Black City

October 22, 2012
Vampires, genetics, dystopia, racism, and star-crossed romance vie for space in Richards’s overstuffed debut, first in a trilogy. In Black City, one of nine megastates in the theocratic United Sentry States, vampiric Darklings live in walled ghettos, segregated from the human population. As a “twin blood”—half Darkling, half human—16-year-old Ash Fisher is an outcast among both peoples, but is drawn to Natalie Buchanan, daughter of the Emissary who heads up Black City. Readers won’t have to try hard to spot the many parallels between the injustices of Ash and Natalie’s world and their own, including forced relocations, crucifixions, and torture, along with allusions to Nazi Germany and the use of the epithet “nipper” for Darklings. Despite initial mutual hostility between Natalie and Ash, their romance is inevitable. However, it gets buried by unwieldy pseudoscience (including plague strains, genetic superpowers, and creatures with too many or too few heartbeats), Darkling lore, religious dogma, and questionable world-building, starting with the atmospheric but inexplicable decision to build a city out of materials that smolder in perpetuity once ignited. Ages 14–up. Agent: Ayesha Pande, Ayesha Pande Literary.

October 1, 2012
Eyes will roll. Ash is a scorned twin-blood Darkling--hybrid son of a human and a vampire--who hustles Haze, the drug that occurs naturally in Darkling venom, to the addicted human youth of Black City. Natalie is all human, daughter of Black City's newly returned Emissary, local head of the national government that just won a bitter war against the Darklings and is committed to racial purity. When they meet under a bridge after Natalie slips her security detail, Natalie's heart skips a beat. So does Ash's, which is seriously weird, because twin-bloods' hearts don't beat at all. (Full Darklings have two hearts, one of the book's many arbitrary and wholly unconvincing quirks of biology.) They meet again at school; they engage in pro forma animosity; they realize they love each other. While this narrative arc is entirely predictable, at least it is relatively short--but into the mix are thrown political upheaval, a murder mystery, a contagious wasting disease, brutality against animals, parental infidelity, steamy near-sex scenes, vivisection and public crucifixions, along with grindingly obvious parallels to Nazism and the American skinhead movement. Copious infodumps do not compensate for slipshod worldbuilding. There is as little nuance to the relationships as everything else; in addition to the ludicrous destiny that binds Natalie and Ash, friendships dissolve and come back together with all the subtlety of a preschool playground. Bloated and banal. (Paranormal romance. 14-16)

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October 1, 2012

Gr 8 Up-Tapping into many popular tropes, Black City tells a story, in alternating narratives, of a pair of star-crossed youths from opposite ends of the socioeconomic spectrum set against a dystopian backdrop. Ash is a twin-blood-part vampiric Darkling and part human-living on the fringe while his Darkling family is forced to live in an enclosed ghetto, segregated from the human population. Natalie is a pampered but compassionate young woman, daughter of a highly positioned government official, with whom Ash feels a baffling but undeniable connection after a random post-curfew encounter. When the two later meet at school, circumstances throw them together and their attraction, though illegal, grows. As they begin to understand each other, their heavily militarized world begins to crumble and their actions reflect a new perspective. While this exploration may enchant some readers, many secondary characters remain one-dimensional, and their actions compulsory. Strong world-building is undermined by verbosity and banal expressions ("Just because your heart doesn't beat doesn't mean you're not alive"). Overall, Black City is a lackluster addition to the oversaturated field, but insatiable fans of saccharine paranormal romances or gritty dystopian novels will devour it greedily as it provides a balanced combination of romance, action, and fantasy.-Nicole Politi, The Ocean County Library, Lavallette, NJ

Copyright 2012 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2012
Grades 9-12 As the Sentry Emissary's daughter, human Natalie Buchanan fears and mistrusts Darklings, the blood-drinking kind who live outside the walls of the aptly named Black City. Yet when Natalie meets half-Darkling boy Ash Fisher, her heart literally pulls her toward him. Confused by the implications of this attraction and brainwashed by a lifetime of anti-Darkling indoctrination, Natalie fleesat first. For his part, Ash wants nothing to do with a spoiled Sentry brat whose very existence threatens his own tenuous way of life in a ruthless world. When Natalie starts at the same school Ash attends, they slowly acknowledge their inexplicable feelings for each other, aware that interspecies mingling is an offense punishable by excruciating death. Detailed postapocalyptic world building makes Richards' series debut intriguing; of particular interest are the many types of Darklings, from winged to catlike. Not as successful are the unpolished writing, a story line that leans heavily on breathless melodrama that ultimately flattens the plot, and an overabundance of head-spinning cliff-hangers and events. Barbarous, detailed cruelties, including torture, both human and animal, mark this as fare for older readers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2013
Following a war that left the population of vampire-like Darklings oppressed and ghettoized, human Natalie and half-Darkling Ash fall in love and uncover a genocidal conspiracy hatched by the purity-obsessed human government. Ash and Natalie's relationship drama seems petty next to the gritty horror of their world, but that world is vividly painted and imbued with provocative (if heavy-handed) social commentary.

(Copyright 2013 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)