Sixteen-year-old Thea Holder’s mother is cursed with a spell that’s driving her mad, and whenever they touch, Thea is chilled by the magic, too. With no one else to contribute, Thea must make a living for both of them in a sinister city, where danger lurks and greed rules.
Thea spends her nights waitressing at the decadent Telephone Club attending to the glitzy clientele. But when her best friend, Nan, vanishes, Thea is compelled to find her. She meets Freddy, a young, magnetic patron at the club, and he agrees to help her uncover the city’s secrets-even while he hides secrets of his own.
Together, they find a whole new side of the city. Unrest is brewing behind closed doors as whispers of a gruesome magic spread. And if they’re not careful, the heartless masterminds behind the growing disappearances will be after them, too.
Perfect for fans of Cassandra Clare, this is a chilling thriller with a touch of magic where the dead don’t always seem to stay that way.
It’s been quite some time since I’ve come across a reasonably dark fantasy. Some stories, I’ll refrain from naming, are labeled dark and sinister but there’s something about them that never lives up to the hype. Some call it the plague of YA, while I think it’s that we haven’t gotten the right people to tackle the subject, but Dolamore has managed to do just that. This novel is so dark, and, no, it isn’t just the zombies or anything like that. This whole novel is so bleak; the city, the attitude, just the overall personality. And, all the while, this book manages to shine in unimaginable ways.
Jaclyn’s writing style is lyrical and flows freely throughout the book, but I must admit that I felt there were more than a few things missing from the plot. Dark Metropolis is one of those books that tries to make you think there’s absolute chaos when not much of anything is actually happening. It happens to work out in the novel’s favor at some parts, but at others I felt like the writing was empty and just filling the page to make up for lack of plot. The characters in DM, though, make up for all of this. Freddy, Thea, Sigi, and Nan are all oddballs with glimmering little stories just waiting to be told. Each of them has some really key elements in the novel, and it was lovely seeing them all come together and contribute a bit of validity to the story. My only issue is that I wish we would have gotten some more time with Thea and Freddy on the same page. A lot of their relationship is based off of thoughts they keep to themselves, and I can honestly say that out of the whole book there was only twenty-something pages where they happened to be interacting, so their relationship felt rushed and at times sort of fabricated. Nan and Sigi’s relationship felt a bit more natural, as they spend way more time together than the other two. Luckily, though, we get a second tie-in, and after doing a bit of research, some of the things I was unclear about have been settled.
I had no idea where this novel was supposed to be set, or in what era, to be more specific, and it looks like Jaclyn thought of all this and maybe purposefully kept it out of the novel for the hell of things. Dark Metropolis is actually based off the movie Metropolis and is supposed to take place circa 1927 Berlin. I can’t tell you all just how many times I stopped reading to try and get a feel for what/where/why things were happening. A bit confusing, and I only wish that Dolamore had slipped that in. Either way, I’m more than excited to get my hands on the sequel and see where this story takes all these characters.
Any fans of dark fantasies and odd romance will love Dark Metropolis.
Rating: 8/10
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