Review: Red City

Red City by Marie Lu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It’s easy to look at Marie Lu’s adult debut and think it might still be more teen friendly at the start, since we begin by following our two protagonists Sam and Ari from a very young age when they were both immigrant children in Angel City (the DC Comics-like alternate Los Angeles of this book). But it becomes very clear, very quickly, that once we we move into their grown up lives, they really do deal with grown up concerns.

Lu’s long had a way of writing star crossed lovers like you wouldn’t believe, and this book is no exception. Sam and Ari are pitted against each other in rival alchemical syndicates fighting for control of the Angel City demimonde, and yet, they’re the one who got away for each other - particularly Sam for Ari.

Sam is heavily based on Lu’s own childhood, being a poor immigrant from China whose mother works in a restaurant to make ends meet - but Lu is quick to point out in the acknowledgements that Connie, Sam’s mom, is not based on her own mother in terms of personality. Which is a good thing because Connie is a horrible mother, emotionally distant and controlling and excessively prideful, and what character development she gets is too little too late.

As for Ari, he gets plucked out of obscurity in his home of Surat, Gujarat, and is taken to America to learn the ways of alchemy and charisma. He’s told he’s got charisma out the ass naturally, but he’s nevertheless very anxious at almost all times, fearful that those who sponsored his immigration will also kill his family back in India. And considering that the rival syndicates of this world are deeply entrenched in the economy, right down to plying people with a deadly alchemical drug called sand and fighting off all attempts to ban it…I’d say his fears are founded.

This series gets comps to both The Godfather and The Magicians, but those comps - especially the latter - do it a huge disservice. This book sprawls through a cosmopolitan alternate world setting, merely scratching the surface - I expect Lu will expand the view of this world with each successive book just like she did in her original Legend series - and the characters are far more likable and interesting than any of those stereotyped assbites at Brakebills.

As a Lu fan, though, I’d say that Sam’s alchemist name is a particularly nice touch. Mozart, but not for Wolfgang, instead for his sister Nannerl - the protagonist of one of Lu’s more obscure YA works, The Kingdom of Back.

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