City of Fire (City Trilogy, #1)
by Laurence Yep

2 out of 5 stars

Scirye vows revenge on the dragon that killed her sister, and she is joined in her quest for revenge by Leech, whose friend was also killed, and Bayang, a dragon disguised as a human. This unlikely crew start on the trail to find the evil dragon, Badik, and they end up as stowaways on a plane to Honolulu to track him down and retrieve the priceless artifacts he stole.

The world building for this story was a mishmash of a lot of things. It’s an alternate reality for the modern world where they have phones and cars and planes, but there are also a lot of magical creatures and magic artifacts. It was interesting, but kind of random.

I did not like the writing style at all. The chapters are divided by POV between three different characters, but the POV doesn’t always stick to their perspective. There will be one random paragraph, or one random sentence describes the thoughts and feelings of some other characters, so we are constantly head-hopping in a very jarring way. The characters did not have unique voices. They all sound the same.

I did not connect with the characters at all. There is too much “telling” instead of “showing”, so that there is no emotional connection between the characters. We are “told” that they have become friends, instead of their friendship unfolding naturally through the story.

The plot is really slow and the chapters are oddly short. I did not need 60 pages just to tell about how they snuck onto the plane as stowaways. The writing could have been more concise. The plot ends on a cliffhanger, but I will not be continuing with the rest of the series.

This book has been screened for mild violence on the Screen It First website. https://screenitfirst.com/book/city-of-fire-city-trilogy-2481051