The City of Stardust Published by Orbit on January 30, 2024 Genres: Fiction / City Life, Fiction / Fantasy / Action & Adventure, Fiction / Fantasy / Contemporary, Fiction / Fantasy / Dark Fantasy
Pages: 352
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Goodreads
Reading Challenges: Netgalley BacklistA #1 International Bestseller • An Amazon Best Book of February 2024 • An IndieNext Pick
"A dark dream of a novel...that feels both timeless and original. Enjoy—and also beware. This fairy tale is deadly." —Laini Taylor, New York Times bestselling author
Slip into a lush world of magic, stardust, and monsters in this spellbinding contemporary fantasy from debut author Georgia Summers.
For centuries, the Everlys have seen their best and brightest disappear, taken as punishment for a crime no one remembers, for a purpose no one understands. Their tormentor, a woman named Penelope, never ages, never grows sick – and never forgives a debt.
Violet Everly was a child when her mother left on a stormy night, determined to break the curse. When Marianne never returns, Penelope issues an ultimatum: Violet has ten years to find her mother, or she will take her place. Violet is the last of the Everly line, the last to suffer. Unless she can break the curse first.
Her hunt leads her into a seductive magical underworld of power-hungry scholars, fickle gods and monsters bent on revenge. And into the path of Penelope's quiet assistant, Aleksander, who she knows cannot be trusted – and yet to whom she finds herself undeniably drawn.
With her time running out, Violet will travel the edges of the world to find Marianne and the key to the city of stardust, where the Everly story began.
Praise for The City of Stardust:
"A story as darkly wondrous as midnight. Summers brilliantly takes our yearning to open doors to magical new worlds, and twists it into a seductively vicious dream of darkness, blood, and winged horrors. Enthralling to the last page." —Shelley Parker-Chan
"Summers' debut is a dark, gorgeous tale of curses, gods and monsters, with the love and loyalty of family at its heart." —Sangu Mandanna
Bookly APP Stat
I recently started using the Bookly App while reading, which generates excellent graphics about your reading. So, For the City of Stardust, it took me about 6 hours to read, but over a week, I read about 134 pages a day. I felt it was a very suspenseful book; the horror element came as the body count, which I was not expecting. The romance spice level was not too extreme. I hoped more from that as it is an adult novel, and they usually go higher in the spice department. For tears, there was a lot of death in this book, which made the mystery, thrill, and suspense relatively high. I felt where it was going to go was very unpredictable.
Review:
A curse can be many things. A wish left out to spoil in the sun, putrid and soft, leaving behind only calcified desire and oxidized envy. Or a poisoned chalice, a mistake tattooed across an entire family tree, with every generation promising never to sip until they do. Sometimes, it’s a deal and bad luck conspiring like old grifters closing on an easy mark. For the Everlys, it begins with stardust.”
One of the first quotes I noted in the City of Stardust applies and sets the stage for what will be an epic tale. It is a tale of a young lady whose mother leaves her to live with her two uncles, waiting for her to return.
“She believes in curses like she believes in stories. For a curse is just another kind of story, dark, toothy, and razor-edged. It’s the unspoken tale singing its way through her family history; once a generation walks into the dark, compelled by the shadows, our poor Violet has shadows stalking her every move as she tries to unravel the family curse that plagues her. She was given time by the mysterious Penelope, ten years and a day. That seems like a long time, but when you’re trying to solve a puzzle and have not been given the truth most of your life, it can fly by quickly.
“The cost to travel through the door is always sacrifice. And there is no one but herself to give it.”
Doors and keys are featured throughout this tale of multiple worlds, lost mothers, family curses, and finally being free. The City of Stardust is a unique debut novel that kept me guessing until the very last page how Violet would save the Everlys and how it would all play out between her and Aleksander. I read this as part of the Fairyloot read-along, and it also counts towards a Netgalley arc I did not get to before publication.
About Georgia Summers
Georgia Summers is a half-British, half-Trinidadian writer. She spent most of her life living across the world, including Russia, Colombia, the USA, Scotland, and briefly Switzerland. She is still bad at languages.
She has previously worked as an editor, a bookseller and rare books student librarian, so you could say she’s seen the entire lifecycle of a book.
When she’s not doing bookish things, she enjoys embroidery, playing piano, and painting, among various other crafts. She currently lives in London, but she dreams of one day living in a haunted château with cats and a ghost that cleans.
She is represented by Robbie Guillory at the Underline Literary Agency
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
- Netgalley Backlist
