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mattiedancer's review
adventurous
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Writing: 3⭐️/5
The writing was substantial, but not remarkable. It got the job done and didn’t get in the way of the storytelling, but it wasn’t the strongest part of my read. However, I do believe that the potential for stronger writing could be seen – little kernels of it, if you will – and so I look forward to future books by Schaeffer.
Characters: 3.75⭐️/5
I’m torn here because while the characters definitely pushed the story forward in areas, they also held it back in others. I wanted a bit more from the characters that wasn’t so focused on shock value. I mean, I love that the characters are vibrant and unique, but I wanted to know them deeper and more personally than that.
Plot: 4.25⭐️/5
Okay, so here’s why you should pick up this book: it’s a brilliant concept. I loved learning about the world and how unique the characters had to become in order to survive. I loved the worldbuilding, the substance of the story, and the driving force behind the characters. While certain moments were predictable, the world in which they were happening never was, which made old tropes feel gorgeous and fresh. I personally can’t wait for the next book, despite wanting more from this one. In a way, I think I may be grading it harder because I expect so much next time.
Who Should Read This Book?
- Those looking for a unique fantasy read
- Those who love unconventional worlds
- Fans of enemies to lovers
- Young adult readers who want a memorable world
Content Warnings?
- Death, murder, violence, blood, grief, injury, fire, confinement, toxic relationships,
Post-Reading Rating: 4.5⭐️/5
Very fun. Will read the next one.
Final Rating: 3.75⭐️/5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Death, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Gore, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Kidnapping, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Body horror, Trafficking, and Car accident
bree_h_reads's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
City of Nightmares kicks off with a strong start and a fascinating concept that carries well until about the midpoint of the book in which is takes a sharp downward spiral. This is only furthered by the poor handling of what matches up fairly well with a trauma response and its dismissal throughout the novel.
I thought the book started out pretty strong, there was a solid introduction to the world and the characters. I liked Ness and her best friend (who’s name escapes me at the moment whoops), they dynamic felt genuine and realistic. I thought the set up for the Totally Not a Cult was interesting and was totally down for it as a more sinister force to lurk in the background. Early on I thought the handling of nightmares as an allegory for multiple things, or at least is coming across that way, was really interesting and would allow for the covering of multiple topics under one concept. I was also looking forward to Ness growing over the course of the story and accepting she does have some kind of trauma response linked to nightmares due to her sister turning into one and killing their father, eventually seeing her switch to a more positive self-talk and stop saying she’s “just a coward” and learning coping mechanisms. I liked having a protagonist that couldn’t fight and how that felt consistent with her as a character and how that played into her handling of dangerous situations and ability to escape danger. Her running through the streets and trying to escape the people after her with minimal fighting was exciting! It allowed for a different approach to things.
However, a lot of these opinions changes about halfway through the book. I didn’t mind the slow start, but when I realised I was in the middle of the book I became extremely concerned about how the book would wrap up all the plot threads introduced. Unfortunately, I wasn’t extremely satisfied with how this was handled.
To start, the book continues the trend that Ness is just a coward. This frustrated me because the book seemed to be describing her episodes/encounters with nightmares as some kind of trauma response/panic attack. Only for it all to be brushed off as her just being a coward, which felt almost minimising. Furthermore, the book had ANOTHER separate reason for her fear aside from the extremely traumatic experience of her sister turning into a nightmare and violently killing their father in front of her. It was frustrating to watch it drive home this notion that Ness was just a coward and needed to suck it up and suddenly her trauma would be cured! (This worked btw.)
Next, and less frustrating, was the setting. I had a very hard time pinning down when this book was supposed to take place. It felt very 1920’s, which I could have completely gotten behind, but then would mention very modern things. It felt like a very strange and jarring mix of the 20’s of today and the 20’s of 100 years ago which made it hard for me to picture the characters or settings with any level of clarity. I think that this can 100% work in most cases where it’s either supposed to be set in a certain time period but has anachronistic tech (Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows) OR in which it’s supposed to evoke a certain time period but still has modern tech like elevators or future tech like spaceships (The Adventure Zone: Balance). I don’t think it’s impossible to have a setting that has the aesthetic of the 1920’s but includes modern tech, I just don’t think this book executes it very well. I wouldn’t even have a problem with it, if it didn’t make it difficult for me to picture the characters or settings of the book, because I couldn’t wrap my head around what building or outfits or hairstyles were supposed to look like.
Next on the chopping block before I get to the meat of my issues, is Ness as a protagonist. It’s disappointing to me I fell off with this character within the story. I thought she had the potential to be extremely interesting and wanted to see how she’d grow over the course of the story. Then I realised she’s a total idiot and was dragged along as she got worse. To start, my first tip off was when her bestie was telling her the boat she was boarding to deliver mail was an all night party boat where no one would be sleeping, Ness had to ask what the beds were for. I immediately caught on to what was being implied, but then Ness had it spelled out for her and got all slushy and flustered about it. Then, on the boat, when she meets Cy she quickly runs through the types of vampires and identifies him as one almost immediately. It was impressive and clever, and this never happens again. For the rest of the book it feels like things have to by spelled out for the main character by the far more competent and strong people around her. It felt almost infantilising. Not to mention I was pitched a morally grey protagonist and instead just got a raging asshole who repeatedly bullies this one girl (who we never see be mean to her without Ness being aggressive first btw) and is just rude and snarky to everyone around her. It wasn’t endearing, I just thought she was a dick.
Finally, we get to the rushed mess that was the last 50%-30% of this book. This is where I’m going to enter some spoiler territory, so just a heads up.
To start, we really kick off events post boat-explosion (there was a boat explosion at the beginning of the book) by an assassin being sent after Ness. Presumably by the people that arranged for the boat to go ka-boom. As a consequence she runs off to the vamp she escape the boat explosion with, Cy. She leaves the next morning, but the assassin never shows up again. Just completely dropped with no explanation. Cy and Ness trauma dump. It’s not until 70% of the way through the book things start happening again. Ness and the bestie break into a secret room and find all the Mysterious Documents that the head of the Totally Not a Cult they’re members of has. Out of literally no where there’s a big plot twist that they’re sending people off to be turned into nightmares and they were going to do this to the MC. When I say out of no where, I mean out of no where. We’re never once given the sense this is something the group would do, they wanted to relocate the MC because she sucks at her job (which is does), but that’s it. Never once does it seem like they want to experiment on her or anything. At least not until it’s relevant. They’re found by the director and saved by the girl Ness has been bullying non-stop, only to find out she’s an investigative reporter trying to uncover the human experiments. It’s here that Ness realises she’s been manipulated into being scared of nightmares and suddenly she’s cured. Whoo. Great writing. Then, Cy figures out who wanted to kill him and there’s a big plot twist with a shit reveal that had minimal build up (it’s his bestie’s gf who’s super jealous of two guys being friends.) Ness then goes on this long speech about how jealousy and abuse is bad with all the subtly of a brick to the face. It feels strange, like the author is trying to signal to everyone she’s a good person. This is also how I felt reading the long rants about the romanticisation of toxic relationships in media. Not that these things shouldn’t be discussed, but it feels weird to out of no where have characters go on these long rants about how evil and wrong it is. After the jealousy rant, Ness and Cy are kidnapped and taken to a secret jail run by the people who hunt nightmares. This of course, had no build up or foreshadowing, and I think the author just expects the reader to assume that the group is being evil because everyone else is. Then the book takes a hard left back into something alluded to after the boom went ka-boom, which was then dropped and never mentioned or alluded to again. Ness goes on this whole personal journey and then wakes up, someone else saves the day, and she escapes. There’s then what feels like a sudden romantic subplot coming out of no where as there’s a scene that feels somewhat implied to be sexual. Every scene after that seems to allude to them now having feelings for each other, it was a bit of a disappointment after being so invested in their friendship and being excited to have close friendship between a girl and a guy.
Overall, it had good moments and had a strong start, but fell flat at the end in a disappointing way.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Confinement, Death, Drug use, Gore, Gun violence, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Violence, Blood, Police brutality, and Death of parent
Moderate: Emotional abuse and Toxic relationship
Minor: Trafficking and Pandemic/Epidemic
saucy_bookdragon's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
So in this book the main character, Ness, had an older sister who turned into a giant spider and ate their dad alive. It was a super traumatic experience ya know, your older sister turning into a giant spider and eating your dad alive. Did I mention that he was alive while his daughter, who, and I cannot stress this enough, turned into a giant spider and ate him. Yep, a giant spider. She turned into one. And ate her dad. Deeply traumatic event, your sister turning into a giant spider and eating your dad that is. Did I mention that she turned into a giant spider and ate her dad? Her older sister, that is, turned into a giant spi-
Annoying, isn't that? Cause that's what I suffered through with this book. There's a lot of problems with it, but by far one of the most annoying is how often this key piece of Ness's backstory is brought up. Schaffer hammers this in until you're no longer scared of giant spiders, just annoyed. I'd personally go to Mordor and kill Shelob with my bare hands just to make Ness shut up about it.
Now, with that out of the way, let's dissect the rest of this story. Like how Ness's sister dissected their dad as a giant spider.
I am a HUGE fan of Schaeffer's first series, the Market of Monsters trilogy. It's an absolutely wild, bloody ride that's pretty dark for a YA series. City of Nightmares has the foundation to be as thrilling as the first series, even more so honestly. The premise is fascinating! When people have their worst nightmare, they turn into whatever they were dreaming about. Because of this you get people waking up as bugs or vampires or dragons or even viruses, their bodies contorting in even stranger ways if what they fear is abstract. If the person doesn't retain their human mind, then they'll go on killing sprees. Some nightmares like vamps and zombies are even contagious.
It's a really compelling and terrifying concept that demands digging deep into characters and understanding both what they fear most and what that fear would manifest as physically, while also leading to some incredibly disturbing body horror. And I'll give the book credit, it's pretty frightening and disturbing. It could be more creative with some aspects of it, like why would their only be twelve types of vampires? But it's overall pretty solid.
It would be even more terrifying if it were better written. You know those Tumblr posts that are like "you go and do your Evil Tasks™ at the Evil Store™ and buy some Evil Butter™"? This book reads like one of those, but if they were unfunny and went on for almost four hundred pages. It's quite comical how blatant it is and excessively it uses telling instead of showing. This is especially annoying when it's giving insight into what Ness thinks, as it just spells it out for you!
This gets especially annoying as the book becomes a vehicle for moral and philosophical ranting. It confuses me that this is marketed as being "morally gray" as Ness is so clearly someone you're meant to root for with all her ranting about how everyone has agency to choose good and why vampire movies are perpetuating abusive relationships. This is both confusing and ironic considering Schaeffer's previous series actually did allow characters to be morally gray and did so without preaching morality.
By the way, what was with those vampire movie rants? Because the movies are clearly a stand in for darker and/or paranormal romance movies and novels such as Twilight. You see in this book there is an Evil Vampire Director™ who makes Evil Vampire Romance Movies™ that are Evil Vampire Propaganda™ that enforce the idea that Evil Vampires™ are sexy and that consent ain't important. This lore is unimportant to the plot and simply there for the characters to talk about how bad these movies are. Now I do think there is a conversation to be had about how the media being criticized here have some very valid critiques and how they can normalize abuse and rape culture, so I don't disagree with Schaeffer's thesis, I disagree with her arguments.
I question if most of this media is actually made by people who are genuinely bad and trying to convince people their behavior isn't bad, it seems to me we more so live in a patriarchal culture and so creators often perpetuate that. There's also a line about the men who watch those movies and how that makes them think it's okay to be abusive, but I assure you men are very much not the target audience of the media being criticized and that male romantic leads are not, in fact, aspirational for most men. I actually burst out laughing at that line. But rest assured, there is plenty of male centered media that tells them it's okay to hurt women.
And the plot is meandering and weirdly a little too close to the Market of Monsters series. Girl works for someone shady, girl meets a bad boy who's literally a monster that has prey to on people to survive, things go haywire and girl and bad boy work together to survive, girl and bad boy return to society and find out that the shady person was in fact bad while also becoming close friends (but no romance, something I like about both of Schaeffer's works is how she makes the central relationships friendships between a guy and girl, Ness is also implied to be aroace). The big difference is that one of these books did that in an interesting way while the other is City of Nightmares.
Overall, City of Nightmares is my first major let down of my 2023 releases. Despite it's terrifying concept, it fumbles in execution thanks to shitty writing, one note characters, and a plot that is neither gripping nor entirely it's own. Oh, also Ness's sister turns into a giant spider and eats their dad alive, btw. In case you missed that.
TWs: LOTS of body horror, giant bugs and spiders, death and murder, drug usage, depiction of anxiety from the main POV, blood, trauma, grief, a cult, gun violence, discussions of rape culture
Annoying, isn't that? Cause that's what I suffered through with this book. There's a lot of problems with it, but by far one of the most annoying is how often this key piece of Ness's backstory is brought up. Schaffer hammers this in until you're no longer scared of giant spiders, just annoyed. I'd personally go to Mordor and kill Shelob with my bare hands just to make Ness shut up about it.
Now, with that out of the way, let's dissect the rest of this story. Like how Ness's sister dissected their dad as a giant spider.
I am a HUGE fan of Schaeffer's first series, the Market of Monsters trilogy. It's an absolutely wild, bloody ride that's pretty dark for a YA series. City of Nightmares has the foundation to be as thrilling as the first series, even more so honestly. The premise is fascinating! When people have their worst nightmare, they turn into whatever they were dreaming about. Because of this you get people waking up as bugs or vampires or dragons or even viruses, their bodies contorting in even stranger ways if what they fear is abstract. If the person doesn't retain their human mind, then they'll go on killing sprees. Some nightmares like vamps and zombies are even contagious.
It's a really compelling and terrifying concept that demands digging deep into characters and understanding both what they fear most and what that fear would manifest as physically, while also leading to some incredibly disturbing body horror. And I'll give the book credit, it's pretty frightening and disturbing. It could be more creative with some aspects of it, like why would their only be twelve types of vampires? But it's overall pretty solid.
It would be even more terrifying if it were better written. You know those Tumblr posts that are like "you go and do your Evil Tasks™ at the Evil Store™ and buy some Evil Butter™"? This book reads like one of those, but if they were unfunny and went on for almost four hundred pages. It's quite comical how blatant it is and excessively it uses telling instead of showing. This is especially annoying when it's giving insight into what Ness thinks, as it just spells it out for you!
This gets especially annoying as the book becomes a vehicle for moral and philosophical ranting. It confuses me that this is marketed as being "morally gray" as Ness is so clearly someone you're meant to root for with all her ranting about how everyone has agency to choose good and why vampire movies are perpetuating abusive relationships. This is both confusing and ironic considering Schaeffer's previous series actually did allow characters to be morally gray and did so without preaching morality.
By the way, what was with those vampire movie rants? Because the movies are clearly a stand in for darker and/or paranormal romance movies and novels such as Twilight. You see in this book there is an Evil Vampire Director™ who makes Evil Vampire Romance Movies™ that are Evil Vampire Propaganda™ that enforce the idea that Evil Vampires™ are sexy and that consent ain't important. This lore is unimportant to the plot and simply there for the characters to talk about how bad these movies are. Now I do think there is a conversation to be had about how the media being criticized here have some very valid critiques and how they can normalize abuse and rape culture, so I don't disagree with Schaeffer's thesis, I disagree with her arguments.
I question if most of this media is actually made by people who are genuinely bad and trying to convince people their behavior isn't bad, it seems to me we more so live in a patriarchal culture and so creators often perpetuate that. There's also a line about the men who watch those movies and how that makes them think it's okay to be abusive, but I assure you men are very much not the target audience of the media being criticized and that male romantic leads are not, in fact, aspirational for most men. I actually burst out laughing at that line. But rest assured, there is plenty of male centered media that tells them it's okay to hurt women.
And the plot is meandering and weirdly a little too close to the Market of Monsters series. Girl works for someone shady, girl meets a bad boy who's literally a monster that has prey to on people to survive, things go haywire and girl and bad boy work together to survive, girl and bad boy return to society and find out that the shady person was in fact bad while also becoming close friends (but no romance, something I like about both of Schaeffer's works is how she makes the central relationships friendships between a guy and girl, Ness is also implied to be aroace). The big difference is that one of these books did that in an interesting way while the other is City of Nightmares.
Overall, City of Nightmares is my first major let down of my 2023 releases. Despite it's terrifying concept, it fumbles in execution thanks to shitty writing, one note characters, and a plot that is neither gripping nor entirely it's own. Oh, also Ness's sister turns into a giant spider and eats their dad alive, btw. In case you missed that.
TWs: LOTS of body horror, giant bugs and spiders, death and murder, drug usage, depiction of anxiety from the main POV, blood, trauma, grief, a cult, gun violence, discussions of rape culture
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Body horror, Death, Drug use, Gore, Panic attacks/disorders, Violence, Blood, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Animal death and Cannibalism
amyejones's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Read this as an e-arc, and I’m so glad I did! The concept was so interesting and I enjoyed finding out more about it as the book went on. It was a rollercoaster of a book and I hope there’s a second one because I need to know more.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Gore, Blood, and Death of parent
Moderate: Gun violence and Grief
Minor: Drug use and Alcohol
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