The City of Stardust by Georgia Summers

FantasyMystery

Jun 18

The City of Stardust by Georgia Summers Book Cover with Publication Information and Star Rating

Synopsis

For centuries, generations of Everlys have seen their brightest and best 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 it first.

To do so, she must descend into a seductive magical underworld of power-hungry scholars, fickle gods and monsters bent on revenge. She must also contend with Penelope’s quiet assistant, Aleksander, who she knows cannot be trusted – and yet whose knowledge of a world beyond her own is too valuable to avoid.

Tied to a very literal deadline, Violet will travel the edges of the world to find Marianne and the key to the city of stardust, where the Everly story began.

*Blurb taken from Goodreads

Review

Reading this was like driving through a majestic landscape, except you’re being dragged behind the car by your ankle. It hurt, and it didn’t have to. The option for a smoother ride was so close.

There’s no doubt that Summers has beautiful, elegant prose. If I were to give a rating based solely on language, this would be five stars. The amount of one-liners that could be pulled from this book are immense and I will be holding onto my exclusive edition if only because reading random snippets gives my writing brain inspiration.

But writing alone isn’t enough. This was the most confusing plotline I’ve read in a long time. To the point where it felt like the author was in on all the secrets and I, as the reader, was being thrown scraps. Sometimes this works, because the POV character(s) are learning as they go, so we know only as much as they do. Except many of the POVs seemed to know far more than they were letting on and we were solving a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle with no idea what the main picture was meant to be. It got to a point where I was skimming ahead just to figure out what was happening.

I do think this author has the potential to put out a marvelous novel full of whimsy. Her prose is too good not to root for her. But this was a hot mess that left me angry for having wasted my time (and money—thanks FairyLoot) on it. Weird, because I will say this is an author to keep an eye on, but if her next novel happens to be strung together like this one, I’m tapping out.

I imagine Summers wanted the mystery of the world and the lore to come together in the bite-sized stories that got fed to readers, until the whole picture came into view and awed us. Instead, this was lackluster at best. Which is sad, because this could have been a 5 star read.

Critiques

Plot: There is none. Or, there is, but a pointless one. In the end, this WHOLE conflict could have been avoided if the Everly ancestor had simply killed Penelope long ago instead of locking himself away in a cage and avoiding the mess he made. Which is exactly what he does at the end of this book. I imagine there was supposed to be some bigger message about myths and twisted fact and storytelling and religion and so on and so forth in here. I can see it. But that’s all knit together so loosely that that plot holes are gaping. And there are too many subplots in here—subplots that mean absolutely nothing because no payoff or overarching message/theme can be found. Intuited? Sure, I guess. Readers can intuit a message out of anything with this many random paths. But not a solid takeaway. Violet’s mom? Pointless subplot. Violet’s travels? Pointless. The multitude of myths surrounding Ever Everly (a name meant to be whimsical, but the book was so poorly executed that it made me groan) and Penelope? Again, pointless, because they end up offing one another anyways. Based solely on this plot, I have no idea how the book made it to publication. The prose? Totally understand … but there’s no story. Nothing tangible, at least.
POVs: To coincide with the disjointed plot, the multitude of character POVs only add to the jarring puzzle of this book. I think Summers would be able to pull this off in another project because her writing is so beautiful that it would engage readers no matter the setting/perspective. But, again, there has to be an anchor that keeps us grounded. Otherwise, it’s just a litany of whiplash moments that become frustrating. There are plenty of character POVs we don’t need because they don’t add any understanding to the story because the plot itself is so convoluted and riddled with dead-ends.
Substance: The prologue and initial chapters set up Summers’s novel beautifully. I felt the fantastical and gothic threads being woven into the story. But the vibes became all that this book has. There’s no substance. The City of Stardust (AKA Fidelis), the lore, and the magic is all half-built and left dangling. There was so much potential for an incredible world build and magic system that would have captured the wanderlust of out main protagonist, Violet. After the initial launch of the story, however, this gets thrown out the window. Sad days.