A review by jennybeastie
City of Islands by Kali Wallace

2.0

I'm not sure why this book didn't do much for me. Singing magic in a post-mer world is a pretty compelling set-up, but I think the sheer amount of neglect and abuse of children really bothered me. In some ways that's the point, and I know there are pearl diving children in the world right now who are living Mara's life, but I found that appalling, and I found her frustrating as a character and I thought the all-tied-up-in-a-bow ending was not believable. The adults in this book are pretty uniformly horrible, and the magic can't make up for that.

Advanced reader's copy provided by Edelweiss.