Mystic City (review)

In this alternative future New York, global warming has flooded the city’s streets, magic-wielding mystics are drained of their powers and forced to live in the grimy Depths, and the wealthy elite use appropriated magic to power a world of luxury in the Aeries. One of the elite, seventeen-year-old Aria Rose, has been carrying on a secret romance with Thomas Foster, the son of her father’s adversary—or so she’s told when she wakes from the near-fatal drug overdose that has destroyed her recent memory. Unable to ignore doubts about a passion she can’t remember, however, Aria sneaks out to the Depths to spark her memory and meets Hunter, a handsome mystic rebel, who helps her on a quest to uncover the secrets of her own past and to understand her role in the war that is about to erupt between the mystics and her family. The novel’s intriguing premise will please fans of romantic fantasy, particularly its imaginative recasting of the conventional Romeo and Juliet storyline. The first in a series, much of the novel is dedicated to setting up the conflict for future volumes, but it still includes plenty of its own action. Unfortunately, the otherwise compelling story is undermined by lackluster world-building, including several noticeable gaps in logic, and shallow characters. Though Aria’s evolution from naïve pawn to courageous revolutionary makes her a heroine worth rooting for, her seemingly endless cluelessness becomes annoying, while Hunter never rises above the standard romantic hero. Nevertheless, readers looking for an action-centered romance with a sci-fi sheen, a sort of Gossip Girls meets Total Recall, may find the premise here diverting.