Fantasy Book Reviews

The City of the Dead

Author: melaniepatrick
Title: The City of the Dead
Link: https://www.wattpad.com/story/22869622-the-city-of-the-dead

The City of the Dead is about...pirates! I love pirates! I haven't been able to find a good book about pirates since Tim Severin's Corsair. And when I read the blurb to this book, I felt a gleam of hope that I have perhaps discovered another hidden gem on Wattpad. But alas, I was so wrong.

The City of the Dead is about a girl who's been abducted by pirates of the past and must fight to survive the harshness of the sea. The story started off really well with a great hook that immediately created suspense and kept me interested. Midway through Chapter 1, it started to lose steam and did not really pick up pace again. Sure, there were bursts of tension and intrigue here and there, but those moments were quickly drowned by the clutter and strange choices in the storytelling. I'll explain...

The whole segment where we are introduced to the protagonist, Emerald, and her family felt like an info-dump. We learn a few useless facts about their relationship and the "agreement" the siblings have with one another. I'm very sensitive to these things; even one sentence that doesn't fit with the immediate plot I consider it an info-dump. Because of this, the story lost a lot of its suspense.

When Emerald regains consciousness after an incident in the lake, she wakes up chained and lying on a table in a bizarre place with bizarre people. Her first inclination is to think she's on a pirate ship. What about: "Where am I!? What's going on here!? Am I dreaming/dead!?" And it gets dreadfully worse from there. In Chapter 2, Emerald is interrogated by a pirate kid around her age. Her emotions are all over the place. One moment she's afraid for her life, the next she's all smiles and sass. Oooh nooo, I'm in a predicament here and could be killed any moment but let me pause to describe how hot this boy is for you, what he's wearing, how the sun on his face shows off his youth. By the way, his name is Adonis. Mmm I like!

Emerald's internal dialogue is very bizarre. Her mind wanders to irrelevant things like the size of the ship she's on and whether the pirate kid likes her. It felt like the author projected herself into the story, making decisions for Emerald and having her utter silly comeback lines. It's extremely distracting and ruins the story for me.That is the ultimate problem with The City of the Dead.

I'll say, though, that there is hope for the story. The premise is interesting, and the author can definitely write vivid descriptions that draw us into the story. If she could put herself in the shoes of her characters and asked what they would do in the situations they are in, The City of the Dead just might be worth reading.