Hallie is a scholar in a desperate financial situation, terrified at the thought of having to return home and face the grief in her past. Kase is a pilot with a hefty family legacy who screws up one too many times. When they are both approached for a mysterious mission, they jump at the chance to prove themselves. The mission is more dangerous than they first thought, however, and the secrets of the land they are exploring more weighty than any could have guessed. Not to mention Kase and Hallie’s immediate dislike for each other. Can their team make it back in one piece, or will they fail in a strange land?

I was so so excited for Cities of Smoke and Starlight. It had been recommended to me by a friend a long time ago, and when I finally bought it I fell in love with the cover. According to the blurb, it’s for “anyone who believed Rogue One needed a romantic subplot.” That sentence definitely applies to me.

Unfortunately, somehow it fell flat. Maybe it was the dragging pace and confusing world building. Maybe it was the childish characters and unrealistic slow burn romance. Maybe it was the giant font size. In any case, I just couldn’t sit back and enjoy it, which is why it took me 18 days to get through (finals week probably had something to do with that actually). Still, I can see how other people would like it – if you’re into steampunk vibes, exploration and adventure, and interesting new magic systems, you might find Cities of Smoke and Starlight perfect for you.

I wanted to be entertained, I really did. But the plot felt so slow. Even in the middle of an action scene, I just wanted some progress to be made. As Brandon Sanderson says, you need promise, progress, and payoff to make a story work. Cities promised me swashbuckling adventure, a sweet romance, teamwork and camaraderie, and redemption arcs for grieving characters. None of these promises were paid off in the end, and progress throughout remained stagnant. I didn’t feel like anyone grew or changed at the end of the book. What change did happen felt artificial and forced, especially in the romance between the two main characters. Hallie and Kase were too mean and childish with one another for me to believe they had any meaningful reason to like each other, and they suddenly started acting all romance-y at the very end with no build up. I was so confused the whole time what the crew’s mission was actually supposed to be. It didn’t help that they spent the whole trip facing problem after problem and never seeming to get any closer to their goal.

The writing style rubbed me the wrong way a bit as well. Again, it just felt slow and focused on all the wrong things. For an adventure story, it almost felt too dark with the way the characters are constantly thinking about their horrible pasts and the bleak outlook of the mission. It just wasn’t fun or even easy to relate to.

This might just be personal bias, but I hate when authors substitute normal bad words with “fantasy” bad words. For example, they saying “shocking” all the time here (like, “ah I stubbed my shocking toe”). Some people might like that, but it just annoyed me. The intention of the word is still there. Words are just words, and bad words are only bad words because people say them with bad intention. If you take the word and replace it with a word that means the same thing in your fantasy world, your characters are still cursing. This book would be full of profanity if we counted fantasy curse words as profanity. Not a fan.

Not sure what the theme was. Never give up even when the whole mission is crashing around you? But their only option was to keep going so they didn’t really have a choice. Teamwork? The whole team seemed to hate each other more and more as the book went on, so not that one. Pride-and-Prejudice-type “first impressions can be wrong and one needs to get over their pride to find love?” Not sure how Hallie and Kase even got bad impressions of each other because what happened wasn’t a big deal. Plus, they didn’t really fix things at the end, they just started being nice to each other out of the blue.

The characters were so close to being likeable. Hallie sounded like my favorite type of female character. Bold scholar, super smart, gets really invested in whatever she’s interested in… but her internal voice and actions were so naive and childish. You’re telling me this girl is older then 15? And Kase would’ve been such an awesome, Carswell-Thorne-type pilot character. Instead, he was rude, arrogant, and snippy with everyone who tried to help him. I had no pity for him or his situation. The side characters were more interesting than the main characters – Zeke and Jove were awesome and I would’ve loved to see more of them. Ebba was cool too, but she mainly seemed like a token female friend character. In general, everyone was pretty one-dimensional, with unrealistic or nonexistent motivations.

A generous three stars for Cities of Smoke and Starlight. I’m hoping the rest of the series will redeem it. Maybe I went into it with the wrong assumptions, but this fantasy adventure novel felt too dark, hopeless, and confusing for what it promised. The slow pace and vague world building left me without a motivation to keep reading. If steampunk, slow burn, and vague magic systems are up your alley, this might be the series for you. If not… it wasn’t for me either 😉