Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC.

A dark city fantasy. As a reader you go through the story following multiple lead characters.

The overall story I found was well written and I enjoyed it though I found the plot to become a bit slow sometimes.

The Iron City is a prison as a result of a fae-goblin war. A drug that fuels magic remains in the city and connects the people to what once was nature, dust. There is much to unpack and follow as the characters go about their quests and adventures, and I found that the author was able to keep me on my toes as I wasn't able to predict everything that was about to happen next.

All in all, this wouldn't be at the top of my reads list but I liked it and would probably recommend it to a friend.

This book was all over the place for me.
It takes place over just one night and there's simply not enough time to explore the characters and get properly involved. They're not badly written, they all have their own agenda and distinguished thoughts, but we got minimal info outside of their current situation. The character development has no base, because we don't get to see how they were before this all started. We're just thrown into a rebellion and I had no idea what the opposing positions offered and where I, as a reader, was supposed to stand. There wasn't enough world building for my taste and I couldn't grasp how the world looked; we had cars, guns and security cameras, but no cell phones and one character was fighting with a sword? The different kinds of fae were also lost to me, no idea what the difference between dryad and sidhe or even the goblins is!
I loved the witty tone and the writing itself. That and the fast pace kept me reading, though it almost read like a military thriller at times. This novel is more like a high paced action movie set in a fantasy world, which is not my style. I expected an intricate high fantasy, full of scheming and political intrigue, which doesn't focus on the action.

This book sounded like it would be an interesting novel but I couldn't get very far in it. I just came to a stall while reading it. I am going to start the book again and see if I can get further into it later this year.

I absolutely loved this book. Told from multiple characters POV, this mystery thriller of subjugated fae with their magic kept from them, and the goblins that won the war. The iron wall keeps them from their magic except when they take the addictive "Dust". This really was a stunning debut book from this author. I LOVE when you don't see that twisty coming, and it annihilates you. The. Best. Dialog. Granny Spregg was my favorite. Dark, gripping, angsty with one huge badass woman. Highly recommend this book. I voluntarily reviewed an ARC from Netgalley.

A, lot of people are going to love this book, I think. Unfortunately, I am not one of them.

I like the overall concept of the story, but I wasn't keen on the execution. I like the idea of the fae being subjugated and oppressed for once, by goblins, no less, entrapped in a city made of iron, cut off from their magic. They are made to work in mines, kept in poverty, and any rebellions dealt with brutally. The effect of the mines is cancer, short life spans (human short), and for many, an addiction to Dust, a drug that allows them to briefly touch nature again. The world itself is cool and the ideas behind it are excellent, but the deployment of the story just wasn't for me.

You get the story through several characters, some fae and some goblins. There isn't really a single character I cared about. I felt that they were very one-dimensional, cliché kinds of characters. I didn't feel that any were really that likeable, and I mostly found that they were just too flat with no depth to them.

I felt that the pacing of the book was kind of slow at times. There were times where I almost decided to give up on reading. That said, it's still a fairly quick read.

In terms of plot, there was loads going on, but I'm not sure how much of it was necessary to the overall story. I feel that at least one of the main characters was completely unnecessary and did nothing to advance the plot at all. If anything, it just seemed to be filler to add more pages to the book.