Love the premise of this book - I'm a sucker for portal fantasy. There are some very good ideas and important criticism of society. But this felt too straightforward for an adult book - I would put it more in the new-adult section. The main character is likable but a little too Mary Sue. If you like dystopian novels and are looking for a light read, this is perfect. I can't say I was surprised by any of it, but it was a pleasant and quick beach read.

<i>"The first time I die, my life doesn't flash before my eyes in a rush of images"</i> ... what a first line!

<b>Plot:</b>

After <b>Talia</b> passes away, she expects to wake up in the afterlife. Instead, she finds herself in a version of San Fransisco she doesn't recognise, where she is mistaken for the missing princess of the Nimali people, Celena. The first person she sees is someone who looks incredibly like her childhood crush who passed away years ago. <b>Ryin</b> is a Fai prisoner of war, and is nothing like the Victor she remembered from her childhood.

The Fai and the Nimali are two groups of people, separated by significant ideological differences, who have been fighting one another for a long time. Serious concepts such as slavery, humanity, souls, relationships to nature and the world, and even possible genocide are covered in this book. In a post-apocalyptic San Fransisco, we see a cruel world with a power structure which forces actions and reactions by various actors, leading to a powerful story.

<b>Review:</b>

This story was genuinely incredible. The worldbuilding was very interesting, and though the book took its time explaining the various elements it introduces, I truly think it is worth the wait. Talia's inner monologue is something I could easily identify with and it helped connect me to her character instantly. Ryin is a character I slowly fell in love with throughout the book and the more details of the world were introduced, the more I understood him and his motivations.

I cannot wait for the next book in this series, as the world set-up is amazing and I became so invested in the characters and world. Very light spoiler ahead: <spoiler>The epilogue does leave a bit of a cliff-hanger, which I think will lead brilliantly into another book exploring all the elements of this world we didn't get to touch in this introductory novel.</spoiler>

<i>I received an ARC of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased and honest review.</i>

Savage City is an engaging story, if not a bit underdeveloped. Either way, it is always refreshing to see Black women as the MCs in adult fantasy novels (especially when the author is also Black). The first two chapters were off to a rocky start, things were hard to follow at first; it evens out pretty fast. The writing is straightforward and simplistic, which isn't a bad thing. I think the story does a good job in providing worldbuilding details as needed and I never felt overwhelmed with it. What I did feel overwhelmed with was so many bland background characters who didn't have anything distinctive about them, and so they were forgettable. To be honest, the secondary main character Ryin is also forgettable. Talia, the primary MC, was flat. She is kind of adrift in a plot and doesn't really take much action of her own that's meaningful to the plot's development. Things just happen to her. And she's a bit one-dimensional.

While I did enjoy this story overall, I do have some minor gripes like the development of the romantic subplot (it was supportive and non-toxic, which I appreciate, but I didn't really believe they were in love). There were a few other moments in the story that I felt were glossed over and maybe needed to be developed more. The ending felt a bit rushed. Sometimes the dialogue felt overly formal and stiff, even for the main character, who is from our Earth in modern times.

Speaking of worldbuilding, I can't quite understand why there are royals in an alternate world that seems to be post-apocalyptic modern Earth set in the United States. This isn't something that is addressed, but I did wonder why they would resort to kings and queens in a place with a history like the U.S. And if this alternate Earth had a different history, that wasn't addressed so the readers are left to wonder. Not necessarily a bad thing, just something that caught my attention.

Also of note: I did also listen to the audiobook of this series while reading along, but I stopped listening to the audiobook because I felt the performances of the readers - particularly the voice of Ryin - was stilted and made reading unenjoyable. I think for this book if you're debating between audiobook and ebook, maybe pass on the audiobook!

Either way, I enjoyed reading it and am looking forward to the sequel.

Trigger content warnings: brief mentions of a bad car accident and then another mention of a pedestrian being struck and killed by a car; slavery, torture, violence, sexual content (between consenting adults), imprisonment.

I recieved the audiobook and ebook versions in advance in exchange for my honest review via Netgalley.

Talia dies in an accident but wakes in the middle of a war between the Nimali and Fai. The Nimali believe she's their missing princess, and the dragon king looks exactly like her father. Finally receiving love and affection, Talia plays along and pretends to be the shifter princess. Ryin is a Fai warrior plotting the downfall of the Nimali even as he's conscripted to work for them. The attraction between the two is irresistible and will either destroy them or save them.

King Lyall is temperamental, with his one redeeming feature his love for his daughter. His emotional whiplash means the subjects fear him, and he's cruel to Nimali and Fai alike, though, of course, he sees the Fai as lesser beings. The technology of the Nimali runs on Bliss, derived from spirit energy, and does get mined and used up. This is a large part of the war between the people, as the Fai hold Bliss in reverence, and deny the Nimali access to their supply. Isn't it always down to resources and allocation?

The world is a mystical overlay to ours, and the different cultures are seen and learned about through Talia. As dangerous as it is to pretend to be the princess, that also allowed her to survive. The Nimali hoard resources and supplies of all kinds; our first introduction to the king is his condemnation of a former citizen of his city getting rations from a current citizen that results in death and expulsion from safety. It only adds to the hate and fear, clearly the way he established his power in the first place. Having a spirit bonded to him should have prevented him from killing and threatening indiscriminately, but Lyall uses his power to intimidate, and ultimately his plan to obliterate his enemies.

This is the first book in the Bliss Wars series. This novel is complete on its own, with a hook for more coming up. It's a fascinating world, and one with people I really enjoyed reading about.

I received an ARC from the publisher and am voluntarily posting a review. All opinions are my own.
Savage City is the start to an intriguing new fantasy romance series by L. Penelope. While her previous full-length novel series was more in the vein of epic/high fantasy, this one is more akin to portal fantasy, and I admit it took time to warm up to it at first.
Conceptually, it’s super cool…I love how it begins with Talia’s “death” on Earth, which triggers her transportation to this mysterious city. And while it took time to get my bearings, Penelope does a decent job of establishing a sense of place, with it feeling like a multiverse full of diverse characters.
However, I found the characters weak. Talia is ok, but there’s not much that made me want to invest in her. She doesn’t like others being hurt, but I feel that’s a pretty common thing to feel in that situation? And Ryin is equally bland as a love interest, which makes their relationship feel equally bland.
This story and the series overall has the seeds of potential, but I feel this could have been developed more. I may check out the next book, as there are some good ideas here and I normally like L. Penelope’s work.

Thank you to Net Galley for an eARC copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

This is a new to me author and a book I had not heard any buzz about. Having said that, the blurb intrigued me enough to request a copy.

We start off with Talia, whose died, ending up in some kind of parallel world during a monster attack. Um, what? So, lots of action from the start! Talia is saved by the Crown Prince, who thinks she’s his missing step sister, Princess Celena. Sprinkle is some shifters, daimons, dragons, warring clans and forbidden love and you have the beginnings of an epic tale, right? Well…..not quite. The mythos was a bit confusing and the main characters were a bit bland. Although I was intrigued by Prince Shad. Also, where is Celena??

All in all, a good (not great) start to a new fantasy series.

3/5 stars

Hmmmm… I’m not quite sure where to start with this review.

First of all, the premise is an amazing idea. Girl dies… only to be reincarnated elsewhere in the midst of a monster attack?? Absolutely WILD!

But from there… I didn’t really feel anything. Talia felt very bland to me (she was so boring on Earth, and that’s coming from me: the most boring person on the planet). Also… how did she fall in love with Ryin so quick? I know he looked like her old crush on Earth but… I don’t know, I guess it felt unbelievable to me. Like, one minute they were kissing and the next they were having sex in a closet??

That was another thing that weirded me out: the entire book felt super young and YA and I would have guessed the characters were 16-18 based on how they acted, but they were really in their twenties?? And there was a graphic sex scene and talk of boners and things like that? It just didn’t feel like it fit. I literally gasped because I felt like it came out of nowhere.

So much of this had good potential… but I don’t think it really hit the mark for me. Not quite sure if I will read the rest of the series when it comes out or not. I did sort of like Prince Shad… so maybe I will have to give him a go.

Savage City is the start of a new series of fantasy romance series by author L. Penelope, who I've previously encountered for her "Earthsinger Chronicles", another fantasy romance/epic fantasy series, which just finished with 4 novels a little while back (and 3 novellas). I kind of grew to really really like Earthsinger, whose first book had a solid pair of main characters but little else, but grew more and more complicated and filled with good characters, till it became really interesting, which characters and romances I really liked and cared about. Still, the series seemed to grow too complicated for Penelope to finish it with a truly satisfying conclusion to its many themes and ideas, which were really interesting as they were built up.

And Savage City reminds me a bit of the first Earthsinger novel (Song of Blood & Stone) - it's got some very solid interesting characters from different sides of a conflict, some interesting themes, and is just too short to really explore it all. The central romance features Talia, a girl from our own world, who upon death finds herself in a fantasy world as the missing daughter of an oppressive but loving father, and Ryin, a member of an oppressed people acting as a prisoner of war as he attempts to plot a revolution. The setup is familiar in some ways but well done, and the characters are generally pretty enjoyable, but certain conflicts (the forbidden nature of their love, the comfort of having a loving parent vs the fear such a parent is wrong, etc.) just don't have enough time to make an impact.

Still there's enough here - when combined with Penelope's past history with her Earthsinger Chronicles - for me to be interested in going forward, and others may like this a bit more.



------------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------------------
Talia lived her whole life without love, first with her mother before her first accident, and then with her father and stepmother afterwards. And so when a car accident takes her life seemingly for the second time, she doesn't have much hope for the afterlife. But instead of heaven or hell, Talia finds herself in a strange world under attack from dangerous beasts, until she is rescued by humans who can seemingly transform into animals....and who think she is their lost princess. And when Talia finds out the King looks just like her old father, but actually cares and loves his daughter, she wants to pretend she is his daughter....except for the clear fact that the King oppresses and enslaves the Fai people for little reason other than cruelty in acts that horrify her completely.

Ryin is on the surface a captured Fai warrior, forced to use his healing abilities in service of the hated Nimali. But secretly, Ryin has been plotting for the day his people will rise up and fight back, learning the people and ways of the Nimali such that he can fight for his people's freedom....and get revenge on either the King or the Prince who killed his sister. But when Ryin gets assigned to watch and shadow the newly found Princess, he finds a woman who is a lot more caring than he ever imagined, and he begins to have feelings he shouldn't...especially when his Fai allies begin a plan to take her hostage to take advantage of the King.

Soon Talia and Ryin will find themselves drawn close together, and their love, and the forces that put them in their tenuous situations, will change everything.....
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Savage City has a setup that isn't exactly unusual, but is pretty well done once it leaves our world and gets to the fantasy world. You have two peoples - the Nimali and the Fai - each of whom has different ideas about how one should use Bliss, the magical resource they each use to power their technology and their own forms of magical transformations. The Nimali have a caste system that is oppressive of their own people, and under the King, they oppress the Fai, who they want to conquer and erase so they can have all the Bliss on their own; and what Fai they capture they force to lose either their voice, their shadow, or their memory so they can force them to serve as servants....or worse as mindless slaves. It's hardly an unusual setting these days, but Penelope makes it work extremely well, especially with how different people in the systems have different views on how to change or keep the status quo - from the Prince who clearly is plotting a coup to change things, to the lost princess who surprisingly was willing to elevate two girls from a lower caste, to the various Fai who want to try to change things possibly by working with the Talia they think is a princess to those who instead want to use her as leverage.

This setting allows for each of our main duo to have to adapt and to face growing internal conflicts, especially as they get close to one another. For Talia, she has to deal with the fact that as much as she wants the attention and love of her father, her father and his people are horribly cruel and oppressive in ways that make her sick, and she can't simply stand by and do nothing. And when it comes for Talia seeing Ryin and the other Fai, she just can't bear to see what the Nimali have done to them and thinks naturally that they should hate her for it. For Ryin the conflict comes from his awareness of how Talia, who he thinks is the princess, is truly kind and caring, and thus when some arrogant and impulsive Fai hatch a plot to capture her and use her for ransom, he finds himself conflicted between growing feelings and his need to help his people. And so the two find themselves conflicted even as their attraction pushes them together, until a finale allows them to finally fight together.

Still the problem is that well, this book is awfully short, and too short for either these conflicts or the romance to really get enough page time. So Talia's conflict over the love she wants from her "father" is basically over pretty quickly, as she never spends practically any time with the King without him possibly reminding her of how awful he is, never really forcing her to make a difficult choice. And the romance between them ignites about 66% of the way through, but just sort of all of a sudden (especially from Talia's perspective), whereas it could use a bit more time smoldering to make the two's giving in to their feelings mean more, so as to emphasize Ryin's conflict. It just feels like a lot of shortcuts were taken, robbing some of this story's themes and romantic parts of their impact.

Still, a similar issue was what I felt with the first Earthsinger Chronicle book, so I'm hopeful book 2 and beyond, now that this setting is established, will be both longer in length and feature relationships with more depth that I can enjoy. In short, Savage City is a solid series starter, even if it's too short to really be a book that is worth highly recommending on its own as a stand alone, even though the ending is conclusive of the main relationship.