Savage City is the first book in a new fantasy series by L. Penelope about Talia, who finds herself in a p0st-apocalyptic, dark fantasy version of her old life as she tries to improve a world where enslavement and torture give the ruling class its power.

I really enjoyed L. Penelope's Earthsinger Chronicles, so was excited by this new series. Savage City is full of ideas, and there is a lot being set up that can be explored in future books. The premise is complicated, and I found the beginning hard to follow because this book is doing a lot. There's multi-dimensional travel, dual versions of characters, impersonating royalty, daemons, multiple souls, gladiatorial-type trials, and more.

While there's a lot going on plot-wise, I had a hard time connecting with the characters. Talia is trying to pass as her doppelganger so keeps herself aloof and apart, which is good strategy but less interesting. Ryin is enslaved so understandably hates Talia and her father, and it was difficult to believe in their romance, especially from his side. The book did pick up in adventure and excitement by the end, and I am intrigued to pick up the next book in the series to see what happens.

The book is read by Caroline Sorunke and Nathan Lang who both are excellent and really added to the experience.

Thanks to OrangeSky Audio and NetGalley for providing an audio arc of this book.

This book was enjoyable and different from a lot of other fantasy books. I enjoyed the characters and the way that they developed throughout the book. The idea of housing different daemons that are animals was an interesting concept but a little confusing. There were a lot of questions that went unanswered which I suspect will be addressed in future books. I also felt like a lot of things just didn't make sense like the 3 souls. I was just confused about why the author chose voice, memory, and shadow instead of something else. Those options just seemed a little random to me. Overall, I would be happy to see what happens next in this series even though it was not my favorite.

I really enjoyed this book. Loved how you got to know the main characters, and all the layers that go with them. How some times the line between good and evil is so blurred and finely walked.
How prejudiced is in the best of us and worst.

The world is very easy to imagine but with fresh ideas, and I’m sure there is more to come in future editions. It’s a world based on ours but with mystery and magic. How one group is hanging on to what we have and they
Once had and the other has shed its self of it. How both side has lost any connection or understanding of the other, but really are just doing what they think is best by what ever means possible, obviously this leads to one side being more brutal and dominant.

The change in narrative and character makes for a very interesting listen. It sucks you in more seeing this world unfold from different perspectives

I very much look forward to future characters having a more pronounced part in the story.

Oh, what a time it was to be submerged in the world of Fai & Nimali!
This story has been like that dip you take in the ocean and see an entirely different world & when come out: it's back to the reality of Earth.

The story navigates fluidly from earth to a different world with references throughout the story to keep things balanced (the aspect is often missing in many fantasy books). There are instances that will make you pause everything else you are doing & only focus on what's going to happen next?
If only we could have accompanying daemons to further strengthen ourselves here. (The concept of Daemons in this book reminded me of "The Dark Materials - by Philip Pullman )

The blurb of this book gives you a decent understanding of what you are jumping into. So I choose not to talk much about the story - but about the experiences it created.

What part got me 100% into the book: "How bad can being mistaken for a princess be?"

Note: The book has a 'not so complete ending', so it keeps you wanting for more - have no clue when the next part will be out!

Thanks
Author: L. Penelope
Narrator: Caroline Sorunke, Nathan Lang
Published by: Orange Sky
Platform: Netgalley

Let me start off by saying I did like this book overall. It had an interesting concept and it kept me engaged. The story itself was by far the best part.

With that said, even though I liked the story being told, I feel like the execution could have been better; and I couldn't help from feeling lots of things, including the main characters, fell flat. However, the story was interesting enough that I enjoyed the book for what it was.

Overall, an enjoyable read, but nothing special.

An easy to get into and fast paced fantasy novel with an interesting concept right off the bat. While the romance isn’t the most interesting it never gets in the way or detracts from the story itself.

Talia is surprised when she dies to find herself waking back up. But she wakes up in an entirely new world where they believe her to be the Princess. She has to find her way through a world with political intrigue and super powers, all while wondering how she got there and where she even is.

The story is pretty short, the audiobook being a little less than 10 hours for a fantasy novel. But Penelope manages to fit a lot of lore and worldbuilding into a small package without it ever feeling too weighed down. The concept of being thrust into this world allows for Talia to have a lot of leeway in discovering new things and can take us along for the ride. I always love the idea of being dropped into a fantasy world so I gave this one a lot of points for providing that.

The characters are pretty fine but I didn’t feel anything too special about them. Talia felt like an absolute perfect person which honestly made her harder to relate to. She could have been a little bit more well rounded. Reyin too, didn’t feel like he had too much depth. This obviously left a lot to be desired for their romance together. It wasn’t bad but I wasn’t cheering for it either.

I actually really would have liked more with her ‘father’. I thought that was a really interesting relationship that could have been explored more.

Oh and there’s dragons!

So a pretty fun book and overall enjoyable read. I would check out the next in the series when it comes out.

Thanks to Netgalley and OrangeSky Audio for this audiobook in exchange for an honest review. The narration was done by Caroline Sorunke and Nathan Lang. She did fine but I wasn’t a huge fan of his narration.

Bog thanks to L. Penelope, Netgalley and OrangeSky Audio for the Audio ARC in exchange for a review.

Talia dies. More than once. Her life is just over. Not that she's really missing a lot. Her mother died, her father has a new family and she's struggling to make ends meet. But that's life.

When she dies this time though, she doesn't come to in a hospital. She's somewhere new. The same world, just different. And no one is calling her Talia, it's Princess now.

I'm giving this one 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4. I like the idea, a futuristic, dystopian Earth, magic and royalty. The narrators were good. Talia was a bit whiny and was never really part of any conflict, she just woke up in the middle of it all and was quick to choose a side. I think the author tried to give a sense of 'which side will she choose' by making Talia's father a doting one in her new life. Almost like 'is she going to take his side' but it was so quick and Talia just slipped into her role of Nice that there was never really any question about who she'd be helping.

I thought that this was a good start to a series. First books always have a lot of heavy lifting to do. But I felt that a lot of the relationships and world building fell a little flat. There was a lot of telling and not showing.
I am also not a big fan of instalove - so I found the main relationship to be a bit unrealistic.

But I am interested to see where the story goes.

Star rating: 4.5 stars
I loved this book! The plot was amazing and the characters were fun to learn about. The author made it easy to follow along and learn how the world in the book worked. I loved the main female and male characters. I love reading about injustice being fought from behind the scenes. The only reason I can’t rate this book a 5/5 is because at some points the romance seemed to just randomly happen but I’m still glad the romance was added in, I thought it was so interesting that in this world the king and Ryan were from the original world.

I would definitely recommend this book!!!

- BIPOC representation
- Parallel universe
- Dual POV/ Dual narrators
- Fae
- Forbidden love

Talia dies and wakes up in another world with Fae and she soon realizes this world parallels her own. She is thought to be the missing daughter of the Savage King ruling the Nimali people and in order to stay alive, she must take on this role. Although she is desperate to get back to her world, she contemplates staying in order to make this work a better place. Ryin is a Fae warrior held in captivity serving the princess. With plans to overthrow the king, Ryin begins to have feelings for the lost princess who could possibly be the key to bring peace between Fae and Nimali.

I love the idea of this book and enjoyed listening to the audiobook; however it seemed a little underdeveloped. Another book with so much potential! You’ve got parallel universes, shifters, Fae, and BIPOC representation in a Fantasy series!!! The plot is definitely interesting and reminds me of His Dark Materials… if you’re familiar with that series.

I found the idea of soulmates to be intriguing in this book. Soulmates aren’t just lovers but rather a deep relationship with another person that could be your lover, sibling, or best friend.

Talia’s relationship with Ryin developed way to fast. She has a history with a guy from her world who looks like Ryin so I could maybe understand how she developed feelings for him. However, Ryin despised the princess and then all of a sudden he is in love with her. I would have love to see more interactions between them.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and I look forward to reading the next book in the series. ALSO, this cover is beautiful 😍

Savage City by L. Penelope
5/5 Stars
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐⭐

•••Spoiler free review below•••

Savage City might be one of the coolest books I have ever read and I am confident it will be one of my top reads of 2022.

Our book starts off in our modern day world, following Talia who is struck by a truck and killed. When she awakes, she is in a parallel universe - A futurist San Francisco that is on the brink of a war between the Fai and Nimali clans. Talia resembles the missing daughter of the Nimali King and must pretend to be her in order to avoid certain death. She struggles to learn about her new world while feeling drawn to a Fai healer, Ryin, who is held captive by the Nimali King and inexplicably shares the same face as a boy from her old life.

This book is fast paced and interesting from start to finish and there BETTER BE A BOOK TWO.

Savage City will be out March 31st, and if it's not already on your tbr, it should be!
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Special thanks to NetGalley and Orange Sky Audio for sharing an arc with me in exchange for my honest opinions.

3.5 Hearts

Savage City follows a girl after her death to a different earth in the multiverse where she is mistaken for the missing princess. An Earth where after a drastic life altering event the planet has changed and humanity was split into three different people: The humans, Nimali and the Fai. Talia must pretend to be the missing princess if she wants to survive this new world. This is the first book of The Bliss Wars and my first L. Penelope story.

This is a world with magic. Where the Nimali can shift into animal form to be better and stronger warriors, while the Fai channel the essence of the animal without changing their physical appearance. As Talia learns about this world she craves love and attention from her doppelganger’s father, the attention she never got from her own father. But she sees the imbalance of power also and how cruel her father is this world is. Maybe she can find a way to help the captive Fai in this land and find her place in this world at the same time.

I enjoyed this story. The world was pretty cool and I liked how the two different peoples basically had the same kind of ceremony to receive their spirit animal but channeled them so differently. The plot was interesting and kept me very engaged in the building love story between Talia and Ryin. There are undertones of a conservation story happening as the Nimali need a mined type of mineral to run all of their technology while the Fai find those deposits sacred and do not touch them. The conflict between the two races is over a mineral called Bliss and the Nimali’s dependence on it.

I have a few nit picks. The first chapter was a bit jumbled, that could be on purpose because how clear should someone who is dying’s perception be. But I wasn’t sure what was going on in the first chapter. Then the insta love was totally insta-lovey. The characters got barely anytime together and then all of the sudden they had sex. A lot of the characters seemed a bit flat and could have been a little better fleshed out. Especially Talie herself.

Still overall, I really liked the idea of the world and the bound creatures from a spirit realm of sorts. It was a very cool take on a shifter premise. I like it enough that I’d give the second book in the series a try to see if the author couldn’t flesh out the next story just a little more fully.

Narration:
I always appreciate it as a reader when a book with multiple PoVs does multiple narrators too. Caroline Sorunke and Nathan Lang were good story tellers for this and I liked how they portrayed each character’s PoV. I did enjoy Nathan slightly more than Caroline. I was able to listen at my usual 1.5x speed.

**3.5**
I thought this was a good start to a series. Throughout the story, I was pretty invested due to my curiosity about the events that led to Talia’s predicament.
The characters are likable, although some were way more developed than others.
Since this is the first in a series, you’re left hanging and wanting more! Now it’s a waiting game until the next book comes out.


Thank you to TLC Book Tours and OrangeSky Audio for sending me this advanced audiobook in exchange for my honest review.

3.5 this book had an interesting world and awesome concepts. I struggled to connect emotionally with the characters. They came across as a little flat for me.

Savage City is the first book in a new series from L. Penelope and the world-building is intense. It took me a while to grasp what was going on, but it was easy to ground myself even in that uncertainty because we follow Talia, a woman who essentially wakes up in a whole new world and is mistaken for that world's missing princess. There are a good many characters, but Chad (whose name may not be spelled that way) was probably my favorite, which leaves me far more excited about book two than I ultimately was about this first installment. Chad is the missing princess's step-brother and his plotline wound up being the most intriguing for me. I'm hopeful that book one suffered from having to set up quite a bit of world and plot to get us to book two.

Anyway, focusing on the book I actually read, Talia feels an instant connection to Ryan, a Fae drudge (aka a slave for the Nimali people), and their relationship building is interesting, but it felt almost as if we were observing it from afar despite being in their alternating perspectives. The distance is not necessarily something I enjoyed, but am not sure how it will impact other reader's experience. Both Talia and Ryan have some grief and trauma in their past and I appreciated how they connected, even with that distance between the reader and the characters.

Turning specifically to the audio narration, I thought both narrators did a good job, although if I'm being nitpicky, if it weren't for the Netgalley app, I would have wanted to listen to each narrator at a different speed. But overall, I thought it was a well done audiobook and I would recommend if you're interested in intense world-building with a nice romance to accompany your fantasy read!

ARC Review - Expected Release March 31, 2022;

SO GOOD!

I honestly was a little hesitant to even request this as Netgalley has it categorized as romance/fantasy; while there is some romance and light spice in the book i’d place it way more into fantasy that romance; I’m so glad I decided to request it because i’m definitely going to need to follow L. Penelope’s works along the way.

So definitely a lot better than A Kid in King Arthur Court, but in the beginning it sort of had that feel as, Talia, the main character is thrown into what turns out to be another version of Earth via a multiverse. (Don’t worry this doesn’t get overly complex at least not yet, might come into play more in later books); This version on Earth went through an event that left most of the world broken, and humans have developed into warring clans of shifters known as the Nimali and the Fai.

She is a doppelgänger for the Nimali Princess, the Namali are in power but are ruthless even going as far as to enslave the Fai! On our Earth Talia’s father mistreated her and made her feel unloved. Yet his mirror truly loves his daughter and leads to her having a lot of mixed feelings over being loved and his tyranny.

While she’s dealing with her personal struggles the tensions between the Nimali and the Fai are boiling over and something has got to break.

While I enjoyed the whole story, and mostly liked the characters, my hopes for the future of the series is the world building is expanded upon. There were many opportunities to teach us more about the land, magic, and lore that just fell short on some of the details. The good news is this is book 1 of a series so there is definitely time to learn more.

The antagonist was really complex and I like that, I was honestly surprised by some of his actions towards the end, not that they were out of character for him, i just thought he’d chose differently.

The story honestly leaves quite a few paths open for the sequels without leaving you with major cliffhangers which is nice.

Caroline Sorunke and Nathan Lang do a great job at narrating this book, having separate narrators for the different POVs really made it easy to know where in the story you are and I feel they both worked really hard to embody these characters.

I’ll definitely be looking forward to the sequel but i’m also going to look into some of L. Penelope’s other works.

Big thanks to Netgalley and OrangeSky Audio for providing me with a chance to get in on this book early. I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Talia wakes up after her death thrust into another world. Realizing fairly quickly that the alternate version of herself is a missing princess, with no other options Talia takes her place while she figures out how to navigate this world. Ryin is a warrior who's basically a prisoner of war under Talia's father. Their relationship fell a little flat for me, and I didn't feel their connection. The world was interesting, and the concept certainly intrigued me but it just never really landed. The narration was enjoyable, and I may see where this world goes in the future.

“Savage City” follows the story of Talia, who dies in our own version of San Francisco and re-awakens as a look-alike “Nimali” missing princess from a parallel San Francisco. In this world, the two races, Fai and Nimali. This makes it a great story for fans of fantastic creatures and unique magic systems.

Although it has heavy YA fantasy components, the ending is a cliffhangers and the epilogue opens the possibility for more world-building and character exploration.

Having listened to the audio version of the book, I was happy to hear the story narrated by multiple people. This made the story easy to follow and it gave a better insight into the personalities of the characters.

Special thanks to NetGalley, OrangeSky Audio, and the editorial team for giving me the opportunity to review the ARC in audiobook format and to you, my reader, for taking the time to read this honest personal book review.

If you are interested in other of my book reviews, make sure to follow me on GoodReads!

#LifeLongLearning #SavageCity #NetGalley

Such an interesting and fantastical world, I just love dragons so I might be biased.
The narrators have a nice tone and speed, the story doesn't feel long nor rushed.
I give it 3 stars because there is something off, i cant quite put my finger on it, its a great story but its missing something, in some parts gets confusing and in others dull.

Talia is just a normal girl, living with her father and his family. She had been living with him, ever since she lost her mother, but she was not as equal a daughter as his wife’s daughters. Some would say this reminds them of Cinderella, alas, there is no Prince! Well, at least not that clearly. Her life is not going well, and for the second time she finds herself in a hospital seriously injured. Until she actually dies. And then, she is not found neither in heaven, nor in hell. However, her first experience of this place definitely gives her the hell vibes. Thankfully she is saved by the mighty beasts that attack her by a dragon! The dragon is actually a man that can shift forms and so are the rest of the people in this strange world. These are the Nimali and Talia… Talia looks like their lost princess and they are now celebrating her return. Along them is the dragon king, a man that in form looks exactly like her father. Only this king, this father, loves his daughter and is so very much happy to see her again. He is a loving father, but he is also a cruel king. He rules the Nimali with strength and no tolerance for outsiders. He and his savage people are determined to use every resource this planet has to keep them alive and prosperous. This is why they are in war with the Fai.

The Fai, who also have powers like the shifters Nimali, don’t shift forms, but co-exist with their daemons, those spiritual creatures that give them their power willingly. The believe in saving the nature and the Bliss, this mighty power that the Fai adore and the Nimali use as their basic resource. When the Nimali capture Fai, they enslave them, taking part of their daemon’s power away, so that they cannot escape. Fai and Nimali need to have all their three souls to feel complete. The Nimali take one of the Fai souls away, so as to ensure they won’t try to escape. No Fai wants that fate, but Ryin is a captive with a plan. He is a warrior that is plotting against his enemy, collecting information that could be useful for his people. Because of his healing abilities, the king puts him next to the princess, in case she needs his help. She has returned a bit different. She seems to have lost her memory soul but Ryin finds himself warming up to this new version of the princess, the one that says “Thank you” to everyone, even those who serve her.

The concept of this book is multi-dimensional and pretty awesome! We have a heroin who, through her death, is transferred to this parallel universe, where a person that looks exactly like her father exists, a person looking exactly like her exists and a person that looks exactly like a childhood friend also exists. The cool thing is that her father is also her father in this universe and he actually loves, her, something that she didn’t experience in real life. We don’t really understand where this universe exists, but we do get to know a lot about it, which helps to understand the rules of the society we meet. There are also powerful creatures, not exactly human as they carry a daemon inside them, a daemon that is the source of their power. We also get to see that this is somewhat a post apocalyptic society, as we learn that this is how their life is after the Sorrows, which is probably a huge disaster or war.

I loved the magic system! How people get their magic and how this magic works. How different it is for the two tribes, based on their beliefs and customs. There were some strong messages portrayed as well. Like all people are equal and we should all be treated with respect. And also how the planet was destroyed and how we need to be careful not to eliminate the resources of the planet.

The narrators did a great job bringing the story to life. They brought their characters to life, making their personalities visible, or may I say audible, to the reader, or rather listener in our case.

This book is expected to be published on March 31st 2022.

Thanks to NetGalley and OrangeSky Audio for the opportunity to listen and review this audiobook. The views expressed are my personal and honest opinion.