Sinking City reminded me of a mash up between Shadowhunters and the Volturi from Twilight (hold on before you judge that… just talking about the structure of magical Italian politics). It’s one of those YA stories that has action from sentence one straight through to the last page. Set in Venice you have all of the beautiful ambience of the ancient city with the tradition and politics of a magical Mafia.
Zan is our main male character who is the son of one of the Capo’s and is like most teen sons, not quite what his father envisions. The family is what’s called in this world, Skilled, which means they have varied magical powers with a history that stems all the way back to Galileo. When an American family moves into town, Zan finds himself drawn to the daughter, Ellie, who is just your average girl. This is frowned upon, queue your forbidden romance. Interestingly, the more time they spend together, the more forbidden the romance becomes because she finds herself embroiled in the brewing magical tensions between Zan’s family and their rivals.
I really enjoyed the world building and the interesting way magic manifested in this world, although there were a few times where I felt it was convenient they happened to have a certain power at a certain time. There is also insta-love which is not my favorite but they acted appropriately for teenagers so the steam was at a perfect level for me. There’s lots of intrigue and betrayal and I appreciated that there was a clear ending even though this is a series. I’m looking forward to checking out the next installment.
Thanks so much to the authors for providing me a copy in exchange for my honest opinion.
One of the powers in this one is to be able to share memories so that people can see events through your POV, what’s a memory you would want to share with someone?
~ Dana
openmypages 