A review by booknooknorth
City in the Dragon's Eye by Jordan Loyal Short

adventurous dark funny medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No

3.0

This guy has every potential to becoming a good indie writer!

...just he needs to address a few things.

1. We have a character drama focused book, but the villain is a little stereotypical which is a whoopsie poopsie. He's more stereotypical bad guy that has a morally gray reason but...he's still kinda twirling moustache kinda dude

2. Lack of diversity in main characters and that one incident he called a main side character "caramel" skin colored which was a little yikes (I've addressed this with the author via DM and he seems to understand to not do this in the future)

3. The worldbuilding, though good, is slightly lack luster because we only get mention of the magic systems which seem to be "an equivalent exchange" magic, but I'm giving the benefit of the doubt to saying it's "first novel in the series" things.

4. A minority dies first which is also yikes. (Also a whole topic on this online, my hands hurt too much to delve into that)

So, why is this still 3 stars?
Three things.

First, I still found myself having fun, I follow this guy on Tiktok and Insta and he's not a bad moustache twirling demon like the main villain, so a lot of things I stated I want to say that he just wasn't aware of said problems. If I see it in future books (outside of Page's Pyre since I literally talked to him about this a few days after that release, then it's a different story.) I still docked a star for the whole diversity issue because it does need to be addressed and I can't turn a blind eye because I follow him.

Second, I found myself ugly snorting in laughter at this book far too much than a Pratchett book. Short has a way of sneaking humor at odd times where you don't expect it and that makes it better. Pratchett sneaks humor nearly everywhere and the climax is huge and emotional. It's not like that with Short, hell, there was even good comedy scene near the climax. So if you're trying to find joy over this holiday season that is filled with passive aggression around the table, read this book while being told by your aunt "Writing is a shit career"

Third, Short has a rare gift of having a GOOD prose style that doesn't suck. There are so many traditional PUBLISHED author prose style that don't have any merit of substance unlike Short. And he's indie. He has some hiccups where the action scenes can get a little confusing but for the most part, it has a very strong potential to being honed into something truly great.

All in all, with all things I mentioned, it's still a decent KU read. It is still worth your time since the guy just published a sequel and he's a genuine treat on social media.

-

Prose: Good and be sharpened to something even better. Work on action scenes and what to fix in your prose and it'll be killer.

Pace: A bit slow in the beginning until you get around 10% in and that's when the hook comes around then

Plot: Wasn't really impressed by the plot but because this is a quasi dark comedy fantasy mashup, I can't say the plot would be the biggest draw to this book. You're here for the mashup, not for screaming "WHY DOES HE HAVE WINGS"

Character: This is a character drama and though we see what pitfalls they have, we don't see a huge amount of 3 dimensions to them. I think it's because it's first novel stuff so we won't see too much of it yet, but for a starter, it's not bad. 

Vibe: Germany with a side of "IT'S NOT A TUMOR"

Worldbuilding: As said above, it's not the best worldbuilding I've seen, but it has potential of being good. It got me interested, I want to see if these Wells would be literal "wells" and seeing more how this magic system gets set up.

This is a high 3 star book, if I had it in my shelf, I wouldn't resell it

3/5