Review: City of Lies

I just finished City of Lies, and I am probably going to gush about this one a little. I believe this was Sam Hawke's first novel, but you can she put a lot of effort and thought into it. The world building is good, the plot is decent, but the characters are where she really nails it. Incidentally, it also starts out with the best first line I have ever read in a novel:

"I was seven years old the first time my uncle poisoned me." 

Her book has an interesting world with a sort of Middle Eastern-meets-Native American feel to it. The religion is interesting and developed, with room for more development in future books. The magical system is only roughly sketched, which again leaves room for more later, but which also makes the magic not the focus. This is one of those books that is fantasy more because it isn't set in our world than anything, with just some brushes of magic, building toward a more fantastic scene at the end.

The plot at times felt slightly cliched or predictable, with some interesting moments, but kept me engaged and interested. I think the plot felt like a first novel (while the world building and character development felt more fine tuned), but you can easily see how she will grow as she writes more. In some ways, some of the side-plots were more interesting/surprising to me than the main plot.

But her characters are where Sam really hit it out of the park for me. First, she manages to have no truly "main character," yet still have you interested and care about the characters. Second, she includes a character with an anxiety disorder and a character with a chronic illness, yet their illnesses don't define them. This alone made the book worth reading to me. The illnesses are part of them, but are not the focus. They're part of character development, not plot. It's rare to see a character with these sorts of illness where the illnesses are not the focus, they're just a part of the character development.

As someone who suffers from anxiety and monthly migraines, this was truly amazing to me. I felt she handled the whole thing skillfully and in a believable way that allowed me to identify with characters in a way I am not sure I have in any other book I have read.

It turns out Sam and I are members of the same fantasy readers Facebook group, and in a comment on a thread I got to tell her this. She replied "chronic and mental illness are so underrepresented in fantasy and I just wanted a story where the leads had these issues but it wasn't the point of the story. It's just....them." To me, she really pulled that off. This was exemplified in a particular passage I highlighted on my kindle:

For most of my life I'd had to hear the same sentiment - sometimes asked in confidence, sometimes with brashness or suspicion or disbelief. They couldn't see what was wrong so they assumed it was not real. "She's been doing too much," I snapped. "She is always unwell, she's just very good at hiding it." 

This book should be on any must-read fantasy list, and any must-read list for someone who suffers from chronic illness and doesn't seem themselves well represented in literature.