Two things stopped me from enjoying this book as much as I wanted to:

1) I did not like Laura, or her friends. Not a single one of them.
2) This book has atmosphere aplenty and that's about it.

There is no common sense to be heard of from these kids. None. Not a single iota. A volcano erupts and instead of staying inside they run around Rome (sometimes with a teacher, most of the time not). Weird shit constantly (and I do mean constantly) happens around our main character Laura and she just sort of freaks out silently, but tells no one.

An entire hostel worth of people are getting deathly ill so Laura and her friends decide to run off into Rome.

Morris describes Rome in wonderful detail (at least insofar as I can see, it sounds like what I see of Rome in pictures and videos) and she sets the mood for this epic war of the Gods...but at the end of the day its all teenage hormones all the time. Laura spent just as much time worrying if Dan (a classmate she sort of finds cute) found her cute as she did about the birds dive bombing her head.

Part of the problem is that I've read so many stories at this point which feature teens/young adults who find out they are an important piece of an age old battle between ancient Gods/Goddesses. I'm not entirely sure what was important about Laura beyond her nifty stone from her grandfather who apparently picked it up after World War II.

Compare her against Percy Jackson or Ashline Wilde or Gwen Frost or ANY of the recent Medusa-related books I've read and quite frankly Laura is lacklustre. She was ineffectual. I thought Maia was more useful and reliable, but she didn't have main character charisma/personality.

Unlike with [b:Ruined|14547552|Ruined|Paula Morris|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1358741423s/14547552.jpg|6444288], THE ETERNAL CITY doesn't offer me enough to find interesting in the characters as well as the city itself. And that's a damn shame because I had high hopes for this.



( )

Well-paced fantasy adventure that will appeal to Percy Jackson fans. Implausible but fun tour of some of the great sites of my favorite city, Rome. Occasional violence and one kiss. ( )

Really 2 1/2 * .. The Eternal City had a fun premise. But for me fell short.

I did really enjoy Paul's Morris's Ruined series and would recommend it. ( )

It was great! I loved it. ( )

Less than "meh". Thankfully, it's a short book, so I didn't waste too much time with it. But, you know, if it had been longer, it might have been better. Go into more detail, give us a little more of the gods...EXPLAIN more, please. As it was, most of the action made no sense and character motivations--when there were any--were unclear. There's a solid three- or four-star book that could be made from this story. Unfortunately, this wasn't it. ( )