I'm enjoying the world building, but staying for the character building. ( )

It felt like the author tried to pack too many creatures in and there just wasn't very good world building to even make them seem real. The vampires weren't scary because the danger of them was never fully described. It's more just expected we already know why we should be scared of vampires, but then they don't seem like normal vampires anyway as they have claws and smell terrible apparently.

For all the info dumping I still came out of this book not really knowing very much about the history or the species of creatures in the world. Like what even are the shifters? Where did they come from? How do their abilities even work? What are the 'others'? What do the wraiths/spirits/ghosts look like? How the heck did everyone live for over 100 years?

I think the story would have worked a lot better if it was simplified or the world built up slower and in more detail. Tiger is a likeable character with flaws, and is obviously affected by her trauma leading her to care a ridiculous amount about some random children she's never met. ( )

This could have been a wonderful book and the start of a series that I would have followed avidly but the writing degraded my enjoyment too much for me to want to continue

"City Of Light" is an Urban Fantasy / Sci Fi book that has a lot of strengths. It brings together humans, shifters, aliens, genetically engineered people and ghosts in an original way. The world-building is well thought through. The plot is intriguing. The kick-ass-but-empathic heroine has a secret, an agenda, a complex history and a guilt-driven need to protect children from evil. There's lots of well-described action, often enabled by an interesting mix of magic and technology.

For me, all of this was undermined by the kind of careless or lazy writing that a second draft or a decent editor could have fixed.

Certain phrases occurred with such regularity that I could have built a drinking game around them:

"He/she smiled but there was no humour in it"

"He/It sent a shiver down my spine"

"Energy/Tension bit the air"

"My skin tingled under his gaze".

There were enough small grammatical errors to give the book that self-published I-can't-afford-a-copy-editr feel.

Then there were descriptions that shouldn't have passed a second reading

"He was not what he seemed. He had deeper depths."

Personally, I think the use of the phrase, "I proceded to..." should be restricted police officers giving evidence and really doesn't work in a sex scene.

The story is told from the point of view of our kick-ass, I-was-built-by-humans-a hundred-years-ago-to-seduce-and-interrogate heroine and yet, by the end of the book, I knew very little about her other than that she is easily aroused and willing to kill to friends to achieve her goal.

Then the book ends rather than finishes. One goal is achieved but nothing much is explained. I felt I'd just watched the pilot for SyFy series that couldn't afford a good script writer.

Even though the ideas are appealing, I won't be going back. I'd rather read authors who have enough respect for themselves and their readers to polish before they publish. ( )

Tiger is a déchet, a breed of humanoid supersoldier. Her kind have been hunted and are considered an abomination. She's a combination of shifter, human and vampire. After rescuing a child from vampires, she goes from hiding in her bunker to endangering herself over and over investigating what is kidnapping children. Not really a romance at this point but there's foundation for future possibilities, she also is reunited with an old lover.
( )

I liked it. I'll read on. But, she hit a couple of my pet peeves with her writing, and sometimes I felt like there was a whole lot of babble going on, but the plot wasn't really getting anywhere. I'll put some of that down to world building and book one of a series and give the next one a go.

The story itself is interesting, and I really like Tig as a character, as well as Bear, Cat and Jonas. It's a fresh take on shifter stories, so that's huge points in my estimation! ( )