Earth has been conquered. An extraterrestrial race known as The Assembly has abducted the adult population, leaving the planet’s youth to fend for themselves. In this treacherous landscape, Holt, a bounty hunter, is transporting his prisoner Mira when they discover Zoey, a young girl with powerful abilities who could be the key to stopping The Assembly. As they make their way to the cavernous metropolis of Midnight City, the trio must contend with freedom fighters, mutants, otherworldly artifacts, pirates, feuding alien armies, and perhaps most perilous of all: Holt and Mira’s growing attraction to each other.
Midnight City is the breathtaking first novel in the Conquered Earth series, and a stunning work of imagination from debut author J. Barton Mitchell.
While I do enjoy reading dystopian and science fiction books, I tend to prefer fantasy. The fact I rated this book so highly, despite the fact it’s not my favorite genre, shows just how much I enjoyed it.
The story itself is excellent. I really enjoyed reading what was happening to the characters and the world around them.
The characters were fantastic and rarely have I seen such evenly balanced male and female in the lead roles. Their abilities are closely matched, their personalities are just as strong, neither of them outshines the other in terms of story or quality of writing, and neither of them dominated the relationship.
Speaking of their relationship I thought it was really well done, they initially dislike each other and very slowly they begin to fall in love, with very believable feelings such as denial (to themselves) of their attraction and later accepting the other is attractive but convincing themselves they are not interested in pursuing a relationship. The long journey they go through makes it more interesting. I don’t normally like much romance in reading, but I did enjoy this one, partly because of the reasons I have already listed, but also because the romance didn’t dominate the story.
The characters are developed through the story in more ways than just on a romantic level. But it is done slowly and in a believable way.
The thoughts and feelings of the characters was also written very well.
The world building is done exceptionally well. There is plenty introduced to the reader to make the world interesting, but it is spread out throughout the book so I never suffered from information overload. There was always enough information and reminders, that I never felt lost or confused.
A few times I did think things were over explained, but it was pretty rare and didn’t go on for too long. I guess it’s better to have things explained a little too much than not enough.
The descriptions were of a good length, enough detail to follow what is happening and to visualize the world, but not so much that it got boring.
The pacing was perfect, while there is plenty of action and adventure, the author was never afraid to slow things down, to give the characters more personal and intimate moments, or to give us important information about their personalities or background.
I have very few criticisms of this book. The only one that bothered me was the fact that neither Holt nor Mira never really questioned Zoey about her powers, her past, or strange way of talking. Occasionally they would ask her something but were accepting when she said she didn’t know why. This seemed to go against Holt’s and Mira’s suspicious nature.
Overall I thought this was an excellent book, with a really enjoyable story, with strong male and female lead characters, a very interesting world, excellent pacing and descriptions.
Rating: ***** + ♥
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