tl;dr This was an interesting concept, and it had a ton of potential, but there was too much going on which convoluted the story a bit.
You know, in all 1000% honesty, what drew me to this series was that the second book was called Phoenix. One of my best friends is obsessed with the Phoenix, and while I prefer the Griffin, I still thing the Phoenix is pretty bad ass. So then I saw that that was book 2, so I found book 1 (Black City) and read the synopsis and decided … "Meh, why not?" So I gave it a try. And it was… trying too hard.
Where to start. We've got the obvious WWII/concentration camp parallel, the Berlin Wall correlation, the "My mother hates me" story line, the vampire story line, the religious extremists story line, the nefarious government plot story line, and the "i'm wealthy and forced to go to school with the peasants who will hate me because I'm wealthy" story line. Ok, so that last one isn't one that I've read a ton of times, but its just another thing to add to the list. And some of it ties in. Some of it, however, just feels like its there trying to hard to pain a picture of this horrible way of life that everyone just accepts due to fear of the government.
So that was a bit overwhelming. Like it was trying to do too much and not doing it all that well. The world building wasn't so great either unfortunately, but otherwise it was an enjoyable read. The love story was a lot cliche, but the overall plot aside from them kept me intrigued. It was an interesting take on vampires, though it did leave some questions. And so here come some spoilers after the following gifs
OK so here come the SPOILERS! One of my biggest questions is how on earth is a half vampire's heart compatible in a human body?? For real, its hard enough finding a match using normal human hearts. The human body can so easily reject a transplanted organ. It never really explains how a heart that is half vampire half human would work properly in a human body, especially since a half vampire's heart doesn't beat. Idk. I just don't get it and that bugged me.
I think that was the main thing that bothered me and didn't make sense, but its been a few books since I read this one so i am hazy on the details. Anyways, aside from that and the stupid love triangle that ends up popping up, it was an interesting story.
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