When you anticipate pain, you can prepare for it. You can see it coming, and you do what you can to pad yourself against the blow. But when you don’t see it coming, it’s like getting hit by a strong wave that has you tumbling underneath the surface. Red City by Marie Lu is one such wave. It is a story filled with anguish and hard choices, and like the city it’s based in, it’s beautiful in its own harsh way.
There are two young and lonely souls in Los Angeles. Sam seems to fade into the background of every room she occupies, and even her perfect photographic memory can’t make anyone take notice of her brilliant mind. Ari, on the other hand, unintentionally turns heads and attracts all sorts into his gravitational pull. The two form a friendship at school, but never dig too deep into the secrets both are keeping. Ari’s benefactor has taken him far away from home so he can study alchemy in LA. And Sam struggles to keep poverty at bay before it swallows her and her mother whole. Both of these young souls will wander into powerful, rich, and crime-laden alchemy syndicates in search of something more. But the further they go, the more they drift apart, and soon the gulf between them will be too wide to cross.
There is a lot that I love about Red City, but it’s the relationship between Sam and her mom that has its hooks in me. Lu starts the story from the eyes of a young Sam, who naively and happily describes the life she shares with her mother in a small LA apartment. We see a single, resilient parent struggling with the weight of the world to provide for her child, and the difficult choices made daily to ensure her daughter can dream and achieve something bigger and greater. As Sam grows and her path takes her deeper into the world of alchemy, we see how much the relationship with her mother warps and changes. Both women make choices they think are in the best interest of the other, and Lu details just how wrong every choice is, or at least how each choice wasn’t enough to compensate for the damage done. This mother-daughter dynamic is so powerful; it outshines the glittering scenes of the wealthy alchemists and their impressive abilities. Even as we follow a story dominated by Sam and Ari’s diverging paths, it’s truly the mother-daughter relationship that is at the heart of everything and what adds so much depth, pain, and love to each moment.
Lu weaves her own childhood experience into Sam’s life to show us the hardships of a family immigrating to another country in hopes of better opportunities. Sam’s mother works long hours and still does not rest after coming home, ensuring that every moment matters and every resource is extended to provide for her family as long as possible. Sam’s humble beginnings and hardships push her to find security and safety via any means necessary, leading her to sell her soul to one of the leading alchemy syndicates. And this is where Lu begins to erode Sam away and show the corruption of money and the wealthy’s brutal callousness. Money does not buy happiness in Red City, and we see it in the way it rots both Sam and Ari. They both have every comfort and luxury in the world, yet Ari lives a soulless existence, charming other people while being forcibly cut off from everyone he loves, and Sam becomes so removed from the real world that it isolates and hardens her against everyone she loves.
Alchemy is the root of the story’s magic system, but it also contributes heavily to the book’s thematic threads. Balance is, of course, a key theme as we see the rippling effects of choices made as the competing syndicates and their alchemists try to gain an edge. But Lu also weaves creation and destruction throughout everything—through people, relationships, feelings, choices, and so much more. Alchemy is not just a tool used in Red City, but a powerful transmutation that leaves nothing unscathed in Sam and Ari’s world.
This book is painful, hard, enlightening, and full of love. Reading Red City was like performing alchemy, giving up a little of myself to be changed in return. It’s incredibly impactful, and it will cause so much anguish (in the best way possible) that you can’t help but read non-stop through to the end to see if you can find relief on the final page.
Rating: Red City – 10/10
-Brandee
I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an unbiased review. The thoughts on this story are my own.
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