The City's Son is an urban fantasy debut novel by Tom Pollock. What exactly is an urban fantasy novel? Urban fantasy is a sub-genre of fantasy. Most are set in contemporary times, but they can also take place in historical times or have futuristic settings. This story takes place during modern times in the busy, crowded British city of London, England.
Beth is a graffiti artist. and Pen is her middle-eastern schoolmate and her best friend. They run the streets of London together and draw pictures. They put graffiti of a teacher on school property, but manage to escape capture. Then Pen, for reasons Beth doesn't know, ends up betraying her. Beth is hurt and she flees deep into the streets of London. Her mother is dead, and her relationship with her father is not the best. She is looking for a safe place to go.
Instead she find Urchin, the supposed crowned prince of London's underworld and the son of a goddess. This underworld of vast spiders, railwraiths, a priesthood of bronze statues, and telephone wires that seek voices to steal is waiting for the return of this goddess. Beth's eyes are opened to a world she has never seen, a world she never dreamed existed, and a life she never knew she was possible.
Except for a few places in the story that kind of got slow for me (probably because I don't really get into mechanical stuff much), the story was great. A lot of the descriptions of those in this underworld were pretty grotesque. Mr. Pollock's descriptions were so good that vivid pictures formed in my mind of all of these beings that were formed. Beings that were put together out of garbage remains were pretty disgusting. Babies condemned to life inside statues, well, that was pretty bad.
It amazed me that this entire other world existed in London, and the population of this huge city was totally unaware of it. Because of what I read in this book, I view the world around me differently. I live in out in the country, but it still made me wonder if there was another whole world out there that I couldn't see, a world to which I was oblivious.
My copy of this book came from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. If you would like your own copy of this book to read and enjoy, I have provided a link to Amazon below.
