An interesting start to a new series. Good characters, plot, and writing. Intriguing and engaging enough to bring me back for book two.

An enjoyable romp of an adventure. Arnold's Last Smile is a charming beginning to a new fantasy series.

I did not finish this, I dnfed it at 22% I lost interest in this book. I couldn’t vibe with the writing style.

I wasn't sure what to expect going on but this story hooked me from page one and I can't wait to pick up the sequel and continue the journey!

The premise of this (a world where magic has recently disappeared) was so promising, but I had mixed feelings about its execution. I didn’t dislike the main character, but I had the feeling that I’d come across PI-type characters just like him many times before. Still, I’ll probably read the next book in the series eventually because I am curious to see where the world building goes.

I've been reading this off and on since the end of February. Not sure why it's taken me so long to finish it. I did enjoy it when I read it. Good character and good story. An okay pace. It was slow at times and dragged a little for me, but it wasn't too awful. Overall it was enjoyable.

Ultimately I am disappointed by this, relatively, hyped new series. I was looking forward to an ‘urban’ setting in a fantasy world with a gritty, bitter leading male whom took down the bad guys for the greater good. This was really not what we receive in The Last Smile in Sunder City; instead it's a testosterone fuelled mess that just lacks true emotion.

Setting, History & Magic
It feels like Luke Arnold had a clear intent with his new debut series: create a grim dark fantasy world, add in a complex magical history (that our leading man had a major role in affecting), plus a large disparity between races/species; all which culminates into a beautifully put together setting. This complex world and history is easily the best part of Arnold’s opening book in the Fetch Phillips Archives. I love the intertwined magical abilities that each species has (or had) at any given point; and how it affected the stereotype of each group of characters. From wealth, typical job, community lived in, etc. Arnold gives us a messy society that mirrors our own in so many ways. From unfair disparities to societal expectations to rules/laws, etc.
If the actual plot itself had been better and our leading man Fetch Phillips had more personality and intrigue then I believe this would have been a brilliant opening book to a series.

Leading Man, Fetch Phillips
Unfortunately our leading man Fetch misses the mark. He feels close in the beginning. But put him up next to say, Geralt of Riviera and suddenly he feels like a poor archetype of a macho man who messed up badly and is attempting, fairly badly, to ‘redeem’ himself. I know we are supposed to have sympathy for Fetch and feel like everyone else screwed him over and set him up; but to me I feel like if he was as “clever” as Arnold seems to want him to be, then he would never have made the mistakes of the past that dominate his current situation. There is a careful balance that needs to happen between young and reckless versus plain stupidity that doesn’t match up, even considering his experience over the years, with the man we know in the current timeline.

Supporting Roles & Masculinity
As with most fantasy stories, the characters around our lead(s) are super important. This is another place where Arnold almost makes it but then ultimately misses. It’s a bit frustrating as Arnold is an actor himself (in Black Sails) and should know how important every voice and person are in a story. Given he has played many minor characters I would have expected him to know that each of them needs to feel genuine and have a rapport with the leading man.
It becomes particularly relevant just past halfway that there are only ‘macho’ male characters in this book. It’s a typical pre-1990’s issue in fantasy; but I’m super disappointed to see it happening in 2020. There is no reason why some strong female characters or at least a few LGBTQ+ ones couldn’t have been put in some of the placements where we encounter more ‘manly men’. And while many of them are enemies I still don’t see why the testosterone level has to be so high on almost every character.

Silly Language
I’lll confess I have a pet peeve against ridiculous metaphors, similes, and absurd language. There are so many in The Last Smile of Sunder City that I could write pages of them for you. But here is the one that annoyed me the most:
”The last thing I remember was the sound of the landing, like someone stepping on an egg full of snails.”
Let’s just break this sentence down for a minute…
1) Snails are not born with hard shells, they are soft and so there is no sound of a breaking snail baby (it’s too squishy),
2) Like snake eggs the shells of snails are gelatinous or very soft; they don’t have the crisp break of a chicken egg like we are used to, and
3) why on earth would you use a comparison that no one has probably ever heard (even if the shells were hard)? I just don’t get it and it drives me crazy.
I literally put the book down upon reading this line just to post on Goodreads about how ridiculous it is. Anything that takes me out of a book so abruptly is a fail.

Overall
I really did want to love this book. I had high hopes for a new grim dark, gritty series with a sarcastic leading detective that would be a good break between intense historical or in-depth fantasy stories for me. This is Arnold’s debut novel and it is possible that this series will improve. I will likely wait for further reviews of book 2 (just recently released) or further releases in the series to see if other reviewers feel the story and writing improves. However at this time I have to say that if you are desperate for a detective story that is different in a complex world you might like this one. But if you are just fulfilling books on a TBR that were/are hyped or new; The Last Smile of Sunder City could be passed over for now. If you want a super witty, sarcastic, and disillusioned character I have to (continue to) promote Murderbot as the best choice in the last few years or pick-up any Jim Butcher series for some fun.

Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review.

I am a member of the American Library Association Reading List Award Committee. This title was suggested for the 2021 list. It was not nominated for the award. The complete list of winners and shortlisted titles is at <a href="https://rusaupdate.org/2021/02/2021-reading-list-years-best-in-genre-fiction-for-adult-readers/">

A really imaginative it and fantasy and a solid debut. If you’re a fan of noir With grumpy cynical detetctives, you’ll like this. Not sure I’m interested enough to continue the series, but it held my attention while reading it and was a unique, dark and twisty tale.

I’m not sure what I expected when I requested a copy of this book for review. I’m not a fan of the self hating down on his luck private detective male savior main character and that is probably why I’ve been setting on this review copy for about a year. This book is not to my taste but the idea of a magical world that has lost its magic was very well done.

If you like Fantasy detectives like the Dresden Files then you might enjoy this.

Imagine the world went to hell in a handbasket, and you knew whose fault it was. Like, you could name them.
Now imagine that person told their story, and you have Last Smile in Sunder City.
Original magic system (or lack of), characters I can believe, enough darkness to be believable but ends in hope for a slightly-less-shitty future, I really liked this book.
I couldn't love it though. It has a noir detective feel, but tries too hard. The one-liners start out great, but towards the end seem forced.
The characters carried this book for me. They sin, have faults, try their best but sometimes just aren't good enough. You know, like real people.
Looking forward to the sequel.
**I received an advance copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book screamed noir detective story with fantastical creatures from the very first chapter. The world was gritty and immersive, and the characters were amazing.

The underlying premise of this book is that 6 years ago humans tried to harness magic but instead they destroyed it. Since then all of the magical creatures lost their powers and have had to struggle for existence. That poses a problem in urban fantasy, since the author has removed all of the fantasy from the present. The formerly magical creatures (including elf, dwarf, werewolf, vampire, ogre, gnome, goblin, satyr and siren) just look weird and are helpless in the presence of human greed and indifference. All of the magic is in the backstory of the PI, Fetch Phillips. The book is written in cliché-ridden noir fashion. If you have read any urban fantasy you have already met Fetch. Here, he is tasked with finding a missing vampire, but that search gets lost in the general busyness and world building of this book.

The writing is fairly pedestrian. “I swung my left arm out at him; I never was much good with it. I telegraphed it so bad that he had heard rumors of it three weeks earlier.” I made it through 50% of this book and started to skim. This is the author’s first book, and there is enough there to make me consider reading him again. I assume that this book is intended to be the start of a series. The author narrated his own audiobook and he did a good job, probably because he is an actor.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

I wasn't able to read the book but it will be featured in a series called "I Wish I'd Read That." Text below:

The concept of The Last Smile in Sunder City is brilliant. I love the idea of mixing a good PI mystery with a fantasy world that’s filled with any number of magical beings. I’m always interested in a good creature feature, and I was excited to discover how Arnold incorporates those creatures alongside what I imagine to be a modern city. The description is simple but super compelling, and I’d love to hear what everyone thought of the book! Read more about the author and book below, or purchase a copy for yourself. And of course, a big thank you to Orbit for the free review copy!

DNF. Thank you NetGalley and Publisher for this early copy! I decided to not keep reading this one, it was not for me. Thanks!

I have bought this book for three people since The Last Smile In Sunder City's release date.

What could be more enjoyable than a reluctant Raymond Chandler main character looking for a dying vampire in a world with hard and fast choices? Hard-boiled detective novels have been a guilty pleasure of mine and so have intricate fantasy novels so when I heard and read Luke Arnold's book (on a plane) I spent the entire trip engrossed in that ebook.

The writing style was everything it promised. Gritty and harsh and so lovely at the same time. The main character is instantly likeable in a reluctant hero sort of way. Drinks too much. Doesn't ask many questions and flirts with librarians. Then we add the detective plot and a city marked by rich people and fantastical creatures and the want/need for magic in a place where it doesn't exist anymore. Oh, and humans are the bad guys. Another guilty pleasure storyline.

This book really makes you want to sit at a dimly lit bar, sipping a two-fingered scotch to watch that one guy who enters the bar and doesn't order anything. I want everyone I know to read this book. It's so beyond cool. It's watching a black and white film dipped in magic.

Thank you Netgalley & Orbit Books for this advanced sampler!

Sadly, this book was not for me. After trying a couple of books following a detective, I don't think those stories are for me. I was hoping that the world and the fantasy aspect in this one would be enough to make me interested and make me enjoy it but unfortunately, it wasn't the case.

I think if I had DNF'ed it instead of finishing it, the result would have been the same. I didn't connect with the writing and I didn't care about the mystery and my mind wanted to do pretty much anything else but focus on the words. I also had a hard time picturing this world where humans and monsters exist.

(Thank you for letting me read and review an arc via Netgalley)

Content warnings: Violence, drug use, fantasy gore, arson

I saw that Long John Silver from Black Sails had written a fantasy novel, and I was immediately interested. In this fantasy noir, Fetch Phillips is a human detective who doesn't work for humans, investigating disappearances around town.

This city felt so alive. There is a deep sense of history and a contemporary culture. It manifests most obviously in the presence of a private school which teaches both magical and human students, and the various types of bars and tea shops. It feels modern in a way I don't see too often, especially given the presence of cars and other non-magical technology. I found it interesting that perspective of the city came from a feeling of recent-history, not so much ongoing conflict. There is healing, there is trauma, and Arnold doesn't flinch from any of it.

Fetch is also a compelling narrator. A depressed PI consumed by his regrets, he has insights into the city that ring true given its history. There's a very self-inflicted kind of bitterness, and that kind of introspection lent the voice an authenticity. He doesn't seem to feel that the world did him any wrong, but his view of things isn't at all optimistic. Fetch, however, is also a bit of a disaster. He's so nervous about repeating the mindset that set off his mistakes, at the expense of his own better judgment and safety.

The plot, however, is a bit slow, with not many action pieces until the very end. It meanders through the different worldbuilding pieces which help us get to know Fetch and Sunder, plus the things that ail both of them. It's windy, but the bitter, darkly humorous voice helps bring it to life.

A fantasy noir about a city with as many regrets as our main characters, drenched in the aftermath of conflict.

This is a debut novel, but you may recognise the author’s name. For not only is Luke an author but you may have seen him as an actor – he was Long John Silver in the television series Black Sails.

As the first novel this one introduces us to Fetch Phillips, a cantankerous, moody, grumpy sort of guy who makes his way (barely) through Sunder City, a city of iniquity and decay worthy of comparison with other decrepit urban areas.

I’m Fetch Phillips, just like it says on the window. There are three things you should know before you hire me:
1. Sobriety costs extra.
2. My services are confidential.
3. I don’t work for humans.

It’s nothing personal – I’m human myself. But after what happened, it’s not the humans who need my help.

I just want one real case. One chance to do something good. Because it’s my fault the magic is never coming back.

The beginning was a little generic. I couldn’t help feeling it was (at least to start) something I’d read before, an homage like many others to the film noir detective novels of the 1930’s. The cover also didn’t help, making the book at first glance feel a little like a Rivers of London ripoff, or a poor man’s Ankh-Morpork. (I thought of this before finding out that the author himself admits to being inspired by Terry Pratchett’s city in an illuminating interview at the back of the book.)

To the author’s credit, I found that the lead character was not as unremittingly nasty as some of our genre characters have been of late. Fetch is more like Glen Cook’s Garrett P.I. than like someone out of Tyler Whitesides’ The Thousand Deaths of Ardor Benn. He has some redeeming qualities, although admittedly they are often well hidden beneath his snarky exterior. It may not be a characteristic that’s too realistic, but it’s bearable. This is a character damaged by his life-experiences, trying to survive in a changed world, a change that he blames himself for.

The surface plot is the usual detective fare. Fetch is hired by Principal Burbage to investigate the disappearance of a teacher at an interspecies school. Professor Edmund Albert Rye is a Vampire, a species that since the start of The Coda and the ensuing loss of their ability to gain sustenance through drinking blood, is in decline. Rye was also one of the founding members of The League of Vampires, the group who has vowed to protect, not prey, on weaker species, which leads Fetch to discover that this may be more than a simple missing person case.

What is actually more interesting is the back-plot that we get along the way. This is about how Fetch managed to cause the loss of Magic in an event known as The Coda, although some of this is explained in clunky blocks of exposition, such as during a school sex education class lecture at the beginning of the book. However, once the book has got over its slightly wobbly start, it finds its feet and clicks along at a great pace.

What worked for me most, more than the characterisation, was that the world of Sunder City is interesting. It is not a medieval-esque world, but a fairly modern one. There are cars and telephones, for example. It’s what we would probably describe as a factory town, created atop an underground fire pit to smelt iron. The Sunderites are generally straightforward folk – often tough, belligerent and worn down – that made me think of a 1920’s New York in style and manner. It feels industrial, with old, decaying warehouses, dark and dim bars and limited light sources. A flood in a shanty town shows the reader how precarious some areas of the city are.

This precariousness doesn’t just apply to the buildings, however. Most of all The Last Smile in Sunder City is about a world where magic, once part of everyday life, has gone and how the inhabitants deal with the consequences. Wizards, witches and warlocks have been rendered impotent. Vampires can go out in daylight, but no longer get sustenance from blood, which leads them to eventually just crumble into dust. Ogres are now having to get jobs as bodyguards, whilst dwarves are reduced to squatting in properties they can no longer afford. Necromancers have to earn their keep by working in the City Morgue, whilst Sirens are often having to make do with getting by singing and playing music in bars or even becoming strippers in less salubrious environments. Nail Gangs roam the streets, vigilante groups killing ex-magic characters for fun. It’s a sobering yet imaginative world.

What doesn’t help is that Fetch himself is a pariah, outcast from the elite ruling body known as The Opus. He’s also a human, despised because it was Humans who caused the magic to go away. Along the way we discover that he’s an ex-soldier whose life-experiences have led him to become this dour, broken person, and yet one who wants to make amends and help, despite the consequences to himself. This meandering backstory gives us glimpses into the wider world of Sunder City, which are intriguing, even if not always directly related to the story at present.

And it is this that really engaged me. By the end, and despite my initial reservations, the character of Fetch and the world he inhabits won me over. Whilst The Last Smile in Sunder City is clearly a debut novel, but one with an intriguing set-up, and once it got going became an engrossing and entertaining read that kept my attention happily whilst reading. There’s scope for more novels here, which I’m pleased about, as more books will no doubt follow. (Indeed: Dead Man in a Ditch is due in October 2020.) Now that the premise has been set up, I suspect things will now get very interesting.

*I voluntarily read and reviewed an ARC of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. *

DNF @ 15%

Alright, this one was a bit too bleak for my tastes and I wasn't into the writing, so I decided to stop. I'm not rating it though because I think the fault lies more with me for picking up a book that isn't to my tastes and I can see the appeal, see how people will like this one.