When I read that this book was going to be like guardians of the galaxy but sapphic, I was initially thinking that there was no way it could live up to that, but it really did. And I personally would say it surpassed that. By a LOT.

This sci-fi story follows Asa, the heir to a large corporation, and Riven, an outlaw, and their journey to save Asa’s sister. This book is perfect for fans of These broken stars, Guardians of the galaxy, Star Wars, and basically any morally grey sci fi character lovers.

I loved this book so much, and I can no longer say I dislike sci-fi, because I adored this. I loved how there was so much complexity and depth to the characters, and that they were not perfect, but they were still extremely likable. I also loved the relationships between the characters and how they felt so realistic and vulnerable. I also loved the enemies to lovers trope in this, although I wish we could have seen a bit more of the lovers part, but that might just be the romantic in me talking.

Overall, This book is absolutely amazing, and I am never going to stop talking about it. It will be available for purchase on October 19, 2021, so mark your calendars!!

I would say a solid 3.5 stars really.

Starting off, I think the writing style was very good. I loved the voices of the two main characters and how distinct they were. With the povs changing sometimes within chapters it was easy enough to follow along.

The plot I really enjoyed. The idea of one girl doing everything in her power to save her sister and the other to save her home while simultaneously lining up their objectives but not fully trusting each other was played out so well. I think they complimented each other perfectly.

As for the pacing though I’m not too sure. It started off well but then the first part became very Asa centric. The second part I really enjoyed but the third started to lag and by the fourth part I was unfortunately at that stage where I really just wanted the whole thing to end.

The characters were all well written and captivating. Riven had such a tragic backstory but we didn’t dive into it as much which I was kind of disappointed with. Asa was your classic “spoiled rich girl turned rebel” but it wasn’t too cliche and I did like her story. I feel like Ty had a lot more potential than shown and was more reduced to a love interest. Samir and Diego I loved, I just wished we saw more of them and got more of their story as individuals and a “couple” (are they together? were they together? I honestly don’t know).

So there was a love triangle. I personally feel like it was so pointless and added nothing to the plot. Like I was told this book was sapphic, and while it was, it honestly felt like there were more Asa and Ty moments than there were for Asa and Riven. And like not that there’s anything wrong with mlw relationships (especially since like both Asa and Riven are bi/queer) but most of the Asa and Ty moments would have served so much better with Asa and Riven instead (like the club scene where they sneak into a corridor), in my opinion anyway. Like I just was not feeling Asa and Ty as a potential romantic couple at all, they would be better as just friends. Maybe it’s just because this was sold a sapphic story to me but they didn’t really do anything until the last 3 chapters whereas we get told about Asa and Ty, and Riven and her two ex-boyfriends a lot, but I felt extremely underwhelmed.

All in all I think this was a good book and a good story but it started to feel a bit flat and repetitive, and slow but also rushed at the same time. Plus if you’re looking for romance out of this it doesn’t really fulfill (in my point of view anyway). But the ending makes me believe there’s possibly another book or few in the works and I will keep an eye out for that in the future (hopefully).

This is basically the smart, feminist, unabashedly bisexual, adventerous space opera of my absolute DREAMS.

I just...holy crap. It's so good. The world-building is top-knotch, the stakes are believably high, every character has a unique and developed relationship with every other character, the found-family vibes are wonderful, the love triangle is believable and emotional and feels totally true to every character in it, and the small individual choices of characters have real consequences within the plot. More than that, it's ALL of those things with two bisexual women at the center - and that's the kind of representation that I've been desperate for in sci-fi (and in everything) for my whole freaking life.

I loved it. I'm so excited for this book to come out, so that I can foist it on absolutely all of my friends.

(And I need this to be a series. Is this a series? Because I would read many more stories about the crew of this delightful spaceship of misfits!)

hey! finally got round to finishing the book. i'd give it 2.5/5 so obviously feel free to round up or down depending on how kind you're feeling.

pros: it's action packed and the plot is actually pretty neat and the world building is also pretty good! it's got a solid foundation, which is great.

cons: suffers GREATLY from being ya, because everyone is like 17/18 which feels... gross in a scene where everyone is being dressed in scanty sexy things for nebulous ~plot reasons. even if it didn't feel gross, besides the beginning, that bit had this gratuitous fanfic shoehorning in quality that I didn't appreciate.

I wanted to love the relationships but couldn't. there's a sorted of hinted bg m/m ship which could've been so cool but is confusingly played out.

there's also technically a love triangle and i did not care for it at all.

Riven could have been a pretty great character, she gave me Gideon vibes in many ways, but her opinion on Asa her love interest swung this way and that confusingly and mostly with 0 to back it up. she also for some reason had TWO exes entangled in the plot which just got bogged down with all this weird petty relationship stuff, which cheapened the actual cool world building imo.

it tries to do a sort of found family thing that falls short unfortunately because Ass (who is new to the crew) only really spends time with her two love interests so the whole "being part of the crew, having somewhere to belong" part falls super short for me.

that said, Asa's relationship with her sister Kaya is one of the best realised parts of the book and since that's what a lot of the plot hinges on, it was great that that was so believable. i did also love the relationships between riven and ty and riven and samir. sadly there's little backing up samir's relationships with ty or diego, presumably bc the author wanted to write relationship drama instead.

it did also take me nearly a third of the book to get into it, because while it starts out with all this action, the stakes feel super low because you don't know or care about the chars yet.

oh! i did also like that it's a matriarchal society, that was pretty neat. lots of it was good bones with bad execution because the author wanted to focus only on developing romantic relationships.
also, if they'd been early twenties a LOT of plot points would have made so, so much more sense.

The best thing about this book is that it was an action-packed, quick read. I liked the unique world building with exciting plot. The faced paced action scenes definitely did not disappoint. But that is all I liked about the book.

Most characters in this book were not fully explored. A little bonding between the crew might have made me care more about the characters and their dynamics. Other than the fast pace and the intense action scenes, nothing in the book worked for me. I wasn't very invested in the characters or the storyline.

I didn't connect with either of the main characters. Riven, especially was hard to like sometimes and she didn't make much sense to me. For instance, she kept changing her opinion on Asa over and over.Like: "Asa didn’t care about anyone but herself.." Then a second later, she is all "Still, the guilt nagged her. Asa had risked herself to save Riven in the GravSpheres.."

I didn't much care about the love triangle or either of the ships, even though I was really hoping to love the sapphic one. But it was just okay for me. On the plus there wasn't any drama but the love triangle didn't feel fully resolved by the end of the book either.

Overall, it was an okay read for me. Not sure if I will read book two.

<i>Copy provided by the publisher, via NetGalley.</i>

4.5
Thank you to NetGalley for providing the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
This book was an amazing Sci-Fi heist. The vast amount of worldbuilding, plot and character development came through cleanly without any of it being dumped on you all at once which was super refreshing to read.
The book follows two lead girls Riven and Asa, who are from very different walks of life. Asa being a rich girl who we see as a big asset due to her mechanic skills. As well as Riven who is an amazing sharpshooter. The side characters are all extremely loveable and really emphasise different dynamics.
The relationships throughout this were beautifully written, with an amazing sister bond which was a major motivator. There was also a massive found family element to this book which I thoroughly enjoyed. This book explored a number of my favourite tropes throughout and they were so well done (which i'll keep to myself because of spoilers). The action scenes were full of tension and i was so intrigued to see how each of them would play out.

This was so good!

First off, the LGBTQIA rep in this was really something else. I am coming to learn I really, REALLY love a sci-fi/fantasy story if at least half the characters are queer. And this literally checked all the boxes for me.

Action, adventure, banter, and characters that are to die for. All in a sci-fi world where technology is the death of us. Something not too far off of our current reality.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

City of Shattered Light by Claire Winn is a fantastic sci-fi heist story with robots and space pirates. The story revolves around two female protagonists: Riven, the leader of a space smuggling crew, and Asa, who is an heir to her evil scientist father's tech company and who is trying to save her sister Kaya from his grasp.

Here is a quote from an exciting chapter from Riven's point of view:

"One by one, her bullets exploded through the metal shells. The mechs burst into showers of sparks and shattered metal. Steel spider legs fell from ceilings. Her silver-blonde braid whipped over her shoulder as she ducked beneath a salvo of bullets from a turret." - Chapter One

And here is a quote from a chapter from Asa's point of view:

Luca strode back into the spotlight. "Well done, Asanna," his voice washed over the crowd. "As you can see, her brilliance makes her a worthy successor, and I'm proud to have her as the heir to Almeida Industries, and to Project Winterdark." - Chapter Two

I was so excited to continue reading and see how they resolve their respective plots and how their two stories intersect. To be invested in a story, I have to be connected to the characters, to the plot, or to the world-building. Although City of Shattered Light had all of these things, I took off a star because I found myself really having to push myself to get through and finish reading the book. I felt like the book was missing something to maintain my interest, and I'm not sure what it was.

Lastly, this book has a lot of LGBT representation, which is great. Both of main characters, Asa and Riven, are bi/pansexual. However, if you're looking for an LGBT romance, you might be disappointed. There are just as many romance scenes between Asa and Riven and male characters as there are between the two of them. I counted two of each. .I believe this book could be classified as an extremely slow, slow-burn romance, and the sci-fi action takes precedence in the plot. Overall, if the quotes above or the description seems intriguing to you, you should check out this book when it comes in October. I recommend it for all readers of the YA science-fiction genre, especially if you're looking to read books with LGBT representation,

I was lucky enough to read an early version, and I can honestly say as an avid SFF reader, you are in for a treat with this book.

If there is one way to describe City of Shattered Light, it is with two simple words: tension rocket. The pace of this story is so breakneck, you're barely allowed to breathe, when you get said breath, you're aching for more. None of the world-building and plot arcs fall under this intense rush to the climax, in fact, you're almost wishing for more by the time you get there. It's just so jam packed with fun scenes, it's a wonder how they all fit in.

This neon-soaked space colony is oozing with underground bravado and spectacle, that it almost feels straight from the mind of Phillip K. Dick but with a modern bass-thumping vibe. Then throw in some very relatable characters with competing motivations (including a sharpshooting wannabe cowboy), a heist that has the potential to go seriously wrong, some weird-ass alien tech, and one of the baddest bubblegum snapping cyborgs ever seen on page, and you'd still not be able to describe everything this book has, well without spoiling everything.

It also helps when the author has a flair for the written word. Such as knowing how to weave a scene that you feel smack dab in the middle, feeling everything happen around, the bullets flying by, the pulse of synthesizers. Riven and Asa (the two main points of view) feel and read like genuine people, with flaws and goals. The way the pair are written makes you, as the reader, root for them all the more to get through this crazy speed racer story, while also grumbling in anticipation for them to finally buck up and kiss already. Added to that are some intense, action-packed scenes that make you wanna throw the book across the room, only to pick it straight back up and figure out how the heck the crew are gonna get out of those situations...

All I can say is that I cannot wait for this crew of misfits' adventure be read by everyone. It's a thrill ride and then some!

This is the book 16 year old me wishes was around ! 25 year old me loved it too but I’m so excited the tech heist WLW YA book of dreams is available for all the teens who need it.

The story suffered a bit in the start for me because the build up was a bit hard to get into. A personal pet peeve of mine is continuously referencing things that have happened pre-chapter one in vague terms. I also had a hard time settling into the world because the tech was hard to visualize.

After you get through that - the story is well done. The characters are rich and well written, the story is fun and gripping and I was rooting for everyone involved. A definite perfect read for someone and I’m thrilled it’s going to be available soon!

This is a great YA sci-fi read for anyone looking for something that feels different/more grounded than space opera. The tech is cool, but accessible, the world vibrant and gritty. The characters nail that found family feel.

For me, personally, the mark of a great sci fi is the mix of: how the hell did the world end up like this but also I'll take one of each of those mods, please. And this book nailed this balance.

A great read for someone crying out for more sci fi!

#CityofShatteredLight #NetGalley
Thank you to North Star Editions/Flux via Netgalley for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review
Can I just say that everyone has to move this book to the top of all of their list? This book had hit all the necessary points for me and it was absolutely amazing. I applaud Claire for allowing us to connect with her characters and giving us enough detail to understand the plot of her story.

I would absolutely recommend this book 🤗