The City Beneath The Hidden Stars was a pretty decent first book for the author Sonya Kudei. While I do believe there is room for a book two, there is no cliff hanger.

The first part was a little difficult for me to follow because it was too descriptive and lost my attention easily .. It was at fifty percent in when the story finally got more interesting and picked up for me.. I was convinced there was going to be a cliff hanger but the story ends a bit abruptly.

In this story you get Croatian lore, witches, legends, a bit of the underworld , multi dimensions, celestial democracy, and a variety of magical animals. I would say this is a good urban fantasy for high schoolers and middle schoolers.

My favorite characters were Leo and Dario even though Leo sometimes drove me batty. One of the funny parts
that stuck out to me was when Dario brought Leo The Hobbit book assuming it was a banishing book. lol

There is no romance in this story, it stays pretty clean minus a few cuss words.

Overall this was a pretty good start and I'd love to see Leo work with Stella more.

Croatian mythology and science fiction collide in this strange and unique tale by Sonya Kudei. The capital city of Croatia, Zagreb, is the setting of this story about its famous urban legend The Black Queen. She is an evil black robed witch who terrorizes the inhabitants of Zagreb. In this story, star beings, unassuming residents, and creepy monsters battle it out when The Black Queen decides to make a comeback in modern day Zagreb.

I was excited to read this book as Croatia is a country that is rarely featured in fantasy fiction, despite having a rich mythology. The writing is quite cynical, with the author taking jabs at Zagreb and poking fun at its misgivings. I would have preferred if the author did not do this because Zagreb is a beautiful city and it deserved a more flattering representation in this book. The story didn't take itself seriously and it had a dry sense of humour throughout, which worked well for this quirky story. The writing is not the most sophisticated but beyond that, there are some really interesting ideas, that with a little more editing and refinement could present better in this book.

There was a lot going on and I would like to know what inspired the author to use star beings in this story? Is there a connection to Zagreb? I think that she could have stuck with the locals and the Black Queen as characters instead of the celestial bits, as it felt a little out of place without an obvious connection to Zagreb.

Overall I thought this was an interesting story about Zagreb's medieval mythic legends in a contemporary setting. If the author writes a more mature fantastical story set in Croatia in the future, I would definitely be interested in reading it.