City of shattered light was my favourite book of 2022 so when I got approved for the ARC of this I was over the moon!! I couldn’t wait to read it,

Like when reviewing most sequels, I won’t be going into much detail in regards to the plot as I don’t want to spoil the first book. The last book ended very abruptly, so I will say this continues to follow Riven & Asa with the rest of their crew as they go on another deadly adventure in an attempt to become a matriarch (the crime lords of their planet).

But my favourite part of this series is the character representation! There’s diverse race, sexuality, chronic pain/disabilities + relationships. But as a sapphic person myself I love that the main characters are in a sapphic relationship ☺️ But not only are the characters diverse, but they’re so developed & unique and will do ANYTHING to protect eachother it’s so endearing!

This was one of my most anticipated reads of the year so I’m very glad it’s lived up to my expectations!

this book was what was missing from the first book. 10/10. the characters are more fleshed out, but the pacing is just as good as the first book.

This book was an amazing sequel to the 1st book. It had wonderful descriptive language. I enjoyed learning more in depth about Riven and Asa's motivation and going into how Ty survived on his own. I would love to learn more about the voice that helped Ty to escape. I enjoyed the guns blazing ending and how everyone all worked together to defeat the enemy. Plus hearing an indication of Asa and Riven getting together was something I was very excited to hear. I can't wait to read more and see what else this author has to offer.

I received an advanced copy, courtesy of NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.
I enjoyed the development of the characters which continued from the first book. Personally, I tend to struggle when authors try to develop characters too much. I tend to get irritated and over them before I get to see the growth. This was not the case here. The author did a great job of highlighting the character flaw “just enough” before the reader gets a glimpse of growth. This book continued with the continued action struggles while weaving character and relationship growth. It was fun watching the bonds develop between different factions. There is a lot of loyalty, a little enemy to friends, and moments of being successful while staying true to values.
There were a lot of moving parts and factions to keep up with, but all the moving parts worked well together. I can usually breeze through books pretty quick and I seemed like this one just took a little extra to get through, but that probably says more about me than the books.
Definitely worth the read. Lots of fun, action, friendships and family drama, what’s not to like?

💜 Arc Review 💜

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for a review.

Title: City of Vicious Night
Author: Clair Winn
Rating: 4/5 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Release Date: May 23, 2023

This was so much fun. I absolutely loved the first book in the series and was so excited when this one was announced. I absolutely love the group of characters at the center of this story, and was excited to see their further adventures as they fought against the dastardly Luca Almeida.

This story is absolutely jam-packed with action and non-stop bad-assery (if that is a word). I loved the shifting perspectives through so that we could see all the different aspects of the narrative from characters we may not have expected.

Speaking of characters I loved the expansion of characters from book one to this book. We get to really know some old faces and meet a few new ones that we grow to love. I am actually so hyped for the Morphet short story coming out later this year.

I absolutely love the atmosphere of Requiem and all of the different layers we discovered through this book were fantastic.

Now I won’t go too deep into the plot because
1. I don’t have the time to explain just how much happens in here and
2. I don’t want to spoil anything
Just know that it goes hard.

Just overall there is a lot from book one that gets awesome payoffs in this book. Definity read this, you won’t be disappointed.

Now I have a few gripes I had. Riven is the queen of bad decisions and pissing me off, but I still love her. She just sometimes makes me mad. There were also a couple of times I was expecting character interactions and additions to pay off later in the book which didn’t happen, so it felt like there were some dangling ends. Not terrible. Also, the ending felt kind of underwhelming, I don’t know I just kind of expected more for the last fight considering how cool several of the earlier fights had been.

I would like to say thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review

"City of Vicious Night" by Claire Winn takes us on another adventure with Boomslang Faction full of unexpected twists that threaten the lives of the main characters practically on daily basis.

Read the full review at the link below:
https://nikasreviews.wordpress.com/2023/04/14/book-review-city-of-vicious-night-by-claire-winn/

More mechs, more family drama, and more of the Boomslang Faction. This return to Requiem involves the crew diving into a matriarch showdown and facing off with Asa and Kaya's father once again.

Ty remains my favorite, despite how much I enjoy the awesomeness that is Asa. It was really cool to see the inside of the matriarch functioning too. I hope there's a third book in the future!

Thanks to NetGalley and publisher for the opportunity to read and review.

Thank you, North Star Editions, Claire Winn, and NetGalley, for the ARC.

I loved this book. I was a little worried because getting into the first book took me a while. But this one comes in straight away with the action. There is a fast part in the book. I love the action. It was very well described even though it's Sci-Fi, and I sometimes have difficulty following Sci-Fi books. The relationship between Riven and Asa is strained, but I can understand where Riven is coming from.

The trails were excellent, and I wish they had gone more in-depth. But other than that, this was a great book. I enjoyed reading it.

I recommend that people read this book.

This was definitely a sequel that lived up to the first one. The characters were already great but grew as people in this book. The tech only got cooler and the complexity of the villains in this is so fun! This book definitely had a bit more of a focus on fleshing out the relationships which I think is a great pairing with the first one. It is still just as awesomely action packed.

With the current state of the world in Requiem and having a huge corporation ferreting out the group, Riven, and her friends are constantly in danger. Losing the protection of a wider organization, the team is left without any safeguard. Nowhere is safe but the Boomslang Faction needs to defend its own. Asa and Kaya’s father is searching for them and they are a key part of his plans to control the minds of the masses.

Someone is after Asa which meant someone is after the crew. The threat of being caught is gaining up on them but the group is trapped in Requiem with no way of leaving. Guilt-ridden for the death of Ty and taking responsibility for the bad things that happened, Riven is just lost. The Ascension Trial might just ensure all of their safety… and more.

Riven and Asa’s feelings might be deepening but it doesn’t mean that the former is willing to let anything develop further than that. Knowing that she might die anytime soon, Riven is afraid of promising Asa the future even though Asa doesn’t care. Although the rest of the team is finding the cure for Riven’s illness, she doesn’t think it’s worth it. Not when their survival is in question. However, she would do anything in her power to retrieve or save any member if they were to be at risk.

In the City of Vicious Night, the group is pretty close knitted but they do have their own problems. While they do have conflicting viewpoints, they ultimately stuck with each other. The dynamics within this found family felt realistic. There are ups and downs in the relationships which also made their concerns more believable. The world of cybernetics in Requiem gave the exploration of artificial intelligence, robotics, and enhanced mechanisms added to human features. This was one of the aspects of the duology that I was looking forward to diving into.

Overall, the duology ended with a good conclusion! There was no knowing who would survive until the final moment. City of Shattered Light was still standalone when the publication was first announced and I’m glad that Claire Winn expanded it beyond one.

2.5 I have to admit... I'm disappointed.

I wouldn't say that the first novel in this duology was the most jaw-dropping, mind-blowing thing I'd ever come across. But I had fun reading it, and I enjoyed myself enough to be excited for the sequel. So I hate to admit this, because I so wanted to love it, but there really is no other way for me to describe this book other than "boring".

There were some entertaining moments at the beginning and I kept hoping that it was just a slow middle. But finishing this story was slightly tedious, and the problem is that I was so uninterested in what was happening that I couldn't find the motivation to pay attention to the details of the plot. Sure it has some politics in it and a certain amount of world building that you have to wrap your head around, but it's not nearly as complicated as some other SFF novels I've read. And yet I don't know if I could accurately explain to someone the specifics of this story. It was this vicious circle of "I'm bored so I'm not paying attention to what I'm reading so I get confused so I get more bored so I pay even less attention to what I'm reading" and I really wanted it to get better, but it never did.

It also made the emotional climaxes very underwhelming. I love sapphic content and I'm sometimes more lenient with books that feature a sapphic couple just because I generally enjoy the novels more when I can pine with the MC(s). But all the sapphic content in this sequel could not save my reading experience. I would be enjoying myself for a paragraph or two and then immediately I would be sucked back into an action scene or some exposition that I could not get myself to care about.

I wanted so much more from it, and I feel like there were specific moments in the book that could have been very effective and poignant had I been interested in the rest of the story. Once again, I'm really sad to say this, but I'm disappointed in how it turned out...

This review will be published on my Goodreads account on March 21 2023, and crossposted to Barnes and Noble and Amazon on the release date.

This book was the perfect sequel to it's predecessor, City of Shattered Light. Just like the first book, this was action packed and centered around the found family of the Boomslang crew. It had the same charm and humor, but with even higher stakes as the crew learned to operate with their new numbers, and had the entire city intentionally pit against them. I loved watching characters develop further, create new bonds with one another and figure out what they want for themselves - if they manage to survive.

Winn's pacing of City of Vicious Light felt smoother than her last book, and I'm really looking forward to seeing how her writing evolves in the future. My only complaint is the same one I had last time, which was that I wish this had been marketed as an adult novel. Everyone felt and acted like adults (other than <i>maybe</i> Ty, and I would've loved to have seen Requiem and the crew developed more in depth the way an adult word count would've allowed. 

If you loved City of Shattered Light definitely pick this up! And if you're a fan of Ashley Poston's Heart of Iron, Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner's Starbound trilogy or Firefly, definitely pick this series up!

I absolutely loved reading this book! It is an amazing sequel to City of Shattered Light. I loved seeing all the characters grow and develop. I also loved seeing the crew grow closer toward each other.
There were a lot of plot twists that I did not see coming I love the book for that and so much more.
The ending of this book is really great, a perfect ending for a perfect book. This ending has my heart and therefore the plot gets a 5/5 it was amazing
The writing of this book was incredible I don't think anyone can write better than that. The writing was definitely a 5/5
Overall i really liked the book and would definitely recommend it to everyone that likes to read sci-fi

In an astounding sequel to City of Shattered Light, we follow up with Asa and Riven who are still fighting for survival in Requiem. After the cliffhanger ending with Ty in the first novel it's hard to not tear through this book to see what happens.
Claire does an amazing job of picking up months after the first book and how the crew has been faring in that time, recovering from the heist and loss of Ty. Asa and the crew being blamed for a new AI ravaging Requiem, while battling to climb in power in order to keep themselves safe from rival factions.
To those who were hoping for a good outcome for Ty-you'll be excited (or heartbroken) to know that he has his own POV in the sequel and - be warned - it'll break your heart and keep you on your toes.
Without spoilers-I love the ending. It wraps up the story and feels very "finished" and in character, while still leaving room for more if Claire decides to add on to the duology someday.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC of this book. All opinions are my own.

I am convinced Claire puts something in her books because I am addicted! They’re just so good! I flew through this and I can’t even get over how good it was! Another phenomenal book from Claire! It gave me everything I wanted in the follow up and I am so satisfied with how it all turned out!

Absolutely loved reading this book, I basically devoured it as quick as possible. It’s been a while since I stayed up to finish reading a book but this one was definitely worth it. It’s a sequel and it’s even better than the first because we already know the characters and the love for their storylines was something which kept me swiping through my kindle

Claire Winn has delivered another high-speed sci-fi action movie thrill ride of a novel! It was great to pick up with the Boomslang faction and find out what was next for them. I did hope to see growth in the writing with this sequel. My expectation was to see the novel pull back on careening action and instead slow down to focus on the emotional development of the characters. In this, I was disappointed. The plot suffers from an embarrassment of riches when it comes to twists and turns. Frankly, it's exhausting trying to keep up. Meanwhile, opportunities for tension between characters and the evolution of a natural growth were quickly bypassed through quick rationalization. Overall, this book's uneven stakes make it read the same way that the first one did: like extended fan fiction. That said, this is a perfectly fun ride that I would recommend to readers in search of something fun.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4!

Thank you so much to the publisher, Netgalley, and Claire Winn for providing me with this ARC. I adored the first of this series, "City of Shattered Light", and was excited to dive back into Riven and Asa's world of Requiem, a gritty, neon-drenched refuge of criminals and big dreamers.

And dive in, I did! "Vicious Night" starts with a bang and breakneck pace and doesn't let up. Riven is desperate to reassert herself as a power to be reckoned with in the underworld, and Asa wants to clear her name. If both can bring down Asa's father while they do it, well, more's the better! Beloved crew members from the previous book also show, as well as a few "did they die or no...?" characters we thought we said goodbye to.

The plot follows a similar sort of "Hunger Games"-esque gauntlet to solidify both Riven's and Asa's goals, and of course there's plenty of sapphic tension between the two, as well as the underlying mystery of Riven's worsening medical condition. There's... a little too much going on, to be honest! This book absolutely felt like it could have been two books - some of the character development and quiet moments from book one are sacrificed to move things along with this installment. Winn's characters are so loveable that of course I wanted more of them, perhaps a little less action breaking up their more emotional stories. I felt like I was doing cardio between chapters!

Which is all to say, the end of the series (is this a duology?) left me breathless and yearning for EVEN MORE.

A wonderful series, one I hope isn't actually over. Fans of Arcane, Firefly, sapphic romance, and quick-paced young adult science fiction will like this one.

The sequel to City of Shattered Light and I had to pick it up...the book immediately puts you in the middle of the action yet again and after a few hesitant pages it all clicked again and the characters and plotline from the first book came flooding in. It was a good sequel, delving deeper in the plot set up in the first book and adding an extra layer with the matriarch competition, both of which are heading to an explosive end.
So you get sci-fi, a rag-tag queer team, villain turned anti-hero (I was so here for that!), more in deptht relationships and lots and lots of action.
Hold on to your spaceship and prepare for a thrilling ride!

City of Vicious Night was disappointing; the first book in this series was around a three star read, I enjoyed the characters but the world building was shaky at best my hope for the sequel was for the world to come into its own. Unfortunately City of Vicious Night fell short for me the world was flat and where some characters received development over all it felt as if the characters haven't grown in the way I hoped they would have.