Intriguing broken world fantasy
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After an unknown cataclysmic event, the coastal town of Fairharbour is stuck in endless winter, and Jamie Pike does his best to survive in a cold world where the ruined town is being bricked up by the taciturn Doormen.

After an unknown cataclysmic event, the coastal town of Fairharbour is stuck in endless summer, and Esther Pike does her best to survive in a hot world where the desiccated town is being taken apart wall by wall.

This is a book of many mysteries, many of which get revealed by the resourceful cousins at the heart of the book, but with an intriguing premise and eventual resolution that are never explained. The twin worlds of Fairharbour are carefully designed and described so that you know which version of the town you’re in within each chapter, and Jamie and Esther and their supporting cast are well defined, their motivations for good, ill and for practicality’s sake interlocking with the plot, such as it is.

But.

There are some delightful moments of story-making that will tickle a fantasy reader, and enough world-building to suggest that this is not our earth anyway, but it never rises beyond a quotidian YA survival tale in a (semi-)dystopian society. Perhaps the brightest parts weren’t bright enough, and the dark motivations never quite deep enough in the shadows. However, it’s worth reading for the colour and feel of the two Fairharbours, written by the two authors as complementary and conflicting settings.

I loved this story of a family divided— by egos, history, and an inexplicable weather event that created two cities. It was fantastical and floating, as two cousins found their way back to each other through their love of making.

City of All Seasons offers an intriguing premise and some beautifully crafted moments, but it doesn't fully hit the mark. The story pulls you into its vividly imagined city and the complexities of its characters, but at times, the pacing feels uneven, and a few plot developments seemed rushed or underdeveloped. The blend of urban fantasy and darker themes is compelling, though I wish some of the world building had been more thoroughly fleshed out. Overall, it's a solid read with moments of brilliance, but it didn’t quite reach the heights I was hoping for. A decent choice for those interested in atmospheric stories, but not without flaws.

City of All Season has a very cool concept, but unfortunately, the execution didn't quite land for me.
Esther and Jamie are cousins living in separate versions of the same city. Esther's version of Fairharbour is trapped in eternal summer, and Jamie's is in winter. Both Jamie and Esther love to make things, and it's through this shared love that they each discover the 'other' version of Fairharbour.
What I liked:
As mentioned above, the concept is great, and there is rich worldbuilding for each version of the city. In Esther's Fairharbour, we have the Fenestrators, who go around putting holes in everything and destroying any glass windows. In Jamie's, with have the doormen who go around boarding everything up to preserve what's inside. I loved the weirdness of these two groups, and how they complemented each other.
The mystery around what happen to Fairharbour, how it happened and who killed Either and Jamie's grandmother were intriguing. I do love me a mystery!
The prose is clean and unobtrusive, making it easy to follow and enjoy the story without having to untangle convoluted or overly descriptive sentences.
What didn't hit for me:
Esther and Jamie's realisation that their presumed-dead cousin was the one they were communicating with through mysterious means felt a bit convenient. I felt a bit like 'Esther knew it was Jamie because she did'.
The pacing was too slow for my tastes. With so many interesting questions raised by the narrative, I wanted to spend less time with the characters passing things back and forth to basically say 'Hi I'm here' and more time actively solving the mystery. It took too long for the story to warm up for my preferences.
Thank you Titan for the ARC!

**Thank you to Titan Book and NetGalley for the eARC of this title!**

I absolutely loved Langmead’s poetic novel, Calypso, last year so I can’t wait to dive into this one. As it has gotten pretty far past publication I am dropping 5 stars as a placeholder and will update with review and posts once I get my life together. Thank you!!

"City of All Seasons" offered an interesting premise and some decent world-building, creating a setting that had potential. I appreciated the imaginative elements introduced and the overall concept behind the city itself. However, I found it difficult to fully connect with the characters, and their motivations sometimes felt a bit murky. The pacing also felt inconsistent, leading to moments where the narrative dragged, preventing me from becoming truly immersed. While it had its moments, it ultimately felt like it didn't quite live up to its full potential for me.

Started ok with lots of info dump. The best part for me was the way the setting was described--took me right inside the book. But it's a DNF, it didn't interest me enough to push through although the mystery is still gnawing at me.

DNF at 20%

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an eARC copy of this book in exchange for an honerst review

It's me, I'm the problem. This book has an incredibly interesting synopsis, and the small amount that I read was a good foundation in terms of character work and world building. However, I just keep not picking this book up. I read the entirety of The Sword of Kaigen, and I'm not even in a reading slump. In fact, I want to read so badly, I just never make an effort to pick this book up. With exam season approaching, I know for a fact I'm not going to pick this book up right now. So I'm making the executive decision to DNF it, and who knows, maybe I will pick it up sometime later.

2.5 stars

Living in a divided mystical world proved for an interesting premise, but that’s where it blurred into foggy world-building, heavy with dreamy flashbacks interrupting the story. The two main characters were bland, lacking distinct personalities, and I could barely keep them straight. The first-person present tense made for a monotonous narrative.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC.

The premise of this book is very cool, dual perspective written by two different authors of cousins separated into two different versions of a city, one in an eternal scorching summer, and another in an eternal freezing winter. The problem is that the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

The main issue is how incredibly slow-paced this book feels. I had a very hard time getting through it, which is alarming considering this book is under 300 pages. In a good chunk of the book it feels like nothing is happening outside of our protagonists wandering their respective city, going to talk to a person, hiding some object for the other POV to find and getting a memory of some member of their family, which sounds fine, until it's repeated over and over again.

Now, the lack of plot can sometimes work in a story, but if you're doing a more slow-paced, character-focused, introspective story, then the characters need to be interesting enough to carry the weight of a lack of plot. This is not the case here. Our main characters were both....Fine, I guess, but I couldn't tell you much about them, except they both love making things. The supporting characters were likewise fine, Bea, Pawel, and the Grandma were vaguely interesting to me, but not enough to carry the weight of the entire story on their backs.

The one positive thing I can say is that the actual moment-to-moment writing, especially the description, was well written on a technical level from both authors; there was just entirely too much of that and not enough of anything else.

It's a shame because I did think the premise had so much going for it, but this book felt so incredibly slow-paced without anything to make up for that.

An incredibly interesting premise but unfortunately I did not feel that the full potential was reached in this. I enjoyed the distinctive two cities and enjoyed the mystery surrounding our MCs grandmother and the rivalry of the uncles. This story would likely translate well to a short mini-series or movie because everything was incredibly visual. They would need to find more differences between Jamie and Esther because they were a bit too similar to each other that the POVs sometimes got confusing until it said snow or heat.

My first read from these authors but definitely not my last. Full of intrigue, intensity and mystery, this was a truly fascinating read and has made me want to read more from these authors in future.

Very interesting concept but overall execution was just dull and boring.

Throughout the book we get the POV of the two main characters, cousins, one who lives in the summer city and the other in the winter city. However, they felt very bland and underdeveloped and the majority of the time, I could barely distinguish between the two and would always forget whose chapter I was reading.

There was also just a lack of world building or explanation for anything. Given that the two cities were split, I thought magic or something fantastical would be involved but I think it was more science fiction than anything. But even that wasn’t really fully explained? I don’t really understand how the science works in this book and the authors never bothered to try and explain it.

Also, the actual reason why the city was split was so ridiculous and underwhelming and I was just hoping for something more.

2.5
This is one of those books where the premise is really intriguing, but the execution just wasn't for me at all. The concept of a single city/small island that got split by a mysterious event into two different versions, simultaneously existing independently of each other, is one of the cooler and more original premises in a sci-fi novel that I've read recently. But the execution just feels so messy. Things happening for seemingly no reason, which is a result of the book's lack of foreshadowings/long term setups, preferring to set up many important things right before they become important, making it feel as if the author(s) just made these plot points up as they go along, without actually fixing them at the end. Ultimately, while the characters are interesting, it doesn't mean much when the story and plot themselves feel so lifeless, even more so than the book's depiction of the city with everlasting winter.

Super disappointed in this one. I was excited for this book based on the description of the premise, however it wasn't executed. The plot had holes, the characters were pretty bland, and I felt very disconnected from the story.

unfortunately, this was one of those books that was a great premise but was so poorly executed. a lot of the issue stemmed from the pacing of this book: its inherently introspective, but to the point where we barely get to know our main characters nor the side characters in any meaningful way. huge amounts of the book covered past familial history, which made the present plot move at a snail's pace. this also led to neither narrator having a distinct voice, and both came across bland & uninteresting. the split winter/summer town was such a neat idea, but even the "twist" at the end (if you can even call it that, because i saw it coming) didn't make up for the lack of strong narrative voice.

While I did manage to finish this book and can appreciate the skilled writing of both authors, I believe the storytelling may have suffered somewhat from this collaboration. The premise and characters easily pulled my attention, but the plot let them down a little. I don't know that I would recommend this book to anyone but a very avid reader of anything SFF.

This was a book that I enjoyed throughout and loved the idea of it however the ending felt like it was built up for something more and just didn’t make it

DNF @ 65%. I was actually going to put this book on hold but I don't really want to go back to this book. It's such a great plot and amazing writing, but I'm not feeling it at all. The lack of distinction between the MCs blurred the two perspectives despite living in two different climates really doesn't help. I feel like the plot is so focused on the past, it forgets the present, which in turn makes this really boring to read.

I was really intrigued by the premise of the story but the execution fell really flat. You can tell this is written by two separate authors, the different writing and tone translates. I'm not sure if each author wrote Esther and Jaime separately but I wouldn't be surprised. I also did not jive with the 2 main characters, the world is interesting but the story is sooo slow. I read over 20% and nothing has happened. The very slow story with no connection to the characters and the irritation from the writing made me decide to stop reading it. I'm disappointed because the synopsis sounds cool but the execution did not work for me.