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City of Others by Jared Poon
May. 9th, 2026 02:23 pmCity of Others
3/5. Urban fantasy about a middle manager in a government agency in Singapore intended to keep the supernatural elements of society quiet.
Okay. Kind of Rivers of London but with a queer protagonist and far less voicey. Though it turns out the voiciness goes a long way to selling all the infodumping you need to do in a fantasy like this.
A good time, with a particularly interesting set of magical ideas. But I suspect someone made him cut, like, 25% of his manuscript or something, because there’s a lot of jerky pacing and weird gaps where I’m like ‘wait, we just met this person and now she’s a core part of the team and we all care about her? Did I miss something?’ Also, it’s all trying just that bit too hard to tie into a neat thematic bow (grief and letting go). Very debut, is what I mean. Naturally it is going to be a series; I might keep going, I might not.
3/5. Urban fantasy about a middle manager in a government agency in Singapore intended to keep the supernatural elements of society quiet.
Okay. Kind of Rivers of London but with a queer protagonist and far less voicey. Though it turns out the voiciness goes a long way to selling all the infodumping you need to do in a fantasy like this.
A good time, with a particularly interesting set of magical ideas. But I suspect someone made him cut, like, 25% of his manuscript or something, because there’s a lot of jerky pacing and weird gaps where I’m like ‘wait, we just met this person and now she’s a core part of the team and we all care about her? Did I miss something?’ Also, it’s all trying just that bit too hard to tie into a neat thematic bow (grief and letting go). Very debut, is what I mean. Naturally it is going to be a series; I might keep going, I might not.
