A Stranger in the Citadel

Ratings
Cover: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Initial Draw: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Characters: ⭐
Plot and Pacing: ⭐⭐⭐
Last Page Feeling: ⭐⭐⭐

Note: For transparency - I received this book as an eARC from NetGalley. This will not impact my review.

Synopsis
A young royal “musketress”, Lilith, lives an isolate life in a citadel with her family controlling an infinite source of resources, created by the gods as well as sole control of muskets/firearms giving them military might over other classes of citizen.

Reading and writing are forbidden acts in this world. “You shall not suffer a librarian to live”; but, one day a librarian shows up at the citadel and Lilith discovers her families secret which changes her perception of her family and the world forever.


Review

Cover

The cover is beautiful and represents the plot well with the frequently chanted slogan “You shall not suffer a librarian to live” emblazoned on the front.

 Initial Draw
The initial draw for me was the premise of a fantasy retelling of the true history of book burning and the suppression of knowledge transfer between classes keeping a status quo that keeps the powerful in charge and the poor under their foot.

Characters
The characters were simply... not interesting and not well described. I could not explain to you what anybody looks like or any of their characteristics except the guardians dress in green and the ruling class carry muskets around.

I ultimately didn't care about any of the characters and most of all found Lilith, the focus of the narrative, extremely dull. She had no growth across the entire book and instead just served to pull the plot along.

The twist of Lillith wanting to persue being a librarian at the end was really not a twist at all. You could tell from the very start that she was going to sympathise with the librarian and ultimately replace him or become his disciple or something of that type.The alliance with Kira at the 70% mark and the ultimate betrayal at 99% was also not at all surprising.

 Plot and Pacing
Firstly be warned it takes until almost exactly the 50% mark for anything to truly progress the plot.

You spend the first half of the book being introduced to Lillith, her teacher/guard captain Kira, and the Librarian. As mentioned in the character section though I don't think the book is any better off character development wise for such a long on ramp. At 50% Lillith finally reveals the big secret to Kira and that is where the plot finally leaves what is already covered in the official synopsis and jumps into new content.

The content from the 50% mark takes a fairly meandering path.

The rest of the book basically being a slow foot chase away from the archangel and it really dragged on and his “death” really didn't answer anything for me about the lore of the world.

 Last Page Feeling

Ultimately it was a quick and enjoyable enough read -  I just felt unfulfilled at the end. I assume this is lining up for a sequel as by the end I still didn't know the real answer behind the big questions like why literature/writing/reading is banned what the archangel was really about, what happens with the newfound knowledge that Lillith returns to Alexandra with etc.. I assumed towards the start there was going to be some kind of lore about this being a dystopian future of our reality or something but nothing of that kind or any in depth lore was ever discussed.