City of Nightmares

content warnings: https://www.rschaefferbooks.com/content-warnings

I'll start this by saying that I loved Rebecca Schaeffer's previous series Market of Monsters. It was truly a dark and messed up YA series that was unlike anything else I'd ever read. Following that up would be a tough task for anyone, but City of Nightmares mostly achieves that and is an exciting new release.

Set in a Gotham-like city, this series is full of monsters and corruption. Residents have to take pills in order to prevent themselves from turning into Nightmares - whatever is the last thing that they would want to be. Ness, the protagonist, has had her life torn apart by a Nightmare and is now terrified by the prospect of turning into one or encountering one. During her work on behalf of the cult she is a part of (which she joined for food and shelter), she is caught up in an assassination attempt and survives with the help of a Nightmare. The rest of the book follows how she deals with the shift in everything she knows, and whether she can balance her fear of Nightmares with her want to be alive and search for the truth.

As always with Rebecca Schaeffer books, sometimes people are worse than monsters. And sometimes people turn into spiders and kill their family.

Ness is a pretty interesting protagonist and different to most female protagonists in fantasy type YA books. She's not brave, she doesn't want what's happening to her, and she doesn't trust anything around her. The book is well-paced and balances plot with character interactions and development. With this series being a duology, it'll be interesting to see how this is wrapped up in the final instalment later this year. I'm looking forward to more shenanigans involving Ness and Cy.