The drug Sand can perfect everything; it is the secret to how Alchemists have been able to run society from the shadows, unnoticed by most normal people. Ari and Sam, however, are not most people, though neither of them knows their potential when they're singled out and plucked from obscurity by competing Alchemist factions, Grand Central and Lumines, in Marie Lu's adult fantasy debut, Red City. Ari is taken from his family in Surat, India, as a child, with no idea what the Lumines plan for him, or what he will eventually become. He takes secret classes after the normal school where he befriends Sam. Sam, however, finds her own way to Grand Central as she tries to make life better for herself and for her mother, who raised her alone after a tragic accident. Though they're friends at school, neither Ari nor Sam understand how this shadowy world will change their lives and what roles they'll play in the endless quest driven by power, ambition, and the desire to control Angel City.
But Sam and Ari increasingly wonder: If everything is capable of being perfected, of being transformed into something better, will any experience or prize ever be enough? When Sam and Ari reconnect in adulthood, each with distinctly different Alchemist skills, they find themselves on opposite sides of a city primed for war, with no end in sight of the escalation to the skirmishes between the syndicates Grand Central and Lumines to control the Sand market. Lu's captivating worldbuilding taps into the questions she had while being raised by immigrant parents of what can be lost to ambition. She probes the dark underbelly of a glittering system of power that can offer so much promise with the same hands that also extend incalculable violence. Her characters embody a rich tapestry of human experience, of human nature, of the choices one might make when they think they have no other option, but also, of the choices that will be made not to lose control or become vulnerable.
Red City's alternate Los Angeles becomes the perfect backdrop for this twisted world to unfold, picking at the monstrousness and cruelty that underlies one's brightest possibilities, including those of apprentices Ari and Sam, those who shape them, the mother who could not protect her daughter, and the doctor who contemplates the price of causing harm in the name of medical progress. Lu essentially offers readers the chance to contemplate what they themselves might do for power, if they knew the costs--and whether they would ever decide to walk away. Red City is an enthralling first installment of the New Alchemists series, sure to leave readers clamoring for more. --Michelle Anya Anjirbag, freelance reviewer
Shelf Talker: Marie Lu stuns with this dark contemporary fantasy that probes the true cost of perfection.