Immortal City by Scott Speer
Summary: Jackson Godspeed is the hottest young Angel in a city filled with them. He’s days away from becoming a full Guardian, and people around the world are already competing for the chance to be watched over by him. Everyone’s obsessed with the Angels and the lucky people they protect – everyone except for Madison Montgomery.
Maddy’s the one girl in Angel City who doesn’t breathlessly follow the Angels on TV and gossip blogs. When she meets Jackson, she doesn’t recognize him. But Jackson is instantly captivated by her, and against all odds the two fall in love.
Maddy is swiftly caught up in Jackson’s scene, a world of glamour, paparazzi – and murder. A serial killer is on the loose, leaving dead Angels’ wings for the police to find on the Walk of Fame. Even the Guardians are powerless to protect themselves in the face of this threat … and this time it’s up to Maddy to save Jackson.
My Thoughts: Very interesting premise. There’s been an influx of “angel”-related YA fiction in the market recently, kind of tagging along on the supernatural coattails of vampires and werewolves and fae and etc. I’ve tried a few and just been kind of disgusted with the writing quality of some of them. Speer’s novel, however, captivated me from the very beginning with an incredibly intriguing and, might I say it, incredibly “American” (and by “American” I mean extremely capitalist!) set-up for his type of angels.
In Speer’s world, Angel City (aka our own Los Angeles) is populated by Angels who will “protect” you, aka save your life were you ever to be in some catastrophic incident like a car accident, plane crash, natural disaster, for an extremely exorbitant fee. As a result, the only people able to be “protected” are the extremely rich. As well, an entire culture and way of life has grown up around the Angels. They are celebrities, fixtures on red carpet events, and there are reality TV shows that center around normal humans competing against each other in different kinds of tasks (think Survivor) in order to get the chance to be “protected” by an Angel for the rest of their life. Angels are rich and beautiful, the world’s elite–there are tabloids and gossip magazines dedicated to them.
So here we have Jackson, the most famous and hottest and most perfect Angel of all. He lives this glamorous lifestyle, and we learn that he’s kind of “different,” and that he is tired of all the obsession and the craziness and fake illusions that come with his life. This is a premise I’ve read a thousand times–famous celebrity is tired of being a celebrity and having an awesome life, and then oh wow, he meets a perfectly normal, not-special girl (who actually turns out to be kind of special) who sees him for who he truly is.
And I expected to be rolling my eyes by this point. Except that when Speer switches over to Maddy’s narration and point-of-view, I only got more interested. I loved Maddy as a main character. She was down-to-earth and real, and I liked experiencing all the things about the Immortal City from her viewpoint. The romance between her and Jackson wasn’t rushed–it had hiccups and misunderstandings that were realistic and believable.
The evil enemy they have to face together was also a great twist, one I definitely didn’t see coming. Overall, Immortal City was a very enjoyable young adult fiction. I was intrigued and continually surprised by Speer’s plotting, and I definitely enjoyed the last 100 pages when things started getting really exciting. I hope there will be a sequel.
Sidenote: I think it’s fun that the author, Speer, is the boyfriend of Ashley Tisdale (of Disney fame) and his main career is a music video director! He’s directed for some big names. And I found this out after I finished reading, when I googled for more information about the book. I guess he actually knows what “celebrity” really is.
How did I get this novel? I received this as an ARC from the publisher, Razorbill. I haven’t seen very much publicity online for Immortal City, which is strange. There’s not even an official website or even publisher section for it yet, which is odd because on the ARC it details this whole marketing campaign they’re doing for the book release… which is only 4 months away. The website on the book cover, immortalcityseries.com, isn’t even up yet. The author doesn’t have a website for his writing, but he does have twitter, and myspace, and facebook. Also, I can’t even find any other book blog that has reviewed this yet! How strange. I feel like this is something the YA/fantasy world should be all over by now.
Genres: Young adult fiction, science fiction, fantasy, urban fantasy, romance
Giveaway: I’ll be giving this book away soon! Stay tuned.
