Immortal City

Immortal City by Scott Speer is a great, original idea that follows Maddy and Jacks as their worlds collide in a explosion of sparks. Cheesy sum up I know but that's how it feels when you're reading this book, everything's on fire, you can feel your toes twiddling, stomach twisting, it's a love story of the century.

Basically the Angels have given up helping for the sake of helping, now they're making a profit out of saving their Protections, who are generally rich and famous. Of course being stunning, and with wings, helps your position in the world and the Angels are basically the elite, the famous, and the powerful. With their publicists able to justify all the Angels motives and actions they just can't put a foot wrong. It doesn't matter that they'll save one person from a car crash, their Protection, but allow the other three people to die, the Angels are too amazing to be held responsible for this. Really it's like the world today except the Angels are Rihanna and Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp.

However what if one saves for love, defies the rules of the Guardians, and saves someone who isn't his Protection. Well this is what Immortal City's all about!

Maddy
A down to earth, human girl who doesn't get what all the hype is about the Angels. In her eyes they're selfish bast*rds that believe themselves too good for the normal humans. Maddy just wants to get away from Immortal City, and try and find somewhere she feels normal. She's prone to visions of nasty things that are about to happen, take her biology teacher blowing up for example (she stops this but as a result of her premonition) and she can't understand why she has them. Needless to say her uncle Kevin, whose looked after her and sheltered her since her parents were both killed when she was a baby, doesn't have much to say on the issue, not that Maddy ever asks him about it! She was an interesting character to follow as you can completely understand her inner turmoils about whether Jacks really does like her, whether she's pretty/special/good enough for him, and the fact she's pretty astute and brave doesn't hurt her! She develops throughout the book and you, well I couldn't anyway, can't help rooting for her, and for her relationship with Jacks to work out!

Jacks (Jackson)
The hot, holy, worshiped, famous Angel whose about to become a Guardian, the youngest Guardian in history, may we hasten to add! He's used to the luxurious privileged life the Angels lead, as well as girls fawning over him and knowing everything about him through stalking the various Angel Blogs, which there are a number of, (the Angels certainly know how to handle and exploit publicity!) When he meets Maddy, a girl who a) doesn't recognize him to begin with b) isn't interested in his apologies and his attempts to make up to her and c) who sees Jacks for the real Jacks, of course he's intrigued, fascinated and blown away. (Where would the story be if he wasn't!) He's a really scrummy character and I enjoyed learning about the Angel Politics and attempting to understand why Jacks was struggling to make decisions that would go against everything he's learnt.

I've read a few reviews on Immortal City and a lot of people would have rather there was less focus on the investigation into the Angel murders and more focus on Jacks and Maddy but personally I felt there was just enough on J & M that it wasn't overwhelming and the Angel murders and the Angel politics background story (and later on J & M are involved in the murders of course) really add to the story by giving it some depth. It helps to set the book up for a series which I think it's aiming to be (the second's out in April I believe) and I want to know what happens to everyone in this book not just J & M which is really important to me as it means Speers has managed to create characters I care about.

You can get Immortal City from Amazon.co.uk for £5.24 and it's published by Scholastic. I would suggest getting hold of this book as it's great fun, it's not overly fluffy, and the characters are really well developed as is the background stories.
 My Verdict: 3 out of 5. I honestly really enjoyed it and like I've said I read it in a day.... I even made myself read it on the bus just so I could find out what happened..... and I get car sick on a bus. It would have been a 5 but if I'm honestly true to myself it was a very fluffy read!!

Good Reading!
Tabs
X