Acclaimed YA novelist Marie Lu venture into adult territory with Red City (2025), a rich, accomplished urban fantasy full of intrigue and romance. It takes place in an alternate universe where politics and the economy are underpinned by secret cabals of alchemists who bend reality to their wishes with powerful magic. Its heroes, Samantha and Ari, are childhood friends in “Angel City” (Los Angeles), whose innocent, platonic relationship blossoms into something more. What they don’t know is that their fortunes are destined to be shaped by alchemical talents, which lure them into the employ of rival syndicates. As an escalating war breaks out between their respective factions, their deeply felt, never-expressed love for one another smolders beneath the conflict.
Lu’s accessible prose and subtle worldbuilding ease the reader nicely into a smooth, thoughtful tale, which layers something of a West Side Story romance over scheming crime-story plot mechanics. From a marketing perspective, the novel — especially its title and packaging — cagily rides the coattails of Fonda Lee’s brilliant Green Bone Saga. Alas, it possesses neither the complexity nor the worldbuilding chops of that epic series, which may disappoint those lured in strictly by the comparison. It does, however, scratch a similar itch, embedding a strong thematic foundation under its romantic adventure, for at its core, Red City is an earnest, effective tale of immigrants seeking a better life in the United States, which tragically corrupts them into the broken, damaging systems of the world. This angle gives what might have been a simple, escapist read a deeper layer, with timely undercurrents about the toxic notions of success that drive their world — and, by extension, ours.
