Review: The Sunken City (The Sunken City #1)

• Title: The Sunken City

• Author: Emma Noyes

• Series: The Sunken City #1

• Genre: YA Fantasy

• Rating: ☆☆☆

**Thank you to BookSirens for an ARC copy of this novel. These are my honest thoughts.**

I feel like there is potential for this world to become something great. The concept of an underwater kingdom that's lightyears ahead of its on-land counterpart sounded so fascinating to me in the synopsis, but I'm afraid The Sunken City failed to deliver what I anticipated going into it. The world is established enough to make it interesting, but it took some time for me to relax into this book and enjoy the characters.

I have to admit, whilst I normally hate love triangles, I loved the one in this book, and it was possibly my favourite thing about it. Lukas is a fantastic character, and whilst I had my thoughts on who he was all along, I enjoyed how morally grey he is and how consistent he remained to his end goal regardless of what he felt for Amare. It will be because of him and the last quarter of this novel that I pick up the sequel when it's released. Flynn was also a great character, but I lost interest in him once his brother returned. I found Amare's reactions with Lukas to be more natural and interesting than her hatred then sudden love for Flynn. I especially didn't grasp their falling in love well, as there wasn't enough development to build up love more than being told it was there.

That being said, there were some issues with this story for me. When Amare was above the sea, I found the world that the author was trying to paint very conflicting. One moment would be internal dialogue, the next, a history lesson of pirates and happenings that didn't quite correlate to what was happening in that moment in the book, and then to story plot or a trait about Amare that had built her up to who she was, only to cycle back around. It felt confusing and unnecessary at times to be so back and forth with the setup. Whilst I understand the author was trying to paint a scene and build Amare as the main character, I would have much rather more focus on the now or aspects about Amare being directly linked to what was happening at that time so it would make sense to bring it up. This stops happening so much once Amare goes to the Sunken Kingdom, and is why I found the second half of this book easier to follow and read. However, I did struggle with how Amare goes from being someone who speaks quite old-fashioned to quickly adapting the modern speech of those underwater.

The side characters were fantastic in this novel. I loved Shoa and Maoke and cannot wait to see how they develop in the next book. I also felt the plot in the last quarter redeemed the drag or lack of solid foundations the book started upon. The promise of revenge, further betrayals and more adventure left this book on quite the cliffhanger and has me interested to follow the journey.