Title: Dark City
Series: The Syndicate: Book One
Author: Sarah Kay Moll
Publisher: NineStar Press
Length: 270 Pages
Category: Contemporary, Genre Fiction
At a Glance: A Poly/Bisexual Romance crime drama placed in a contemporary light-noir setting. Personally, I like my noir seedier, more convoluted, and with surlier protagonists, but if you’re looking for a lovely crime drama romance, this is probably the book for you.
Reviewed By: Ben
Blurb: Jude has a tender heart. Yet he was born into a criminal empire and groomed from childhood to step into his father’s violent footsteps. To survive, he created a second personality. Ras is everything Jude isn’t—cruel, remorseless, and utterly without fear, as incapable of love as Jude is of malice.
But when Ras meets a ruthless socialite, he begins to feel a strange stirring of emotion, a brush of Jude’s passion against his own dark heart. Meanwhile, Jude finds himself with a knife in his hand, the evil in Ras’s soul bleeding into his own.
As the walls between them crumble, they could lose everything—their lovers, their family, and their hold on the dark city itself.
Coming together could break them…or make them whole.
Review: I stepped into this romantic crime drama without reading the blurb, which oftentimes I find helpful, but this time I’m not so sure. The world is contemporary but takes place in a fictional city where Jude, our protagonist, and his family are a part of the Russian mafia. In the first several chapters we’re introduced to Jude as a child, in past third person; adult Jude, in present first; Jude as a child again, in past third; and Ras, in present third. We are also introduced to the city which Jude desires to rule one day; Jude’s father, who is a crime boss for said city and a major antagonist; and it is revealed that Ras and Jude are the same person, by which I mean Jude has dissociative identity disorder and Ras is a split personality. The POV and tense shifts were a bit confusing at first—probably because I hadn’t read the blurb—but I got there eventually.
After reading the reveal early on that Jude and Ras were the same person, I experienced a rush of disappointment. It is a huge plot point in the novel, and I was toying with the idea that maybe this could have been leaked later on, to greater effect. I realize no one likes the ‘surprise—it’s a mental health disorder!’ trope, but there weren’t a ton of surprises in this narrative, and I would have loved the cat-and-mouse game played out more between Jude and Ras. Their interactions were often unrealistic, but if this had been more of a fantasy setting, maybe something like that would have been more acceptable.
The fantasy idea hit me again with the exaggerated street life, sweeping dance-like fight scenes, and stereotypical characters. I think the writing was geared toward the reader making quite a few assumptions on how things worked in the city/world, but I found myself struggling to imagine it all. In a fantasy setting maybe the city’s outlandish personality could shine more.
What I found supremely interesting about this work was that it’s probably the only noir I’ve read that was a Romance, through and through. There were dark elements, to be sure, but the story focused on Jude, who was sweet and in love with a guy called Ash, and Ras, who was cruel and in love with a gal called Scarlet. Jude is gay and Ras is Ras, but when they have to rely on each other like never before, the lines between their love lives also blur. I thought that was rather interesting and unique.
Ash was a prostitute and addicted to drugs. He and Jude had a purely platonic relationship that was quickly going nowhere, until the walls separating Jude’s life from Ras’s begin to fall. Scarlet was another crime boss’s daughter. Though she was hard as nails and intelligent, she, like the other female lead in the novel, was abused. I think there was an effort to give her agency, but I thought she could have been a part of a more enticing plot twist. As it was, the plot was fairly straightforward for a crime drama.
Personally, I like my noir seedier, more convoluted, and with surlier protagonists, but if you’re looking for a lovely crime drama romance, this is probably the book for you.
You can buy Dark City here:
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