![]() ![]() That honor felt like it belonged to Stan with his treasure hunt. It also, overall, seemed to not be the major story line of the book. The second half was a little more interesting, but it also felt like it wouldn’t have happened without an event that might very well not have happened under different circumstances. If it was meant to be a mystery, it didn’t work very well. For half the story, she felt like she was just wandering around, meeting the lone witch left in the area, in her search for the missing witch. Eleanor’s story felt a little slow and involved what almost felt like pointless traveling around the area. I did enjoy just how deeply flawed they were and how well it worked with the story, but they were also equal degrees annoying.Īs for the story, both Eleanor and Stan are given story lines that nicely intersected, though, by the end I couldn’t figure out if it felt more contrived or more a happy accident that just happened to work out. All in all, though, both of them felt generally flat with little else to describe them. I don’t think he was meant to be likable, but he was certainly amusing as a cat. He had some strange delusions and ideas and, if I were Eleanor, I’d have a nice collection of restraining orders. Stan, on the other hand, was a jerk through and through. Her better-than-you attitude carried all through the novel, though I think she learned a few good lessons by the end, so it was easier to soften towards her a little. Eleanor felt like she thought she should be more important than everyone else, which quickly grated on my nerves. They were both deeply flawed people, and not necessarily people I’d feel sympathetic to. The Splendid City tells the stories of Eleanor and Stan, covering their relationship before they were sent to Liberty and what happened to them after they reached Liberty. I had thought it would be a fun social commentary sort of story, but it ended up feeling a little simplistic despite the number of issues it touched on and the whole middle felt dragged out. Then there’s magic and a cat and, really, it’s so hard to resist a book with a cat in it. Considering I live in California where we’re in various degrees of drought, reading about a water shortage kind of felt up my alley. The Splendid City caught my attention right away when it mentioned there’s a water shortage. But they quickly get more than they bargained for when a treasure hunt piques Stan’s interest and there might be a connection between the missing witch and the water shortage. When New Yorker witch-in-training Eleanor accidentally turns her irritating jerk of a co-worker, Stan, into a cat, her coven leader punishes her by limiting her powers and sending Eleanor and Stan to Liberty to find the witch. But, underneath, there’s a serious water shortage and a missing witch. ![]() Texas has seceded and renamed itself Liberty, where the president ostensibly wants to make everyone happy so constantly asks their opinion via strange animatronic heads. Still, the social commentary was interesting despite keeping more to a surface level. But the entire middle dragged on for entirely too long. Eleanor’s story felt like it wandered a little too much, but I enjoyed Stan’s story and, especially, how Stan adapted to doing things as a cat instead of as a human. The characters, Eleanor and Stan, were both deeply flawed and not completely redeemable or even very much likable, but Liberty was a fascinatingly strange place. The Splendid City presents an interesting social commentary using the backdrop of Liberty, which is the former state of Texas, where misinformation is rife and a witch and a cat are on different hunts, one for a missing witch and one for treasure, that inevitably have them crossing paths. One Sentence Summary: After accidentally turning Stan into a cat, witch-in-training Eleanor is sent to the new country of Liberty with Stan in tow to help find a missing witch, who might have something to do with the strange water shortage in Liberty. ![]()
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