‘City of Shattered Light’ by Claire Winn: A Blog Tour Review // Interplanetary Heists, Sapphic Romance & Murderous Viruses

I am thrilled to be hosting a spot on the City of Shattered Light by Claire Winn Blog Tour hosted by TBR And Beyond Tours! Check out the other stops by clicking on the banner below!

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you to TBR and Beyond Tours, Netgalley, and Flux for this free copy.

• Title: City of Shattered Light
• Author: Claire Winn
• Publisher: Flux
• Pub. date: 19 October 2021
• Series: DEBUT
• Page count: 400
• Source: TBR and Beyond Tours
• Genres: young adult, science fiction

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As darkness closes in on the city of shattered light, an heiress and an outlaw must decide whether to fend for themselves or fight for each other.

As heiress to a powerful tech empire, seventeen-year-old Asa Almeida strives to prove she’s more than her manipulative father’s shadow. But when he uploads her rebellious sister’s mind to an experimental brain, Asa will do anything to save her sister from reprogramming—including fleeing her predetermined future with her sister’s digitized mind in tow. With a bounty on her head and a rogue A.I. hunting her, Asa’s getaway ship crash-lands in the worst possible place: the neon-drenched outlaw paradise, Requiem.

Gun-slinging smuggler Riven Hawthorne is determined to claw her way up Requiem’s underworld hierarchy. A runaway rich girl is exactly the bounty Riven needs—until a nasty computer virus spreads in Asa’s wake, causing a citywide blackout and tech quarantine. To get the payout for Asa and save Requiem from the monster in its circuits, Riven must team up with her captive.

Riven breaks skulls the way Asa breaks circuits, but their opponent is unlike anything they’ve ever seen. The A.I. exploits the girls’ darkest memories and deepest secrets, threatening to shatter the fragile alliance they’re both depending on. As one of Requiem’s 154-hour nights grows darker, the girls must decide whether to fend for themselves or fight for each other before Riven’s city and Asa’s sister are snuffed out forever.

Content warnings: violence, death, blood, mild gore, emotional abuse/manipulation, mild body horror (cybernetics), references to suicide, terminal illness, drug and alcohol references

City of Shattered Light made it onto my radar because of its sapphic protagonists. I mean, there is a runaway tech heiress and a gun-wielding thief who honestly look hot AF on that cover and it’s sapphic? This story ticks all the boxes! I haven’t read interplanetary sci-fi in a long while, so I had almost forgotten what it felt like till I picked up this book. And oh boy, I feel like I underestimated what this book would do to me!

The story of City of Shattered Light revolves around two protagonists: Asanna Almeida, the tech heiress living with her cold father and her sister Kaya on the luxury planet Cortellion; and Riven Hawthorne, the gun-wielding thief who leads a crew made up of Samir, sniper with a pet dog, and Ty, handsome crew medic who refuses to use a gun. Riven and her crew live on Requiem, AKA the City of Shattered Light, which is on a moon that orbits Cortellion and also happens to be a hot spot for every bad guy in the star system probably.

Asanna, or Asa, is preparing to take over Luca Almeida’s company as his daughter and heiress, but complications arise at a tech show when a rogue virus named Banshee attempts to sabotage it. Luca is very hush-hush about this new threat and carries on with his experiments like nothing’s going on, using Kaya as his test subject. When one of these experiments ends up with Kaya’s mind separated from her body, Asa works with another scientist to smuggle her sister’s mind and body separately to Earth.

On Requiem, Riven and her crew are trying to get on the good graces of a Matriarch, one of the leaders who runs the place under the control of the all-powerful Duchess. But a mission gone wrong ends up with Riven and her crew having to pay up all the money they lost on the job or serving themselves up for the lucrative organ donor business.

When Asa, carrying her sister’s mind in a biocapsule, literally crashes into Requiem, Riven is determined to cash in on the bounty on Asa’s head for their survival. But Banshee is sweeping across Requiem, shutting down the city and the only way to save it might be for Riven and her crew to team up with Asa to keep Requiem, and each other, alive.

This book had some of the best characters I have read about in a while. They were all so distinct with their own personalities and character traits. I loved the protagonists and literally everyone on Team Good Guys, but I couldn’t help loving all the morally grey and evil characters too. They were all so fascinating!

I was worried that Asa might get overshadowed by louder characters like Riven, but wow, this girl started to really blossom into her own person down the story. The meek, people-pleasing heiress really impressed me with her character growth but I see a lot more space for her to grow, so I can’t wait for any future books to show more of that.

I had no doubt that I would love Riven before I even started reading the book. There were moments that had me frustrated and annoyed with her, much like her crew was, but she really pulls through. What’s not to like about a girl who wields good ol’ guns in a world of cybernetics?

And The Crew! Oh gosh! I fell in love with literally everyone in it, which is why it broke my heart to read about some of the things these rebellious, brave, absolutely amazing people go through for each other! In my honest opinion, The Crew is the highlight of the whole story. That found family dynamic just hits the spot and left me reeling when the story ended.

I was worried I might end up confused in this futuristic world of cybernetics and body mods, but I wasn’t. The author does a fantastic job of using language that even someone who is new to sci-fi would not have a huge difficulty getting used to.

On top of that, I found the writing very well done when it came to the action scenes. I always love it when action-packed scenes aren’t vaguely mentioned but followed through with the reader, and that was perfectly orchestrated here!

City of Shattered Light was told in dual POVs: through Asa and Riven. I love dual POVs because it helps the reader get into the character’s head a lot easier but I struggled to notice a distinctive shift between the POVs here sometimes. Like, it would take me a few lines to understand that now I am on who’s POV.

For a story full of mass chaos and multiple stand-offs, the plot was surprisingly as the blurb promised. But I still loved it because with all the running, heisting, and breaking and out, it felt a lot happened!

However, I am not the biggest fan of the romance. I actually liked Riven and Asa together as a couple because of how their opposing personalities played together and the way they were trying so hard to fight their feelings. But I was not really happy with how Asa handled her feelings for a side character.

I loved that most of the story took place in Requiem because that place is amazing! I would be terrified to step foot on it if it existed in real life, but as a fictional setting, it is pretty badass! Even the people in this place were all badass!

And I am guessing that there might be a continuation of this story since the epilogue ends on a huge cliffhanger, so I am so ready for more! I will probably preorder whatever Claire Winn announces next!

Requiem and Cortellion are such amazing worlds, especially Requiem. Cortellion seemed pretty sterile and luxurious, not really somewhere I would wanna live in. I am really surprised Kaya and Asa grew up on that planet and grew into such normal people.

Requiem, on the other hand, was so awesome! I loved the grittiness and the rawness of that city, and, like Riven and her crew, I really wanted to see that place come out of the clutches of Banshee. The politics, the social order, and the pure chaos of that city reminded me of old sci-fi movies that I have watched, like Blade Runner, but cooler somehow.

I also loved how the author paid attention to things like the hours in a day and such based on the planets because duh, of course, that makes sense! But, as I said before, I haven’t read space sci-fi in a while, so I was utterly mesmerised by all the details here!

There was a lot of great representation in this book. Of the two MCs, one is a chronically ill bisexual female while the other is a BIPOC (Asian coded, most likely Filipina) bisexual female. There are also Achillean BIPOC male side characters, a side character with cybernetic implants, and the story is set in a more-or-less queer normative world.

City of Shattered Light is an action-packed sci-fi with a whole host of characters that I fell in love with within mere minutes! With such great LGBTQ+ representation and even a chronically ill MC, this debut is bound to stun you with its strange new worlds, absolutely terrifying villains, and lengths that this group of misfits will go for each other. I really hope this book gets a sequel though because after that cliffhanger ending my fingers are itching to preorder the next book!

Here’s some City of Shattered Light content you should check out: Ritz’s review & moodboard, Julia’s review, Melancholic Blithe’s Q&A with the author

Claire Winn spends her time immersed in other worlds—through LARP, video games, books, nerd conventions, and her own stories. Since graduating from Northwestern University, she’s worked as a legal writer and freelance editor. Aside from writing, she builds cosplay props and armor, tears up dance floors, and battles with boffer swords. City of Shattered Light, her first novel, releases fall 2021 from Flux Books.

Do you plan on picking up City of Shattered Light? Check out the other tour stops here!