Half City by Kate Golden Review

Welcome to Harker Academy for Deviant Defense. Keep your daggers sharp, and your wits even sharper.

Viv Abbot is an average twenty-one-year-old girl. She lives in an expensive city where the rent is too high, works long hours at a thankless job, and is dating a guy she doesn’t even like in the hopes of winning her prickly mother’s approval.

She just also happens to be a demon hunter.

Ever since her father's murder, she's been forced to hunt deviants alone, meaning everyone, including her family, sees her as an outsider. . . . Until the day she crosses paths with a dangerously alluring demon, Reid Graveheart. The reformed deviant tells her of a school for people just like her: Harker Academy for Deviant Defense. If she enrolls, she'll learn to hone her craft, work with other hunters, and never be alone again.

But Viv has a deadly secret. One that not even her new friends at Harker can know about. Not when the school might hold the answers to untangling the mystery surrounding Viv's father’s death. When strange occurrences begin to plague the students, Viv will have to figure out who she can trust, and fast. All while trying to ace her classes, not fall for a demon, and make it through her first year at Harker in one piece. How hard could that be?

What do you get when you take the concept of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, add in the family business and fatherly mysteries of Supernatural, and wrap it up with the warded magical academy from Fate: The Winx Saga? Besides a whole lot of CW-esque teen drama nostalgia, you end up with a rough synopsis of Half City by Kate Golden. An urban paranormal romantasy about eldritch slaying wrapped up in modern BookTok tropes, it’s an entertaining read that features solid action, interesting mystery elements, and new adult/adult academy storylines. It’s not the type of book that’s going to win a literary award or break the romantasy mold with its fairly generic elements, but it’s a fun and casual brain-off kind of read provided one can overlook its inconsistent writing and its weak early chapters.

Usually when writing my reviews, I follow a rough template that roughly covers the book’s story, then notable positive highlights, followed by possible drawbacks or weak elements. However, when reviewing Half City, it makes more sense to flip it around as the majority of the book’s weaknesses are most notable and evident early on. Pitched as an urban paranormal romantasy book with demon slaying and a secret academy, the book initially feels like a hodgepodge assortment of every popular romantasy trope out there. From its lone wolf black cat FMC, the mysterious and dangerous demon romantic interest who also happens to be a professor (yes, this book also pulls out the hot forbidden teacher trope), a training arc at a secret academy, the material can at best be considered familiar or at worst, derivative and uninspired. While the story features decent attempts at worldbuilding and respectable action, the overall narrative feels like just another Buffy the Vampire Slayer inspired romantasy which has been done many times before, the whole experience feeling rather half-baked.

To make matters worse, Golden’s prose, writing style, and approach to the material doesn’t help the situation. The writing as a whole is very inconsistent both in terms of line-by-line phrasing as well as in substance. Most egregious in the early chapters, Viv’s narration is full of irrelevant and unnecessary details that add nothing to the story. Random thoughts, recollections, or side tangents are thrown in for no reason which not only slow down the plot but are also tiring to read about. A free-flowing, internalized stream-of-thought style of narration is an approach used a lot in fanfiction and indie style writing which in turn has its popularity in certain romantasy titles, but I found it particularly grating not only due to Viv’s portrayal and personality being frustrating in general (more on that shortly), but also because the story could be quite compelling if Golden would just stay on topic. While far from being original or creative, Half City’s plot is quite good, but the book’s execution, focus, and quality of writing consistently sabotage itself.

In addition to the overly casual prose and narration that’s all over the place, this book is littered with details that don’t make sense or have complete contradictions. Purposely excluding any spoilers, an easy example is the non-committal stance on whether Harker Academy acts like an actual academic institution. Is it supposed to be an academy for slaying demons and all things paranormal that have crossed into the human world, but then they randomly have lacrosse teams (not just one mind you, multiple teams)? Considering Harker Academy is a secret academy, it’s not like they can play against any other schools, but with a limited student body size and attendees who are supposed to be training with practical skills in a tense conflict with evil, why is lacrosse even a thing here and important? Demons are the only deviants born in the underworld as opposed to being turned into one at the surface, yet Reid was born in the human world and has never been below the chasm which breaks the book’s own lore. Viv misses killing things when she’s at the academy, yet she’s regularly shown going to and from her apartment at night, what’s to stop her from killing something while she’s out; the story can’t seem to make up its mind on whether entering the city of Astera without permission is allowed or not. First years are not allowed to be taken on field expeditions as an academy policy due to the dangers, but Reid directly breaks that policy via his field training class that includes several. What defines a hunter in terms of their genetics and predisposition is vague and the line separating them with Aeons and regular humans keeps shifting. The only portal out of Harker Academy is via the museum Viv works at (there are multiple portals into the academy however). With hundreds of students and staff that regularly leave for breaks, field expeditions, or responses to deviant threats, how does Viv not notice a single one during her employment and believes she’s the lone hunter across the entire city? The book also can’t seem to decide if it wants to be based in the real world given all of the pop culture and locations referenced or in its own self-contained world given the city feels like its own distinctive place and the story never makes use of anything outside of Astera. These are just some of the bigger issues and inconsistencies in the story, there are countless more on a more micro level in back to back sentences such as Viv running through floors of an asylum she narrates as being abandoned that are somehow stocked with medicine and valuable resources just lying around or cell phones having reception at Harker Academy which is in the rural and desolate landscape away from regular civilization. How the school has running water and power is something the book hopes the readers won’t think about.

But what can be the most negative part of the book is Viv’s character herself that can often be frustrating to read about initially. Believed to be the only hunter in the city after her father is murdered, she strikes out on her own as a lone wolf, self-reliant type of character who is distrustful of others while confident in her abilities. While a book can certainly have a flawed character by design, the execution of her character makes her feel particularly insufferable due to being overconfident and black cat-like without demonstrating her prowess and knowledge to justify her hunter ego. It’s a common mistake I see quite often in romantasy books, especially those that try to portray an edgy and fierce FMC. Her secret of being an Aeon, a dangerous line of hunters with an uncontrollable bloodlust eliminated due to the risk they pose to society, as well as her guilt of not being able to save her father are great ideas for character development, but Golden’s choice to have Viv externalize her issues creates a lot of conflict that feels juvenile, compared to internalized regrets and reflections that could’ve been far more impactful and tolerable; she falls into the chosen one trope unfavorably. While the plot and different storylines can be quite interesting, Viv often feels like the villain, getting in the way of the story with unnecessary drama. The comparison of the book to CW-esque teen drama shows also applies here and not in a positive light.

While I came very close to DNFing this book early on, fortunately around two hundred pages in, suddenly everything started to work, and the messy ideas slowly fit together. As the story starts to settle, gets past its messy worldbuilding, and early generic opening academy arc, Half City starts to find its footing and substantially improves over the course of its last two thirds. I don’t know what happened exactly, but the writing stops straying off-topic with Viv’s irrelevant surface level thoughts and suddenly locks-in, focusing on the lingering clues about her father’s death and mysterious disappearances quietly happening at Harker Academy. The unexpectedly strong paranormal action that was already one of the book’s best elements has additional focus in the back half, along with the plot. New twists start to land with more impact (a few big plot holes are corrected), and the overall writing takes on a more cohesive and polished style while still casual and accessible. The overall sense of pacing and growing tension also feels more intentional and better managed. This is by no means a literary novel and the fantasy elements are still quite generic, but the book’s presentation improves substantially and becomes quite compelling by the time the final confrontations occur. Being compared to a cult classic like Buffy is a tall order many books fail to live up to, but Half City genuinely approaches that lofty goal by the book’s conclusion, ending on a strong and promising note for the sequel.

Additionally, Viv’s character starts to calm down which allows her to work with the story instead of fighting it. Her character becomes far more likable as the story progresses, particularly as she befriends some of the other academy students which have a lighthearted and fun new adult feel to them. Whether they’re studying for practical skills tests, heading out to the city for a fun night out (inconsistencies with academy policies aside), or acting like a Scooby-Doo investigating gang, the group dynamic and supporting characters work really well! Themes loosely touched on earlier regarding wealth disparity, Viv’s family rags to riches arc, and disconnect she has with her non-hunter best friend Penny start to pull their narrative weight even though they could go further, the story nicely blending these elements with the main fantasy action and mysteries. Additionally, Viv’s character making more rational, mature choices helps the story’s pacing and maturity considerably. Elements involving her rocky relationship with her mother, her questionable relationship with her boyfriend, and connection with her museum boss Fiona also add depth to her character.

On the other hand, while I’m sure they were written this way due to how powerful the marketing trope of enemies-to-lovers can be, Viv’s conflict and sparring with Reid never quite worked for me and consistently cheapened an already generic story. However, once Viv stopped actively fighting Reid, their back-and-forth banter, teamwork, and romantic chemistry improved as well. The improvement of the latter two thirds of the book compared to its first third is so notable, it made me question if its many faults were due to a lack of editing, early chapters reading like a rough Wattpad story while the latter resembling the expected standards of a trade published book.

As romantasy books go, Half City is a fairly typical one. Covering familiar topics, fantasy elements, and forbidden romance, it follows the tried-and-true formula and does little to set itself apart. Its inconsistent writing and numerous weaknesses, most prominent in its early chapters result in the book putting its worst foot forward first, understandably resulting in numerous DNF’s and negative reviews; I was fully prepared to write my own, this book was sitting as low as 1.5-star rating at one point for me. But by some miracle, it does get better and to such an impressive degree that I’m planning to continue with its sequel out later this year when I was so close to DNFing this book earlier. While this book isn’t going to win any awards, it’s nonetheless a really fun brain-off kind of fantasy read that’s entirely bingeable (I read all but the first fifty pages in one day). For those looking for an urban paranormal romantasy book, there are better options out there than Half City, but readers could certainly also do far worse. 

Note: On a random tangent, I mainly read this book due to having received a copy from a book box company by accident due to an incorrect shipment from their contracted fulfillment company. It was a very unexpected surprise opening up the box and receiving a beautiful special edition copy of this book that’s in high demand.