City of Halves certainly starts off with a bang. Lily is an expert computer hacker and she uncovers information that will help her father win his cases. It seems, however, that Lily isn’t the only one snooping on people. When she goes out in search of a shady contact that could prevent a woman’s deportation, Lily is attacked by a two-headed dog and loses a lot of blood. Due to a rare blood condition, she can only have transfusions of her own blood, and panics when she awakes to the boy she had been looking for pumping his own blood into her veins. Lily is immediately thrown into an entirely new London; one with wraiths and mothwings, mermaids and river guardians, and countless other forms of Eldritche.

Her stubbornness lands her at the side of the boy, Regan Lupescar, as the magical world around them begins to wake up and turn violent. It seems the balance of Chaos and Good has vastly tipped towards Chaos. Though Regan firmly believes in keeping human problems separate from the Eldritche’s, he soon discovers, with Lily’s help, that it might not be that simple. While constantly battling the forces of Chaos, Regan and Lily begin to uncover the intricacies of missing persons’ cases and learn to question the people they thought most sincere. During all this, Lily tries to make sense of her burgeoning sexuality. While some of the twists and plot points are derivative, the mingling of science and medicine with magic makes gives them new life. While it may be easy to see some things coming, it doesn’t make them any less satisfying when they are realized. All in all, an enjoyable read with a strong female character who saves Regan as much as he saves her.

© 2015 Catia Cunha

Catia Cunha has a BA in Theater Arts and English from Mount Holyoke College. She won Young Playwrights Inc.’s 2013 National Playwriting Competition where her short play “Legs” was presented as a staged reading at the Lucille Lortel Theatre at the culmination of the Conference. In the spring of 2013 she produced and acted in her first full-length play, ____space, which was presented at Mount Holyoke. Catia’s senior project, Disinsemination, a play about feminist lesbians and aliens, was presented as a staged reading at Smith College and Mount Holyoke in Fall 2013. Mount Holyoke’s Rooke Theatre produced it in March 2014. In October 2014 Catia participated in the Grex Group’s Insomniacs 24-hour play festival. She is currently working on a play about sea monsters in the subway.