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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Darkest Fantasy, 9 Jun 2007
This is not your typical fantasy but it draws on the traditions with its main character's quest.
Renegade City was created by a rock band, it is a place where outsiders can go to belong, not by becoming one of the crowd but by embracing their differences and carving their own niche. The four main tribes live side by side but now the City itself is threatened, either from the outside or from within.
Its 'God' is dead, Roses has been slain and his brother Druid must find out what happened, fighting his way through his own dark grief to discover who or what threatens Renegade.
He is helped and hindered on his path by the varied inhabitants of the city, including a young thief who takes it on himself to become Druid's guide and a mysterious stranger with attitude who is on a quest of her own.
Follow his path through the Skinwalkers lair and the land of the Fae as he meets the inhabitants of the city he helped create.
Based on a Nottingham not of the future or the past but somewhere alongside this is a must read for anyone who knows they don't belong, or wishes they didn't!
Step inside the city of your dreams...and your nightmares...
The city is brilliantly drawn, the descriptive prose leads you through the dark streets like a magnet pulling and fills you with anticipation...who will Druid meet round the next corner and to what strange corner of this land will he travel next? The characters are intriguing; who is the mysterious Angel, what is his purpose and why are the Skinwalkers afraid? The dialogue flies with consumate ease, deftly building each character from within and leading you into the lives and minds of the inhabitants of Renegade City.
Eagerly awaiting the next installment...
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5.0 out of 5 stars
A legend in the making., 4 Jul 2007
In a city such as Renegade City, you couldn't hope for a better guide than Kim Lakin-Smith. She's created an alternate version of a Nottingham that could easily be. From the sharp dialogue to the pop culture references to the general sideshow freak population it had me hooked from the words "Chapter 1" Those who live in the night will love it.
Looking forward to the next book.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
A tourist's guide to Renegade, 1 Aug 2007
This novel is being marketed mainly at the type of reader who might buy a house off-plan, or more likely move into a squat, in the new Nottingham: those who, in their own opinion at least, shoplift the right clothes to finance the right drug habit, and whose tattoos have been spelling out the umlaut-strewn names of the right bands since before they were famous. But it deserves a wider audience.
You may feel, like me, that a story set against a background suggestive of Mad Max at a Lordi gig in Gormenghast would not normally be your cup of tea, flagon of gin or chalice of blood, but don't be put off. Book yourself in at the Travelodge on the edge of town, then it's all aboard the heavily-armoured sightseeing bus (with two SAS veterans riding shotgun).
It's the quality of the pre-recorded commentary on your headphones which will make you glad you braved the trip. Poetic passages such as "Set against the great jets of flamingo pink and orange fire that danced filmily in the distance, the many bonfires littering the sloping bank like beautiful soft phoenix eggs, and a landscape hand-inked by Giger, she resembled a child lost amid the junk and flames of Judgement Day." And there's humour too: how can you resist a chapter which begins "That a woman of a certain age, whose brown eyes held the gleam of hard-wrought know-how and whose lips were a painted dry red streak, could propel a fish-paste sandwich with such accuracy and at such velocity, was nothing short of a modern wonder." ?
The author probably won't change your view that the tribespeople should grow up, get their hair cut and get proper jobs, but Renegade is still worth a detour, for even the tweediest of travellers.
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