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    A City Dreaming: A Novel
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    A City Dreaming: A Novel
    Unavailable
    A City Dreaming: A Novel
    Ebook391 pages6 hours

    A City Dreaming: A Novel

    By Daniel Polansky

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    A powerful magician returns to New York City and reluctantly finds himself in the middle of a war between the city’s two most powerful witches.

    “It would help if you did not think of it as magic. M certainly had long ceased to do so.” 

    M is an ageless drifter with a sharp tongue, few scruples, and the ability to bend reality to his will, ever so slightly. He’s come back to New York City after a long absence, and though he’d much rather spend his days drinking artisanal beer in his favorite local bar, his old friends—and his enemies—have other plans for him. One night M might find himself squaring off against the pirates who cruise the Gowanus Canal; another night sees him at a fashionable uptown charity auction where the waitstaff are all zombies. A subway ride through the inner circles of hell? In M’s world, that’s practically a pleasant diversion.

    Before too long, M realizes he’s landed in the middle of a power struggle between Celise, the elegant White Queen of Manhattan, and Abilene, Brooklyn’s hip, free-spirited Red Queen, a rivalry that threatens to make New York go the way of Atlantis. To stop it, M will have to call in every favor, waste every charm, and blow every spell he’s ever acquired—he might even have to get out of bed before noon.

    Enter a world of Wall Street wolves, slumming scenesters, desperate artists, drug-induced divinities, pocket steampunk universes, and demonic coffee shops. M’s New York, the infinite nexus of the universe, really is a city that never sleeps—but is always dreaming.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRegan Arts.
    Release dateOct 4, 2016
    ISBN9781682450390
    Unavailable
    A City Dreaming: A Novel
    Author

    Daniel Polansky

    DANIEL POLANSKY was born in 1984 in Baltimore, Maryland. He is the author of the Low Town series, the Hugo nominated The Builders, and A City Dreaming. He currently resides on a hill in eastern Los Angeles.

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    Reviews for A City Dreaming

    4/5

    46 ratings9 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This was an interesting read, but I'd probably have enjoyed it more if I had known the sort of book it is. It's best not to think of it as a novel, exactly--more like a collection of short stories all involving the same protagonist. Closer even to reading a season of thirty minute shows; one episode per chapter. Very fast read, action packed. The "magic" in the book is done very well, in my opinion. Not over-explained. Very descriptive, too, but not tediously so. There was one chapter toward the end describing a sort of house of hell and the descriptions there were graphic and gruesome, but still never bogged down the story with too many details. If reading a season of urban fantasy TV episodes converted into an easily read and well written book sounds like something you'd be interested in, then you would definitely enjoy this book. **I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my unbiased review.**
    • 3/5
      Witches, wizards or magicians? I'm not sure what the protagonist, known only as M, and his friends were, but they were all capable of making and experiencing magic in New York City. Do not believe the blurb that says this is about a war between two rival magician queens. At most, there is some occasional petulance between them - there is no war. In fact the queens are barely in the book at all. Not that I missed them, but I hate it when the blurb is this misleading. Also, this isn't a novel, it's a collection of related short stories. Some of the stories were good, some of them were unbearably dull and a couple of them were a little touching.The author writes in a wry, clever and imaginative manner that I enjoyed. It was the structure and content of these stories that eventually sunk the book for me and I struggled to finish it. I started out really liking the book, and then I found that the stories followed a predictable pattern. M, a Brooklyn hipster, gets into trouble, usually caused by one or more of his friends, and then he gets out of trouble. Along the way there were subway lines that did not exist, amazing things happening in the back of nondescript bars, constantly shifting tattoos, multiplying coffee shops and other phantasmagorical inventions. I kept reading for these touches, but they were not enough to save the book for me. There was just too much repetitiveness and not enough plot. I also think the Brooklyn hipster satire is going to date very quickly. Some of it already felt old. However, the author is a keen observer (and lover) of the details that make up NYC. While this book didn't totally work for me, I'd be willing to read another book by this author.I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.
    • 3/5
      I nearly didn't finish this at the beginning I couldn't get into the style at first but then I realised that it was anthology of short stories linked by the character of M. It also didn't help that I didn't like M at first but he grow on me. With all short stories there were ones I loved ,ones I didn't care for and other's just okay. I think if you like UF and Horror blended together you would like this. For me I loved it when M visited the nightclub with the entity in his eyes with M showing what humans get up too and the coffee shop chapter but in the end it was too much horror for me. I was uncomfortable reading about the house where unspeakable things happened a glance of hell I really didn't want to read about.There is hope through underneath it after all the novel is a love letter to New York, I'm happy I read this but for me I won't be revisiting again. 3.5/5

      Recommended to horror fans
    • 5/5
      I normally don't go for short stories and so was concerned this novel might not be for me, but the overall tone and slim connective tissue connecting chapter to chapter felt fun and original rather than confusing. This was my first Daniel Polansky book and I am excited to to more of his works. Also this would make a fantastic TV show, kind of like what Syfy has done with The Magicians but more whimsical, with a touch of BBC-style humor. I kind of picture David Tennant as M. :)
    • 5/5
      There is nothing wrong with a good ending...didn’t we just like the one we got ?

      Yes, we did.
    • 3/5
      First of all, ignore what’s written in the dust jacket and used as the marketing blurb on Amazon. I’m not really sure that the person who wrote it has actually read the book as, only by the wildest stretch of one’s imagination does it describe what’s inside. What you really get is a collection of lightly-related short stories featuring the same main character, M. M is a hipster-ish, wise-cracking, laissez-faire kind of guy who—well, this is a fantasy novel—has some vaguely-defined ability with magic and spends his time hanging out with other people having vaguely-defined abilities with magic. He is recently returned to New York City where he has a few adventures with about every trope known to the genre, sprinkled with copious allusions to the works of everyone from Lovecraft to Leiber, before wandering off again to parts unknown.Basically, that’s my problem with the book. As is often the case when you try to craft a long story arc out of individual short stories, the result is somewhat shallow due to the episodic nature. There’s simply no time. In this case, Polansky goes out of his way to explain nothing and most of the characters are cardboard cutouts in the shape of something not quite ordinary. I’m not sure that even the city, itself, would be distinct (beyond the famous names like Brooklyn) unless you were a resident of the Tri-State Area, yourself, and recognized something of the pulse of New York.I will say that M grew on me as the book progressed. The annoyance with him that I felt through the first half of the book morphed into something more. I think that has less to do with a gradual accumulation of understanding and more to do with the fact that the later stories had a little more character depth.Somehow this book has achieved a lot of hype before its publication: rave reviews, “best I’ve read” type stuff. My opinion is different. It felt more like several years of contributions to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction collected into a single volume and, just as even a binge-watched TV series rarely has the depth of a good movie, it’s not a contender for a “best" list of mine.
    • 3/5
      I received a free ebook ARC through Netgalley.com in exchange for a review.

      I have been on a Polansky kick for awhile now, since picking up "Low Town". When I saw that this book was available through Netgalley.com, I jumped at it. However, I feel I was a bit let down. Instead of a fairly straight-forward storyline, it comes across more as a collection of happenings/events in the main character's forays through the city. I only finished the book out of determination rather than interest. I have a few other books by Polansky on my to read list, and hope they are not similar to this one.
    • 2/5
      This review is based on an eARC I received from NetGalley. It is an honest review and the advanced receipt of it in no way affected my review or rating.This book felt like a series of short stories with M being the main character and the world he inhabits is unlike anything I have ever read before. It seems to be commentary about M’s life, friends, and the city where he lives. It was very challenging to find the overall plot. If anything I felt that nothing made sense. There is no explanation of the world you find yourself in. Witches, Goblins, Humans and many other magical creatures all in a melting pot of NYC, why? How did they come to be there? A world need to be supported in order to be fully conceived in the eye of the reader. Even the characters themselves were not developed. They are introduced and then off you go. I prefer character shaping in order to draw me in to what is happening to them.There was little background information to support the world as it was and even less for items found in this world. The items and weapons introduced for example a “gravity knife” but no explanation was given as to what it did exactly. After being introduced it was not even utilized, so how am I supposed to know what it does? So all these cool items are mentioned but the writing does not explain or support their use. Just introduces the idea because it is cool. I prefer if you are going to talk about weapons that they would be written in such a way that we would understand their use.So M has magical ability and he has been away from New York for a period of five years. Now he returns and is catching up with old friends. When reading the story, it is like you are an outsider to the group and they are going about their business and you are left to try and figure out what they are discussing and the context of their meanings but they are not including you in the discussion. They are not giving you anything to go on, so you spend the story trying to infer what exactly is happening and who the main players are. Very confusing.Drugs, sex, and craziness; that is how I would sum up this story. Without the utter violence I would relate this to trying to watch Clockwork Orange. Felt the same way to me trying to figure out what was going on and not really understanding why anything was happening. There were some good points, it is very imaginative, I like the whole idea that zombies can eat and drink but cannot have salt without bad things happening, and there is quite a bit of humor throughout the story. For me this was not a winner but I also do not think I was the target audience.*Thank you to Regan Arts & NetGalley for this eARC of A City Dreaming*
    • 4/5
      3.5?

      Loved the way this started and then it kind of began fizzling out a bit? Still think it's a much better contemporary fantasy than The Magicians but I was expecting a more cohesive narrative and less of a vignette style. Still, if you love Polansky signature with, it translates well from epic to contemporary fantasy.