City of Promise

City of Promise - Dawn Prough City of Promise is set in the year 2063. Humanity is aware that they share the planet with vampires and instead of cowering in fear, humans are actively hunting vampires down and killing them. There is a tiny vampire population left and the reside in the metropolis of Gideon. Gideon is "built on pillars rising from the ocean on the Atlantic ridge," and is governed by scientists. The laws governing Gideon squarely favour humans and vampires live as second-class citizens. Misty Suval lives in government housing unit where there are no units and obtains blood through Gideon's work for blood program. Diving deep into the ocean to do maintenance work for Gideon, Misty stumbles across a dead body and from that moment on, her life is destined to change. When she meets an injured Li and brings home for the day she does not realise that her decision to shelter this human will mean dragging her into the underworld of Gideon.Many of the characters in City of Promise are of colour and this is something I greatly appreciate because erasure is far too common in this genre. Though the world Prough created was multi-racial, none of the characters experienced inform of oppression based in their race. The only oppression discussed in City of Promise is that which is aimed at vampires. The problem with this is that unlike real marginalized people, humanity has every reason to attempt to control vampires - we are after all their food. Even a futuristic setting is not enough to justify the real erasure that marginalized people face, to instead make a false oppression so central to the plot.Despite the unique setting, Prough still fell prey to the dead parents trope. We don't know anything really about Misty's human family but we do know that her vampire sires are dead. In many ways their death seemed to be the only way in which Misty's character expressed any depth. Beyond missing her dead sires, and Misty's vampire instincts she really is an empty character. I did however like Misty's comfort with her body and her absolute refusal to starve herself in order to loose a couple of dress sizes. Misty is fit but she is not model skinny and I like that an average size protagonist is comfortable in the skin that she is in.Read More