loved it! American gods for new Zealand. ( )

66 points/100 (3 ½ stars/5)

The Wind City had an amazing start. I was captured immediately. I kept wanting to quote parts of it at people, and did probably annoy quite a few people about it when I started. I was so amused and excited about it in the beginning. I mean, we have a...who knows what at that point create a human body and go "You must be my true love.". Brilliant! I love it already.

I loved how this was urban fantasy that didn't have any vampires or werewolves or witches. It was all Maori. It was people and things and beliefs I had no idea of before I read this. I had no idea it could create such a rich world. At some point, I'm going to have to look up just how much of The Wind City was based in true myths and how much was made up. There was just so much! What little of the book that was dedicated to Maori myths was really fun and enlightening.

There are three main leads in the series, and pretty much all of them are unreliable narrators by virtue of none of them having a clue about the atua before the start of the book. Every single one of them is learning, and they're learning from different people who are all telling their side of things. The truth, of course, is somewhere in the middle. I actually like all the leads. They each have their own thing, their own purpose. I just wish they did more.

It was the vast middle of the book that I found boring, and it is where this book lost most of its points. I.just.didn't.care! I just wanted something to happen. Everything that was happening seemed to happen off screen! We just ended up hearing about it later on as if they didn't matter. Then we went right back to just..talking and going place and doing nothing in particular.

See, this book is pretty much exactly the Maori version of American Gods by Neil Gaiman. The Wind City is about a bunch of kind of fae, kind of god like people or creatures who are trying to learn how to live in a modern world with humans. They're cold and cruel and they do not have the same morals or emotions as us. And they manage to convince a few humans that they should work with them, to different goals. And the middle is just so dull. There are just so many parallels.

Yes, the ending was actually almost worth it. It was over really quickly, and I'm not quite satisfied with parts of it. Yet, it fit. I went from crushing boredom to interested again within a few paragraphs. It made that change quickly, and I really enjoyed the direction it took. I just feel like this book could have easily been half the length. ( )

Set in present-day Wellington, New Zealand, this book is about two people who learn that the world is not what they think it is.

Saint is a destitute, loser type. On the bus, one day, he sees a very strange woman with straight white hair named Hinewai. Saint is the only one who can see her. She tells him that beings from Maori legend, that go under the general name of iwi atua, are coming to Wellington, some with violent intentions toward humans. Saint can't help but think that he is losing his mind, until his roommate (who he calls The Flatmate) turns into a large, hairy, carnivorous creature who almost makes Saint his next meal. Saint meets an ethereal being named Noah, who convinces him that the rest of the iwi atua are just mindless creatures who don't deserve to live.

Tony is a female boat owner who runs one of those see-the-dolphins tourist boats. One day, her boat is deliberately sunk by Hinewai, who tells Tony that she is actually a type of iwi atua, called a toniwha (a type of large lizard that can swim underwater). Tony is surprised when she actually transforms into a toniwha. Hinewai is upset because, in Maori folklore, she has only a minor role in someone else's tale, but she doesn't have her own tale. Tony figures that the first step in getting Hinewai her own tale is to take her to some of the bars and restaurants in Wellington, where she might meet her True Love. They run into Saint, who learns, to his shock, that those iwi atua that he has been killing, by the hundreds, really are intelligent beings. Many of the surviving iwi atua would like to make Saint pay for what he has done, slowly and painfully. Can Tony keep Saint alive, and prevent a war between humans and the iwi atua?

This is a gem of a story. Considering that it is the author's debut novel (she was only nineteen years old when it was published) brings it to the level of Wow. It is well-written from start to finish, and it is highly recommended. ( )