Reader’s Review: Toxic Heart

This is the second book of the Mystic City series, and while I would have liked to have read the first book, not having done so was not a detriment.  This book stands alone perfectly. I am not sure if one could label this a dystopian novel, but there are dystopian elements present. There is a segment of the society that is mystic. The mystics look and act like “normal” humans, but as their name implies, they have mystic powers.  Somehow these mystics have been exploited to, basically, serve the wealthy. OK, as I write this, perhaps it would be better to read these books in order…

Perhaps the layout of the city is fully explained in Theo Lawrence’s first novel, Mystic City, but what I gathered is; Manhattan got too crowded and dirty, so the Aerie Class had a city built on top of / above the original city, Manhattan.  What we’re left with is a striated city, with the elite on top, and the poor and mystics living below.

Manhattan is embroiled in a war, with the mystics rebelling against the elite.  Aria, an elite-born young woman, fell in love with Hunter, the son of a powerful mystic. Huh… now that I think about it, the first book must read a lot like Romeo and Juliet.  Spoken about in Toxic Heart, is their love, the opposition of her parents, the brain-cleaning to which Aria was subjected (in order to forget Hunter).  At the end of Mystic City Aria renounces her family and decides to live among the mystics.

Toxic Heart opens with Aria in hiding, separated from Hunter, who is now leading the mystics’ cause after the assassination of his mother.  After her first hide-out is brutally raided, Aria is back on the run, dependent on the mystics to help her hide.  Aria comes to believe that the best course of action would be to call a truce between the warring factions.  The question is: how can she achieve this while her family and friends are brutally fighting each other?

• Posted by Karin Mendez