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  • Location: Los Angeles

Red City

Red City

Why a Booktrail?

2025: A glittering yet dark, alternate, present-day Los Angeles.

  • ISBN: 978-1035079414
  • Genre: Fantasy/Sci Fi

What you need to know before your trail

Alchemy is the hidden art of transformation, an exclusive power wielded by crime syndicates who market it to the world’s elite in the form of sand – a drug that enhances those who take it into a more perfect version of themselves: more beautiful, more charismatic, simply more.

Among the gleaming skyscrapers and rolling foothills of Angel City, alchemy is controlled by two rival syndicates. For years, Grand Central and Lumines have been balanced on a razor’s edge between polite negotiation and outright violence. But when two childhood friends step into that delicate equation, the city – and the paths of their lives – will be irrevocably transformed.

The daughter of a poor single mother, Sam would do anything to claw her way into the ranks of Grand Central in search of a better life. Plucked away from his family as a boy to become a Lumines apprentice, Ari is one of the syndicates’ brightest rising stars. Once, they might have loved each other. But as the two alchemists face off from opposite sides of an ever-escalating conflict, ambition becomes power, loyalty becomes lies, and no transformation may be perfect enough for them both to survive the coming war.

Locations

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Travel Guide

Angel City

The city evoked in the story is a dystopian version of LA. As you can imagine, there are not many real site or places in the novel but there are a few! This is not the Los Angeles you might know and recognise – it’s Angel City. A city you will never forget…

Angel City is gritty, dangerous, and layered with syndicate tensions.

BookTrail Boarding Pass: Red City

Destination/location: Los Angeles/ Angel City  Author/guide:  Marie Lu  Departure Time: 2025

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