Thanks to the publisher for an ARC.

The Splendid City had all the potential to be a new favourite book of mine but sadly that was not to be.

The setting and characters intrigued me initially - after all, there's nothing like a gun-toting, fanny-pack-wearing cat - but with certain plot revelations about Stan in the book's middle section I struggled to enjoy reading about him. The setting was interesting, as was the system of witchcraft used. The plot was resolved too easily and left me unsatisfied.

Overall I feel I would have enjoyed this book more if I hadn't gotten my hopes up when reading the first two or three chapters, so I accept that it's still a decent book, but it won't be the first book I recommend.

What a fun exciting read. I loved this book. It was long but I finished in 2 days. I couldn't put it down. It had everything I want in a story. Loved the main characters. This is also a scary story of what very well could happen in our world. A

This book gave me "Don't Look Up (the movie) but with witches" vibes. So if you liked that movie you should check it out. I didn't like either.

i wasn't a huge fan of the dialogue. it felt kind of basic and silly at some points. the first chapter kind of set off to a bad start dialogue wise so it was hard to keep going. i'm really disappointed i didn't like it.

The Splendid City

The fact that one of the characters in this book was a cat meant that there was a high chance I was going to enjoy this story. But it went above and beyond my expectations!

This was one of the best first pages that I have ever read. So humorous and immediately pulled me in. It is an absurd, satirical novel with many strange elements that work beautifully together.

A philosophically indifferent, arrogant cat with a very sweet tooth was a fantastic concept for a character and I loved each of his chapters and interactions with other characters as well as his environment.

The two mysteries did keep the story interesting and gave the reader some type of purpose.

The only thing I would have liked was more of an emotional attachment to Eleanor. I liked the cat’s chapters and his character was very strong but I felt that I did not care much whether Eleanor succeeded with her mission. Also, the middle part was a little slow.

But apart from that, this was a witty, charming little story that would appeal to many different types of people.

this was such a treat of book. it took me a good 48 hours to finish it and i have nothing more to say that this is such a very spontaneous and creative story! love how random it gets sometimes. the backstory of the main characters is so good. i really recommend it to those who are looking for not so serious or deep fiction book. karen heuler did a splendid job with this book.

I feel so disappointed I loved the sound of this book, a talking cat, what's not to like ! but unfortunately ,I kept thinking I would start to enjoy it, but I just didn't.it was a bit silly, and didn't grab me .Really sorry to say.

Well, there's a reason cats don't talk.

We have our two main characters, Eleanor and Stan, who find themselves having to live together.
Eleanor- is a witch who is recruited to help solve a missing person case.
Stan- is a talking cat with a love for fish tacos and beer.

I quite liked the world. It's a mix of a dystopian and some urban fantasy, I felt the author did a good job with the world, but she spent a lot of time on the world and not much on the characters.

The writing was Idk, basic, and didn't really pull me into the story and the way the timeline was set up was weird. The book was split into three parts and part one ends in a "cliff-hanger" if you will and then all of part two is one long flashback creating background between Eleanor, Stan, and the witches. It just felt like a giant info dump in the middle of the book, right after the plot started picking up and the conflict was resolved with no problem in the last 25%. Overall it wasn't for me.

Thank you to Netgalley and Angry Robot Books for the ARC.

The most surreal fantasy book I didn't know I needed! The Splendid City captures the bizarre vibe of 2020-2022, adds a deranged talking cat and some witches, and cranks it up to 11. Oddly soothing.

This was a really surreal but fun read. It was well written with well developed characters and an intriguing storyline and good worldbuilding.
I really liked the dual narrative that was half from a witch and half from a talking cat.
A very strange but enjoyable read.

I received a copy of this book for a free and unbiased opinion.
This book was not what I expected but in a fun and interesting way.
I thought this would be straightforward urban fantasy featuring an underlying mystery that would be solved by the end of the book by the protagonist. But this book was so much more. My own perhaps inaccurate description would be a blend of urban fantasy, satire with feminist slant but with a dose of surreal humour.
The world-building is a fascinating mix of dystopia and quirky magic- with all-knowing disembodied heads and nougat that fly on butterfly wings. The book is set in an alternative ( or future, depending on how pessimistic you feel ) USA, where some cities have declared independence and have their own rules. Liberty is one such city with a President who is at the same hated and loved at the same and massive shortage of water.
The book is told from Eleanor, a white witch and Stan, a talking cat, points of view. Both the characters are difficult to like at the start. Eleanor has an interesting arc and I found myself rooting for her by the end. Unfortunately, Stan who was an awful person before he was transformed into a cat by Eleanor ( I thought a completely reasonable action) continues to be a completely awful cat-person.
The author has written a thought-provoking satire about several current socio-political issues but I did enjoy the conclusion of the main plot of the missing witch and her connection to the water shortage.

Perfect for fans of
I get a strong Terry Pratchett vibe when reading this book
Content warning
Sexual harassment, stalking, misogyny, racism

Dystopian reality but make it funny - or attempt to. That's pretty much how I'd sum up this book. I had to force myself to keep reading in the beginning because the first third of the book didn't gel with me at all. I didn't find it funny, I found it confusing, over the top, strange, and like another reviewer said - I had to keep referring back to the blurb. Stan the cat is utterly weird and unlikeable and while I understand he's supposed to represent an archetype in this parallel setting of today's polarized society, it didn't work for me at all. At least not until about halfway through the book. We start off in the country/state of Liberty which is really just Texas after they've seceded (although we don't find this out till later) where Eleanor the witch and Stan the cat have traveled from New York so they can look for another missing witch. The whole setup is super confusing, the parallels to Trump's America, the far-right, fake news, disinformation, "nice guys", twitter, surveillance, etc. fall into a category of both being too absurd and not absurd enough to be funny, on-the-nose but almost too much so and yet not enough to land. Once the book jumps back in time to New York and we get the backstory and setup of the plot things start making more sense, it becomes easier and more interesting to read, and I started liking the book more. It ended up having some good insights and made some on-the-nose observations that actually worked for me but it took half the book to get there. And by that time, I was mostly reading it to see if maybe by the end, I'd have a huge "aha" moment and suddenly "get" this book. That never did happen, unfortunately. Since I read an eArc from NetGalley, it could be that the final version shifts some things around and rework the pacing and setup in the beginning to make it more readable. Still, I don't think I'll be buying this book and re-reading it to find out.

This didn't work for me from the very first page, unfortunately. The vibe was much more surreal than the urban fantasy I was expecting, and the flavour of the humour is very much Not For Me. It's one thing for your ex-boyfriend-turned-cat to be a horrible jerk, and another for him to be shooting people.

Also, without the blurb, I would have been completely lost - The Splendid City opens in what feels like the middle of the story; there's very much a sense of Much Has Happened before you opened the book. That can be a really good thing, but here it made me feel disorientated and confused, the way you feel when you accidentally skip a chapter on your e-reader and wonder what the hell is going on now. I don't think it's great when the blurb is needed to give the reader context.

That being said, I did massively appreciate the outside-the-box-ness of Heuler's imagination and creativity. But the mix of whimsy and terrible (I mean terrible as in, shooting people/totalitarian governments/etc, not terrible as in bad-writing) just isn't my thing. I won't be surprised if it ends up getting a lot of love from the reading community as a whole, though.