City on Fire

The story moved along quickly. There were a lot of characters and I had trouble at first keeping track of them. My favorite was Cassie but I didn't get to spend enough time with her. I never developed much emotional attachment to any of the characters; had I cared more for or about them this would've rated higher for me.

I don't think I've ever read a mob fiction novel, and City on Fire isn't making me want to read another. If it wasn't a retelling of The Iliad, I probably would have abandoned the book for the casual racist remarks of the characters. And I get it, it's a war between an Italian crime family and an Irish crime family in the late 80s, there's going to be racism, but I was still uneasy reading it. But it being based on the Iliad made a little side game out of drawing parallels between the poem and this novel. Some of it was a little too on the nose. The Trojan Horse, for instance. Emphasis on the horse.