Don Winslow beautifully expands his hauntingly dark crime saga with a thriller that packs all sorts of punches. You’re going to need a strong stomach for this one.
City of Dreams picks up where City on Fire ended, with our protagonist Danny Ryan on the run from the mafia and the cops after a heist gone wrong. Negotiating a truce between him and all those after him for the sake of protecting his young son, he tries to go legit in the world of Hollywood. But that’s the funny thing about crime, once it settles its hooks in, it follows you around. Soon, Danny finds himself in love again, up against new foes, and facing new challenges that define a new era in his life of pain and chaos.
Winslow writes his characters with a heavy hand of suffering and flaws that reflect the best and worst of humanity. His descriptions have a magical quality to them as every chapter comes to life in vivid brushstrokes of conflicting emotions and terrifying realizations. You genuinely start to feel for the characters as Winslow puts them through the worst situations possible, making you root for them instinctively with a passionate stake in finding out what happens to them. City of Dreams is more of a character-driven narrative that progresses by emphasizing Ryan’s transformative journey into a man we’d only seen glimpses of in the first book.
The locations in City of Dreams take on lives and personalities of their own, from dusty and anxious motel rooms to the equally anxiety-inducing but also exotic darkness of Hollywood-esque landscapes with dark secrets brewing in the shadows. You can’t help but feel the palpable energy of the intense scenes in iconic backdrops, sometimes so much so that it takes a while to take it all in.
What Don Winslow has so masterfully done is differentiate City of Dreams from City on Fire in terms of tone, setting, and characters while maintaining the vibrancy of intense writing that is the trademark of a genuine Winslow. One can only wonder what trouble he has cooked up in his next and final thriller. If only time could move faster.
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