The Walled City by Ryan Graudin

I’ve always been fascinated by Kowloon’s Walled City in Hong Kong, with it being a place where the rules, culture and daily way of life are vastly different from those just across the road. I remember hearing a story that it took the mailman years to learn the address system and find his way around and consequently they kept the same guy doing the job until it was torn down.

I was also drawn to this book because of the cover art and the simple tag. Run Fast. Trust No One. Always Carry Your Knife. I was hoping this would be a raw, sleek, exciting, no frills story and that’s exactly what I got. Like the city itself the action is so tightly packed you barely room for a breath, yet most of it is highly relatable. We’ve all been scared, we’ve all been chased and we’ve all had to run so it’s easy to imagine yourself there.

We start with one of our characters Jin Ling, hungry and tired but one of the fastest runners in the city. She is searching for her sister Mei Yee, who was sold into prostitution by their abusive father. Living in the guise of a boy she is spotted running by a boy called Dai who has his own agenda and needs someone with her skills. He is sitting on an 18-day deadline and trying to form a plan; his reasons and objectives are unknown but he needs a runner, someone small, fast and gutsy to help him succeed.

I read this over a couple of hours and was not expecting to get so quickly sucked into the concerns of our trio but I was quite quickly completely invested in their relationships with each other and seeing them connect the dots. I enjoyed the way they treated each other and it was nice to see people who had been through the harshest of times willing to go out on a limb for another person in the name of human decency.

The conclusion is frenetic and breathtaking and makes it, from beginning to end, a crazy good book.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with a copy to review.