Half City (2026) is a fantasy novel by Kate Golden and the first installment in the Harker Academy series. Golden is a USA Today bestselling author known for her popular romantasy trilogy, the Sacred Stones. Half City blends popular subgenres, combining the character-driven romance of romantasy with the gritty metropolitan setting of urban fantasy and the moody atmosphere of dark academia. The novel follows Vivienne “Viv” Abbot, a young museum assistant in the divided metropolis of Astera who leads a secret second life as a demon hunter. Her solitary existence, driven by a need to avenge her father’s murder, is upended when a powerful demon named Reid Graveheart offers her a place at Harker Academy for Deviant Defense, a secret college that might hold the key to her family’s past.

Viv’s journey explores themes of duty, identity, and community. Her secret identity as an aeon, a hunter cursed with a compulsive bloodlust, forces her to confront the theme of Accepting a Monstrous Self. This internal conflict isolates her from her friends and family, making Harker Academy an important turning point where she begins to build connections that underscore the theme of Found Family Over Blood Ties. Author Kate Golden has noted that Viv’s struggle with her dual identity was influenced by her own experience leading a “double life” while transitioning into a full-time writer. As Viv navigates this new world of hunters and institutional secrets, she must reconcile her innate desire for violence with The Weight of a Hunter’s Duty, a moral responsibility to protect humanity from the supernatural creatures that secretly inhabit her city.

This guide refers to the 2026 Ace Books first edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain descriptions of graphic violence, cursing, substance use, sexual content, emotional abuse, and death.

Plot Summary

Vivienne “Viv” Abbot lives a double life in the city of Astera, nicknamed the Half City for the massive crevasse that divides it. By day, she is a beleaguered assistant to her sister-in-law Fiona at the prestigious Windsor Museum, navigating a strained relationship with her district attorney mother, Beatrice, and dating a man she dislikes, James Pine, to please her. By night, she is a hunter, a type of lymantrian (a being with a soul and nonhuman abilities) who secretly slays deviants, monstrous creatures from the underworld. Viv is a rare type of hunter called an aeon, gifted with a second sight to sense deviants but cursed with a compulsive bloodlust to kill them—a trait she inherited from her father, who was murdered by a demonic cabal called the Brood. While rushing to her best friend Penny Pine’s birthday dinner, Viv senses a demon on the subway stalking a mother and her children. Using her father’s silver daggers, she kills the creature, breaking one of the blades in the process. Haunted by her inability to balance her two lives, she leaves the party to hunt, only to be confronted by a handsome and powerful Brood demon named Reid Graveheart. He reveals he saw her on the subway and, instead of killing her when she unsuccessfully attacks him, offers her admission to Harker Academy for Deviant Defense, a secret college for hunters. He gives her an ancient coin and tells her to use it on a broken ticket machine at the Windsor.

Viv is skeptical until she discovers a locket among her father’s belongings, inscribed with “HARKER BOUND, FALL 1992,” proving he attended the school. Using the coin, she enters a gateway to the sprawling, ancient Harker campus. At orientation, she feels like an outcast among hundreds of other hunters. She meets the earnest Peter Roydon and his intense cousin Kitty Briggs, and is introduced to the school’s intimidating warlock dean, Edgar Driscoll, whose motto is “[s]ave lives. Don’t turn. Don’t die” (51). Deciding to stay, Viv moves into a dorm with the vivacious Sophia Valentine and befriends Sophia’s “platonic life partner” (65), Elliot Thompson. She attends classes, learning about the complex hierarchies of deviants and lymantrians, and spars with her new friends. Her animosity toward Reid, a combat instructor, intensifies after he easily defeats her in training and excludes her from his elite Field Training unit, claiming she fights with her heart instead of her head. The tenuous safety of the campus is shattered when wraiths attack the first-year dorm, an event that coincides with the mysterious disappearance of Kitty Briggs, who leaves behind a suspicious note claiming she has dropped out. Reid relents and allows Viv to join Field Training, where she takes out a vampire who injects her with Valium. On the train ride back to Harker, Viv tells Reid she doesn’t like him because the Brood killed her father. They open up to each other, and Viv takes a picture of him smiling.

A week later, a lacrosse game is attacked by zombies reanimated through a dark spell cast on the Harker cemetery. Two students are killed in the chaos. Viv and Sophia help Dean Driscoll contain the threat by felling a large oak tree to block the cemetery gates. During the mayhem, Viv’s daggers mysteriously overheat and glow. Peter later explains they are part of a rare three-dagger aeon set; the third, the Aeon’s Dagger, was on display in the armory. They discover the dagger is now missing, and the armory log claims Kitty checked it out on the night of the zombie attack—days after she had already vanished. Using Reid’s stolen key card, the friends sneak into the school’s archives. They learn that the ingredients for a syrabraxa—the most powerful form of dark magic—include the melted alloy of an Aeon’s Dagger, a rare celestial bloom called asphodel, and an aeon’s blood, which Viv later learns is actually a living aeon host. Viv recruits Reid for help, and, after a passionate kiss in his cottage, their investigation leads them to a secret garden in the planetarium where the asphodels are grown, only to find some have been stolen. Despite the serious nature of their investigation, Viv and Reid are increasingly drawn to each other and are nearly intimate in the planetarium. They also find a bag of poppy bearing the white antler logo of a notorious South of the Chasm nightclub, Fever Dream. Just then, they learn another student, Lyra Roth, has been violently abducted from her dorm. Viv realizes Kitty and Lyra, both suspected aeons, were targeted for the spell.

After promising Reid that she won’t go to Fever Dream, Viv, Sophia, and Penny visit the club, where Viv has a near-lethal encounter with the club owner Deacon, whom she learns is Reid’s brother when he arrives to protect her. Viv and Reid’s relationship deepens, culminating in a passionate night at the Windsor. There, Viv’s sister-in-law Fiona—who is secretly Professor Lisette, a shifter leading a double life—reveals an important detail about Viv’s father’s death: He had carved the number “26” into his hand before he died. Viv races back to Harker and shows Reid and Lisette a photograph of her father’s championship lacrosse team, realizing with horror that his teammate, number 26, was Edgar Driscoll. The dean has been a traitor all along, working for the High Thane. Driscoll kidnaps Penny to lure Viv to the same docks where her father was murdered. Reid fights off a horde of Brood demons while Viv frees Penny, but Viv is captured in her place. Driscoll and the High Thane’s son, Finn, perform a ritual, excruciatingly imbuing the syrabraxa into Viv’s back, making her the living host for the spell that will reopen the Chasm.

Reid bursts in, revealing a history with Finn, and sacrifices himself to allow Viv to escape. Viv confronts Driscoll, who is about to kill Penny, and fatally stabs him. Before he dies, Driscoll confesses he killed her father out of jealousy and reveals the syrabraxa can only be removed by the witch who cast it. He tries to tell her something about Reid, but dies before he can finish speaking. With Driscoll dead, Viv is permanently bonded to the spell. Badly wounded and hunted by the High Thane’s forces, Viv sends Penny to safety and seeks help to save Reid at the one place she might find it: Fever Dream. There, she confronts its owner, Deacon. Deacon is about to kill her for trespassing, but stops when he sees the glowing mark of the syrabraxa on her back. He drags her inside the club as the book ends.