Published in 2025, Red City is the adult fiction debut from Marie Lu, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of acclaimed young adult series such as Legend and The Young Elites. Drawing on her own background as an immigrant from China, Lu crafts a story about two teenagers in an alternate Los Angeles who are unknowingly recruited into rival alchemical crime syndicates. Sam Lang, the daughter of a poor single mother, is drawn into the powerful Grand Central syndicate in a desperate bid for a better life. Her childhood friend, Ari Rathod, an immigrant from India, is conscripted by the opposing Lumines syndicate to provide for his family back home. As their secret lives and warring allegiances force them apart, their deep bond is tested by the violent world they now inhabit.

The novel blends the genres of urban fantasy and crime thriller, depicting a world where alchemy is a corporate-criminal enterprise and the primary commodity is “sand,” a drug that offers a shortcut to perfection. This premise allows the novel to explore themes of The Pernicious Illusion of Meritocracy, Weaponized Loyalty as a Tool of Power, and The Inescapable Past and the Illusion of Reinvention. In this gritty setting, magical abilities come with a spiritual cost, and feuding syndicates function like powerful mob families, engaging in turf wars and brutal interrogations to maintain control over the lucrative global market for self-optimization.

This guide refers to the 2025 Tor Publishing Group first edition.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide contain depictions of graphic violence, physical abuse, emotional abuse, child abuse, sexual content, sexual violence and harassment, substance use, death by suicide, illness or death, and cursing.

Plot Summary

As a child in Angel City, Sam Lang finds beauty in her modest life with her mother, Connie Sun, who works long hours at a Chinese restaurant. In seventh grade, Sam’s world changes when she witnesses two men from an alchemy syndicate called Lumines at the restaurant. One man transmutes a fork into a spoon, and Sam overhears them discussing alchemy and a powerful woman named Diamond Taylor. Later, Sam’s mother finds her online search history about alchemy and, in a rage, destroys Sam’s beloved stuffed animal, Rabbit, forbidding her from ever looking into the subject again. The phrase Sam overheard, “changing something into something more desirable” (7), plants a seed of ambition in her.

In Sam’s class is Ari Rathod, a quiet boy who envies her ability to go unnoticed. A flashback reveals Ari’s past in Surat, Gujarat, India, where he was recruited by Rudra Mahajan, a Lumines alchemist. Rudra brought Ari to Angel City for a rigorous alchemy education, separating him from his family but sending them a stipend. Isolated and homesick, Ari finds his first friend in Sam. They begin exchanging notes and letters, forming a close bond over the next two years, though they never share the secrets of their personal lives.

Ari’s training intensifies. He learns that alchemy requires sacrificing a fragment of one’s soul and that alchemists adopt historical “attributions.” Driven to support his family, he becomes a dedicated student alongside his talented peer, Dominique. Meanwhile, Sam and Ari’s friendship deepens. During a rainstorm in their high school library, Ari traces the alchemical symbol for gold on Sam’s palm, telling her it means “perfection.” Shortly after, a gas explosion at the restaurant severely injures Connie, leaving her and Sam financially destitute and facing eviction. Desperate, Sam has a dream about Diamond Taylor and resolves to seek her help at the Odyssey Theatre.

Sam sneaks into a premiere and follows Diamond and her son, Will Taylor, into an alley. She overhears their discussion of syndicate business and a substance called “sand.” When Will detects her, he uses alchemy to create a gun from a brick wall. As he is about to kill her, Sam demonstrates her perfect memory by reciting their conversation verbatim. Impressed, Diamond offers her an opportunity with Grand Central. At the same time, Ari endures weeks of torturous training under Rudra and finally performs his first successful transmutation. Will takes Sam to the Grand Central estate, Red City, and explains that his father discovered the philosopher’s stone, which his mother engineered into sand, a performance-enhancing drug. At the alchemist training facility, the Observatory, Will gives Sam sand and tests her. She passes an impossible test, identifying elements by touch while blindfolded, and is offered a lucrative position.

Ari excels in his training, becoming a skilled bioalchemist, but he also learns the lethal stakes of his new life when a fellow student, Zan, disappears after leaking secrets. Sam’s new salary transforms her and her mother’s lives, but Connie grows suspicious. Sam feels unchallenged at the Observatory and confronts Will, who dismisses her. To prove herself, she attempts a forbidden transmutation and is attacked by a classmate, Nicolas. She instinctively retaliates, severely burning his neck. Will then reveals that Lumines was responsible for the restaurant explosion that injured Connie. To cement her loyalty and demonstrate Grand Central’s methods, he then forces Sam to torture a traitor in the estate’s “Confession Room,” establishing her role as a polemist, or combat alchemist.

Five years pass. Ari, now 19, is a key Lumines negotiator with the attribution (or code name) “Shakespeare.” Sam, 20, is initiated into Grand Central as “Mozart.” They meet one last time at a secret beach before graduating high school, where Ari tells her he is leaving the city. They part, each unaware of the other’s secret life.

A flashback reveals Connie’s past working at a Lumines factory, where her supervisor, Maclan, sexually assaulted her, using alchemy to trap her in his office. This trauma is the source of her fear of alchemy. In the present, tensions between the syndicates escalate. Alexander Reed, the head of Lumines, chooses Ari as his successor over Rudra. Reed then orders Ari to help assassinate Will Taylor at a meeting. Sam accompanies Will, and at the hotel, she and Ari see each other and realize they are on opposing sides. The meeting is an ambush, and Will is seriously wounded. Sam helps him escape to a safe house run by an alchiatrist, Dr. Amerson (attribution “Demeter”). Ari confronts Sam during the escape but lets her go, telling her to meet him at their secret beach on the next full moon.

In retaliation, Diamond orders Sam and a ruthless polemist, Sebastian (“Hades”), to kill the Lumines members involved. They murder Maclan and abduct another, Kane Zhukov, whom Diamond personally executes. Sam receives a $1 million bonus, but the blood money deepens her trauma and leads to a psychological crisis. Lumines retaliates by killing Ashley Hanover, Diamond’s trusted assistant. Enraged, Diamond breaks the truce protecting philosophers and orders Sam to assassinate Lumines’s top philosopher, Dominique St. Clair, at a conference at Oxford. There, Sam sees Ari with Dominique. She carries out the hit, killing Dominique. Afterward, Sam and Will begin a sexual relationship, during which he reveals his traumatic childhood as a test subject for sand. Upon returning to Angel City, Sam has an intense argument with her mother, who has discovered her lies. Her mother begs for a meeting, a call Will overhears.

Connie, realizing Sam is an alchemist and in grave danger, plans for them to flee to China. Before she can act, Will murders her. A police detective, Edward Sinclair, provides Sam with suppressed surveillance footage of the murder. Devastated and betrayed, Sam makes a secret deal with Sinclair to provide evidence against Grand Central in exchange for immunity and help saving Ari. She goes to the secret beach to meet Ari, intending to lead him into a Grand Central trap. Ari reveals that Lumines had only planned to kidnap her mother to coerce Sam, not kill her. He confesses his love for her just as an ambush by both syndicates erupts. In the ensuing battle, Will’s forces capture Ari.

Will tortures Ari for information. Sam is sent to tend to his wounds, where he confirms Will killed her mother. They confess their feelings and share a kiss, and Sam reveals a plan to free him. However, Will discovers her betrayal. He and Sebastian torture Sam and leave her for dead. Secretly conflicted, Will alerts Dr. Amerson, who finds and saves Sam, but Sebastian later kills Demeter for this act. At the prisoner exchange, Diamond betrays Lumines, and the police raid the estate. In the chaos, Rudra kills Alexander Reed, seizing control of Lumines. Sam finds Ari and guides him to an escape tunnel, but they are confronted by Will. They fight, and Sam impales Will with a transmuted gold spike. She convinces Ari to escape alone while she stays behind to be arrested, fulfilling her deal with the police.

In her prison cell, Diamond Taylor dies. Weeks later, Sam is released and becomes a police informant tasked with dismantling the syndicates from within. Sebastian, now allied with the Belle Epoque syndicate, offers her a leadership role in the remnants of Grand Central, which requires her to move to Londinium. She accepts. Will’s body is never found. In Gotham, Ari, now free from Lumines, learns that his family is safe. He decides to go to Londinium to find Sam.