Title: City of Others
Author: Jared Poon
My Rating: 2 of 5 stars
Genre: Urban Fantasy, LGBTQ+
Category: Novel
Published: January 2026
Format: eBook
Date Started: February 2, 2026
Date finished: February 7, 2026
Summary:
The story follows Benjamin Toh, a meticulously organized middle manager for a highly bureaucratized government agency in Singapore called DEUS (Division for Engagement of Unusual Stakeholders). His team’s daily job is to manage, catalog, and hide the city’s secret supernatural entities, known as the “Others,” to prevent the public from panicking.
When an entire block of public housing apartments completely glitches out of existence, Ben and his understaffed team are forced to dive deep into the magical shadow markets to find out what happened. While looking for the cause of the glitch, they also ended up handling day-to-day paranormal office crises, including a stubborn ghost cat that refused to be exorcised.
My Thoughts:
Initially, I logged this as a lukewarm three-star read immediately after finishing it. However, the total evaporation of the plot from my memory in the weeks since has forced me to recalculate the rating down to a two. Interestingly, the drop had nothing to do with the actual concept of the story.
What led me to bring the rating down was Poon’s prose. When I read, I don’t usually focus too much on the style. I think certain style fits a certain mood. Poon’s, however, was a bit hard to get into. The dialogue and narrative voice didn’t feel natural; instead, the style felt heavily overdone, as if every sentence was trying too hard to force a specific vibe rather than letting the story breathe. Because the execution felt so engineered and rigid, it created a constant barrier to immersion. Instead of being pulled into a vibrant supernatural Singapore, I was entirely too aware of the writing itself. Without natural flow or narrative friction, the characters and the setting ultimately flattened into a forgettable blur.
Recommended for:
· Fans of Cozy, Low-Stakes Urban Fantasy: If you prefer light, quick paranormal workplace stories where problems are solved neatly and the tone remains strictly formulaic, this might hit the spot.
· Readers Interested in Singaporean Settings: It offers a unique, highly structured geographical backdrop for supernatural bureaucracy, even if the execution remains surface-level.
From My Corner of the Universe 
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