The City in the Middle of the Night in Beyond Reality

Feb 17, 2019 Bradley rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2019-shelf, sci-fi, transhumanism, worldbuilding-sf

I'm caught in gravity's tug. I'm stuck between two massive bodies forever tidally locked. ; ;

You know those books that have that certain something that could make them truly great but then they stumble because of the characters within them?

Yeah. This is one of those novels. I can see and appreciate where the author is trying to go here with the characters so full of themselves, their ideals, or their misunderstandings of one another. It fits so nicely with the greater misunderstandings between t I'm caught in gravity's tug. I'm stuck between two massive bodies forever tidally locked. ; ;

You know those books that have that certain something that could make them truly great but then they stumble because of the characters within them?

Yeah. This is one of those novels. I can see and appreciate where the author is trying to go here with the characters so full of themselves, their ideals, or their misunderstandings of one another. It fits so nicely with the greater misunderstandings between the Gelids and humanity... but I have to say that the fundamental concept here is much, much easier to take than the execution.

The bad part of this novel:

Every time I wanted to find some truly great aspect of personality or plot push to latch my hopes on, I was faced with regular people doing stupid things for regular stupid reasons, muddying the waters and generally being jerks to one another. I didn't particularly like any of the main characters except, perhaps, Mouth.

And then the good:

Everything else!

This is the definition of uneven for me. I can appreciate, intellectually, what is going on, but when you can't hang your consciousness on great characters to move you along a MUCH better worldbuilding experience, it becomes something of a drag. In fact, I became so invested in the plethora of great ideas that I kept re-writing the book in my own mind to fly with them in new ways, extending dichotomy between the hurting human city and the alien, maligned Gelids living everywhere in the dark, being tentacular monsters, but also BETTER PEOPLE than those inside the human habitations. :)

It's not just that, though. I loved the tidally locked planet, all the darkness and the need for other perceptions, the communication through tentacles, the transformations, the culture, and everything else about the SFnal experience.

I FELT like this novel could have been one of the greats. It certainly has all the deep explorations of culture, aliens, and setting, giving us a very dark look at a far-future humanity with a lot more to think about than is generally the case. Classic SF always did a pretty good job of this but sometimes a novel or two drills down DEEPER. And this is one.

So I'm caught between a solid 3-star read for characters modified by a cool mirroring with the theme and a very solid 5 star SFnal novel. ; ;

This isn't much like All the Birds in the Sky, alas, but I'm very curious to see what she'll come up with next. ...more

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May 01, 2019 Soo rated it liked it

Shelves: reviewed, audiobook

Mini-Review:

Reluctant Overall 3 Stars

3 Stars for Narration by Two Narrators
4 Stars for Characters
1 Star for Naming of Creatures (Use of Earth names for Aliens/Critters was confusing.)
3 Stars for Concepts
1.5 Star for Execution of Concepts
1 Star for Non-existent Ending

There were moments of beautiful writing that really captured a character or the setting but they were drowned in big themes that were suppose to be a big part of the story but never really made a point of being a part of the story. T ...more

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Sep 07, 2020 Tomislav rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, fantasy

Charlie Jane Ander’s prior fantasy novel All the Birds in the Sky won the 2017 Nebula, and this new novel is a move in a different subgenre direction. A successful direction, as it won first place 2020 Locus Award for SF. For my part, I had not read CJA before.

A planetary romance, The City in the Middle of the Night is set on a tidally locked planet with an inhabitable strip around its horizon – dark in one direction, and intensely bright in the other. A few centuries ago, the ancestors of its h Charlie Jane Ander’s prior fantasy novel All the Birds in the Sky won the 2017 Nebula, and this new novel is a move in a different subgenre direction. A successful direction, as it won first place 2020 Locus Award for SF. For my part, I had not read CJA before.

A planetary romance, The City in the Middle of the Night is set on a tidally locked planet with an inhabitable strip around its horizon – dark in one direction, and intensely bright in the other. A few centuries ago, the ancestors of its human inhabitants arrived in a generation ship, put together by a smattering of surviving underground city-states on Earth. They now live mostly in two treacherously separated cities, having lost all contact with the Mothership, and in a condition of slowly declining technology and critical resources.

Several cover blurbs compare this to the works of Ursula LeGuin, and there are similarities. In the beginning, I was reminded of The Word for World is Forest, with human settlers not recognizing or respecting the native population. But later, the two cities of divergent culture (Xiosphant is a police state with high social conformity, and Argela is a free-for-all run by crime families) reminded me of The Dispossessed. Like LeGuin, there is a sprinkling of cultural mythology told along the way. Yet, I did not find the anthropological realism of those LeGuin works here, nor plausible scientific speculation. I once had a discussion with someone who believed that the difference between science fiction and fantasy was simply the tropes in which the same sort of story was told, and The City in the Middle of the Night bears that out. But I think the difference ought to be more than that. The biological implausibility and telepathy of the Gelet seems more like magical thinking for the sake of the plot. This is science fantasy, while LeGuin’s SF is social science fiction.

That said, I found the complex characters to be evolving and engaging in a way I enjoyed. Their relationships were of foremost concern. The texture of the two cities and several outside groups was well developed – for example, the Illyrian Parlour, with its trappings of Old Zagreb, triggered associations for me that may be more than the author intended, but I think I could love that place even if it weren’t Zagreb. This is a substantial story, but with a somewhat miraculous ending. ...more

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Jan 22, 2020 Cheryl marked it as xx-dnf-skim-reference

Shelves: okc

for Women of the Future
.... giving up p. 116. Too many members of that group, and too many of my friends, weren't impressed. I didn't like Anders' other book. Just too draining to read something that resembles a dystopia.

I did like one line and will check out the author's i09 (?) writings.
"Listen to yourself, hear your own footsteps, your breaths, your heartbeats, oh, how many rhythms you make as you come and go! you are an orchestra."

On to so many other hundreds of books. ...more

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