The City in the Middle of the Night

The narrative is told from two points of view. The first is that of a student, Sophie, who is expelled from school and nearly executed for what should be a minor infraction. The second point of view is that of Mouth's, the sole survivor of a pioneering family, now living as a smuggler. Sophie and Mouth's stories are personal ones. They have small parts in a much larger story, one of revolution. To me, this book reads like a pared down Dune but told from points of view of two of the supporting characters. And in place of Paul, there is a young woman. http://pussreboots.com/blog/2019/comm...

This book hits hard in the most unexpected ways. There are so many missed opportunities in the lives of each of the characters, that the narrative is suffused with heartbreak and the glimmers of what each person wishes could have happened. All these imperfect people running up against their own thwarted dreams but somehow carrying forward was heartbreaking and beautiful all at once. There are so many missed connections, false starts, and dead ends that it's almost surprising to think back on the plot and realize that A LOT does happen in the book. Anders has a delicate hand as she describes the structures of the human societies on this planet. We're light on specifics, and the descriptions tend to arise naturally in conversations between the characters, and are revealed through the movements of the individual characters as navigate their societies, which felt very natural and well-integrated in the story. I was left with a lot of questions, but feeling like a tourist or a newcomer to these worlds along with Sophie made a lot of sense. I remember and like this novel best for the vibe it evoked. wonder if the design of the world was driven by Ander's desire to create startling imagery. The vision of a narrow habitable band between blazing light and freezing darkness was so evocative, and placing the action setpieces so that they veer close to each deadly boundary was delicious and nerve wracking. At the same time there's something about the way the action is narrated that makes it feel like you're watching from 500 ft away. I like that.

Man, this was a tough one for me. I LOVED Anders’ debut, All the Birds in the Sky, and bought this, her follow-up, on that reputation alone. Anders is a master of world building, and that is by far the strongest aspect of this book, but I wasn’t as much a fan of the narrative here. When you boil it down, this book is about toxic relationships, but it’s also about people making stupid, frustrating decisions because they can’t get out of their own heads. For whatever reason, reading this felt like a bit of a slog, and I think it’s because I couldn’t stand the object of the main character’s affection, who was a terrible person that she pined after long past when it was reasonable. I’m still all-in on future Anders books, but this one wasn’t my jam.

I don't know exactly what to say about this book. It was ok. I didn't really believe all the world-building as science fiction, but it sorta works if you think of it as fantasy. There are a number of relatively unsympathetic characters. I got a little weary of Sophie's nearly unrelenting devotion to Bianca. And there was a lot of rambling around the planet to no real purpose. Honestly, toward the end (view spoiler)[ I think there's a case to be made that Sophie was drawn into worship of Cthulu and other Great Old Ones and transformed into one of their followers, and then heads out to convert the world. (hide spoiler)]. But I thought there were also some parallels to Octavia Butler's Lilith's Brood (aka Xenogenesis) trilogy, where humans have to adapt to become something somewhat other than only human in order to survive in the long term. So, ok. Rambling. Messy society, messy inter-personal relationships. It was ok.

This is somewhere between 4 and 5 stars for me, but it's closer to 5, so that's my score. Charlie Jane Anders is a force in sff. As one of the founders of io9, as a short fiction writer, and as a novelist, she's been one of the decades most important and influential voices in the genre. I was fortunate enough to read her previous novel, All The Birds In The Sky, before most people did. So I got be a cheerleader for it at an early stage. It really is an astounding novel, a melding of science fiction and fantasy as well as a discussion between science fiction and fantasy. It had some very dark moments, but also quite a bit of whimsy. This novel is entirely science fiction, and is quite dark. It was not an easy read (or listen, in this case). There's a part in the middle that's a bit slow, and most of the characters are incredibly flawed in very different ways, some of which made them a bit difficult to spend so much time with. But the story itself is brilliant. This is the story about what happens many years AFTER the generation ship gets to its destination, but it is informed by the untold story of that ship. It's a story about humanity, and how deeply fucked up we can be. It's about class and race and gender and privilege and about how intent isn't magic. It's a story about relationships, toxic and less toxic, and how they can from one to the other in both ways - though under rather extraordinary circumstances. Also, it has magnificent aliens. And, in the end, it's a story about hope and community.

DNF’d after around 2 hours into the audiobook. I found it incredibly boring. Probably I just done jive with the author. I didn’t like All the birds in the sky either.

There’s some interesting concepts and topics in this book, but I really struggle when the main character continuous makes the same bad mistake, especially out of some sense of love or affection.

Hello new SFF book that I will be recommending to all my friends who read SFF forever. The worldbuilding in this book is everything!! A breath of fresh air!!

2.5 stars. There's a really good story in here, but it's crippled by poor pacing and cramming in too many ideas that remain insufficiently explored by the end, most notably abusive relationships.

I dunno y’all. This is a book of great starts and disappointing follow-throughs. I genuinely couldn’t quite figure out what this was supposed to be. At first i thought it was a group heist, but the group aspect doesn’t pick up until about 60% in- when the characters begin to finally enjoy their time together (also just characters...spending time together). Also the heist gets teased but...doesn’t really happen? It starts off as a solid idea that fizzles. And then i thought maybe it might be more of a space opera because we didn't seem to be focusing on one plot line (albeit on a singular planet) but uhhhh, there’s not enough of a through-plot to support the lack of plots for the smaller missions. And the smaller plots (the abundance of them) seem to start and end with each chapter. Then I thought maybe it's a dystopian? But there's no real sense of rebellion. It’s got semi-dystopian overtones but no real follow through. And zero of the intrigue. So we ended up being on another planet with some weak call-backs to prior human civilization but nothing to really tie it all together. In the end I'd say this is a bunch of tropes and concepts in trench coat saying they're a plot. The atmosphere itself has a good foundation for an exciting story, but every time there was an opening for a cool direction within the atmosphere, it felt like the lesser of exciting options was taken. There is a broad cast of characters, but sadly there was really only one i cared to follow. And not one of the cast has a rich character arc. They’re all pretty...one dimensional. At the end of the day I’m just not quite sure what the goal of this book was. It attempts to do many things, none of them well, and unfortunately the majority of the plot and time falls to a weak unrequited love story between two people, one of whom is a narcissist and the other painfully bland. It’s a bummer because i think the prose itself is really well done, and there are nuggets of truly beautiful wisdom, but too much fell flat for me.

I really enjoyed this book; I thought it was a perfect example of a character-driven tale in an immersively detailed SF setting. To be sure, it's not a cheerful book, and the descriptions inside really play up the deprivations and bleakness of the future it imagines rather than painting a picture of an enchanting world you'd like to visit. That is the whole point, though, and the result is an awesome book. The City in the Middle of the Night is set on a world which doesn't rotate on its axis. The side facing the sun is permanently scorched by temperatures of hundreds of degrees; the side facing away is locked in permanent night, covered in ice, hundreds of degrees below zero. Only the thin sliver of the planet located in permanent twilight is survivable for humanity, so that's where they all live. Humanity arrived on this world many generations before this story starts, and life has been so hard since then that they live amidst technology that they no longer understand, desperately patching them with dwindling supplies of resources to keep themselves afloat. There are two major city-states – Xiosphant and Argelo – whose divisions go back to their early years on-world and even before, to major conflicts aboard the Mothership. Both are fleshed out in thorough, but not overwhelming detail. Also on this planet are its native inhabitants – a tentacled species most humans pejoratively call crocodiles, but which Sophie – who becomes their ally – calls the Gelet. The Gelet have found ways to carve a sustainable existence for themselves out of the harsh environment, and they realise that the humans thus far have failed. A major theme of the story is the way humans continue to consume all their energy fighting each other, ignoring the looming catastrophe, and whether or not they can be convinced to change direction. The main characters are two young women – Sophie, a university student turned outlaw, and Mouth, the last survivor of a band of nomads who's joined a smuggling crew. Each of them have a female friend with whom they're intimately close – Bianca and Alyssa, respectively. This core group of four are one of the definite strengths of the novel – in many ways none of them are super likeable (and they end up in conflict with each other at least as much as they're ever allied), but they're all empathetic characters whose personal failings cause trouble for themselves, again and again. If I was dissatisfied with anything about this novel, it's the ambiguous ending. I think Anders intended for it to be positive – that humanity will find their way, but only incrementally over tens of generations, such that it can't really be made clear in the novel. But at the same time, there's no real evidence in the book that (view spoiler)[Sophie (hide spoiler)] succeeds in her mission either – that all of the reasons why none of the previous attempts at change have worked are magically fixed now. What the ending does do is give a clear resolution to the conflicts between Sophie and Bianca, and Mouth and Alyssa, so in that sense at least it's successful. There's so much I could talk about in relation to this book – the obsessive time-keeping of Xiosphant, designed to fluster people if they sense a single minute they could have spent better working; Mouth's pain over the loss of her people and misguided efforts to find her place in the world; the colonial arrogance of humanity towards the Gelet; Bianca and how her genuine eagerness to do good leads to quite the opposite, because of her self-centredness… there truly is so much packed in here and for lovers of character-driven, social science fiction I would whole-heartedly recommend this.

This was empirically a better book than All The Birds In The Sky, but I liked that one more. The emotional manipulation and abuse that never gets called out bothers me, but it was a really cool world. If only there was one actual healthy relationship in the whole book