Not-Wednesday Reading: The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders

[chomiji]

This is part of my Hugo Award Reading. I read Anders' first novel, All the Birds in the Sky, back in 2016 and was meh for me. This book is better but still ends up wandering off into nowhere.

The book starts with a small info dump in the guise of translation notes, such as the fact that the people who colonized this planet, January, named the native creatures after animals from their homeworld. You have been warned.

We then join our first protagonist, Sophie. She's from a lower-class family that might, in other settings, be called peasants. Faced with a future as a producer of more peasant agriculturists, she studies with desperate diligence and wins entrance to the university in the city, where she develops a deep crush on her roommate, Bianca. Bianca is beautiful, bright, and at her core, not a great person. She dabbles with the concept of being a revolutionary from a position of extreme privilege, and when things go south, it's not Bianca who falls.

As this story unfolds, we learn about the city and to some extent, the world. In Xiosphant, the activities of the city are controlled to the hour, at a minimum. Timed signals throughout the day tell the citizens when to wake, to eat, to go to work or school. No one breaks curfew, or they are punished. Maniacal little rules occupy any spare thought cycles people might have: food can only be bought with special food currency, for instance, and there are a variety of other currencies for other purchases. Bianca's daring revolutionary actions are trivial: if they were anything else, she'd be dead.

From Sophie's memories, it seems that this draconian governance is somehow a response to the planetary situation. January does not rotate. One side is baked to a fiery hell by its sun; the other side is deathly cold. A narrow temperate zone exists between the two, home to two cities: Xiosphant and Argelo, which we learn about later.

When Sophie takes the blame for Bianca's stupid act of defiance, she is cast out of the city into the edge of the cold zone to die but is unexpectedly saved by a creature considered a hideous and violent monster. When she comes back, she is unable to take up her old life and instead goes to work in a fascinating coffee shop where people can come be different for a short period of time.

At this point, I figured the book was heading into its final arc. I was intrigued and excited. I thought, this time Anders has really nailed it! Somehow Sophie and the underpeople represented at the coffee shop will make things go right! The only thing that didn't seem to work was this strange parallel arc about a traveling merchant called Mouth, part of a desperate crew who bring in contraband goods from Argelo, a strange and dangerous journey. Mouth discovers that the sacred text of her people, whom she lost at a young age, is in the museum in Xiosphant, and plans a burglary under cover of the nascent revolution under the partial leadership of -- you knew this, right? -- Bianca.

And as you've probably also guessed, the book was, in fact, only about half over at that point.

The revolution and Mouth's caper both go badly, and pretty soon, everyone is fleeing back across the horrible leagues between the two cities. After many misadventures, most of the group arrive in Argelo. Mouth and her partner try to fit into non-traveling life, and we get some rather nice "stranger in a strange land" as Sophie and Bianca learn about Argelo. Sadly, Sophie also finally begins to learn about Bianca, who very quickly makes herself at home with the most powerful of the free-wheeling criminal organizations that run the place. Bianca has plans, and Sophie is going to be part of them.

In the final 15% or so of the book, there are battle and horror and catastrophe, and then things just kind of stop.

Anders has a wonderful imagination, and she sometimes has a way with words. But the pieces simply aren't hanging together yet, at least not for me.

I also want to note that the book strikes me as, in some way, a homage to the works of Ursula Le Guin. An obvious inspiration is Le Guin's The Dispossessed, with the two cities and their very different approaches to life on the hostile planet standing in for the worlds of Urras and Anarres. We also have the world January, its very name echoing that of Winter, the outsiders' name for the planet Gethen, setting of Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, which also considered the challenges of maintaining a complex civilization in a very hostile environment.

Comments

[sovay]

the underpeople represented at the coffee shop

Are they actually called underpeople? (I would interpret that as an homage to Cordwainer Smith if so.)

[chomiji]

Nope, that was my slip-up. Maybe I should change it?

[sovay]

Maybe I should change it?

Nah, I just like Cordwainer Smith, so I brightened for a moment.

[chomiji]

He's an old favorite of mine, too.

[muccamukk]

The audiobook didn't have the preface, and didn't suffer for the lack of it.

[chomiji]

Sounds like you enjoyed it?

[muccamukk]

I did (review here). I found it a little YA, but for me the ending didn't actually feel that sudden as the journey of the story was about the characters learning to build healthy relationships, and so ending with Mouth and Alyssa having their non-wake and Sophie finally not only putting her infatuation with Bianca behind her but understanding how she's going to build the movement to save her tentacle friends, and understanding consent, felt like what the characters had been gropingly feeling towards for the whole book, and a well-earned conclusion.

I really liked the character work with Mouth especially and exploring the effects of growing up in the kind of intentional community, which felt like the author knew a thing or two about that.

[chomiji]

Hmm, I think my increasing impatience with the story line blocked my appreciation of the emotional arcs. I should give it a re-read sometime.

[muccamukk]

I agree that the plot as a series of events was pretty chaotic, and I do think Anders needs to work on that. I think I'm the only person in my DW circle who really loved the book. The characters, especially Sophie, didn't work for a lot of people, and that pretty well hoops it.

[tabacoychanel]

oh man, i had such high hopes for all the birds in the sky and it wasn't quite meh for me but it wasn't too many notches above meh either. Thank you for this reveiw, i've been waffling about whether to give this one a whirl and i'm firmly shoving it to the back of the tbr now.