The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders Published by Titan Books Limited on February 12, 2019
Genres: Fiction / Fantasy / General
Pages: 496
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781789092035"If you control our sleep, then you can own our dreams... And from there, it's easy to control our entire lives."
January is a dying planet - divided between a permanently frozen darkness on one side, and blazing endless sunshine on the other. Humanity clings to life, spread across two archaic cities built in the sliver of habitable dusk. But life inside the cities is just as dangerous as the wastelands outside. Sophie, a student and reluctant revolutionary, is supposed to be dead, after being exiled into the night. Saved only by forming an unusual bond with the enigmatic beasts who roam the ice, Sophie vows to stay hidden from the world, hoping she can heal. But fate has other plans - and Sophie's ensuing odyssey and the ragtag family she finds will change the entire world.
I don’t remember when or why I added this to my TBR years ago. As I’m now reading through the books I own, I came to this one and was really excited to get into it. The premise was quite fascinating of this tidally locked planet where human life is locked in by two diametrically opposite cities: Xiosphant, an authoritarian city where every persons’ action is locked in and any deviation is severely punished, and Argelo, a wild anarchist city run by competing gangs. We have our main characters of Sophie, a former student who was sent into the night to her death but managed to survive by becoming friends with the crocodile-like creatures (Sophie calls them Gelet), and Mouth, a smuggler who travels between the two cities and grew up in a nomadic cult. There’s also Bianca, Sophie’s friend, and Alyssa, Mouth’s fellow smuggler and “friend” or “companion.”
It was such an interesting concept that I was let down by how things played out. First, I kept wanting to throttle Sophie for how much blind faith she had in Bianca being this good person that she never was. Since Sophie’s chapters where from her point of view, we do only have her to rely on but considering how Alyssa was treated at the end, I’m comfortable saying that Bianca is not a good person. Or at least someone who believes she’ll do better than keeps the system in place because it works well for her. So much of the book’s commentary on Bianca could’ve been cut out not only because it was annoying but it was tiring after a while.
Then we have Mouth who in the beginning started working with Bianca in Xiosphant to retrieve a poetry book of their people. When it all goes sideways, Mouth’s chapters became them trying to move through the grief of losing the last artifact of their people. There’s also what seems like chapters of them trying to deconstruct their religion and realize they were actually in a cult.
But as with everything in this novel, nothing happens with any of this. There’s build up after build up in each major action scene before it all becomes a let down. It feels like the author is trying to say something about environmental catastrophes and how we all need to work together. Yet it read more in a surface level manner than any actual depth. Sophie attempts it, in the end, but it all blows up in her face. I’m all for open endings but only when well set up ones that fit the story. There’s no resolution to how to save these two warring cities, Sophie, Mouth, and Alyssa are in hiding (considered criminals), and Bianca rules Xiosphant with no plans to change anything about it. Then it ends. If there was another book, it would make more sense to end it here. But with this ending and nothing more? I’m curious about what this all is trying to get at.
It seems much of the issues are overlooked due to how well written the novel is, which I will say was my issue for how to rate it too. Here are some:
“Part of how they make you obey is by making obedience seem peaceful, while resistance is violent. But really either choice is about violence, one way or another.”
“You can’t hide from the people you care about. A love that hides is already halfway to becoming a regret.” (This one is particular is fascinating in terms of sexuality and Sophie’s romantic feelings towards Bianca).
“I realize that human civilization is based on forgetting. If I own a pair of shoes that used to belong to you, then my ownership relies on your forgetfulness. Humans are experts at storing knowledge and forgetting facts, which is why we saw this city from orbit and then pushed all the evidence into a hole. And I can’t help thinking of what Bianca said when I asked her about the Hydroponic Garden Massacre: that progress requires us to curate the past, to remove from history things that aren’t “constructive.” I don’t know if our power to forget makes humans stronger, more self-destructive, or maybe both.”
These are just some of the many thought-provoking and beautiful lines that made it seem wrong to rate it so low. But I couldn’t let good writing stand in for less thought out plot or characters, no matter how much I’ll think about these quotes for ages.
Leave a Reply