The City in the Middle of the Night Hardcover – 12 Feb 2019

I really, Truly and thoroughly enjoyed this book! So much so that I’m really not all that certain where I should start! So, I will begin with the Characters.I loved them, and I really enjoyed seeing how they developed. What made this special for me, is tat the Characters aren’t out of this world perfect, or entirely unable to be liked, rather they were real. They made stupid-ass decisions, they made good decisions, selfless and selfish, some went well and some did not. Choices were made based on others, or their own preconceptions, or on pure, stupid and very human misunderstandings. I LOVED that about them!To me, this made the characters, and the world on the whole much more plausible! Nobody was perfect, they made choices that didn’t go the way they intended, and that affected those around them in unforseen ways. In a world that is based on Science Fiction? That’s a brilliant skill.Now the world building. Just WOW. I loved the idea of a tidal locked world, with the two sides complete opposites and class and culture being based upon where you lived! There were several parallels with cultural norms we have now, that it again was easily plausible. Ways of life had been built that make sense for a future humanity!And the creatures 😱 oh my goodness, I WANT TO GO THERE!! This world is wild, untamed and unpredictable. The creatures are wonderfully unique and unexpected, and the way in which humanity misunderstands them through ignorance, well that just seems perfectly feasible too!This was a wonderful story to read, I loved Mouth and Sophie equally for very different reasons, though at times I must admit I wanted to kick Sophie in the shin for a lack of good sense 🙈If you enjoy your Young Adult Fantasy with enough plausibility to make you wonder if the Author has been to the future, then you will adore this book!

It’s a sad love story about a woman in love with a terrible person who treats her terribly.Also it’s on an alien planet where it’s always night in one direction, and always day in the other. But if it’s the setting that intrigued you, this book isn’t for you. This is a clumsy slog of a love story, with some themes about doing good in the world.Pros:Interesting main charactersCharacter development that’s intriguing to followUnique settingCons:Ridiculously unbelievable side characters. A naive college girl inspires a group of professional smugglers that they can survive the dangerous journey they’ve already done several times.Plot lines furthered by overheard conversations.Confusing, boring, unemotional fight scenes.A lack of a central problem or goal to drive the story. Makes for winding, slogging pacing.Even with my complaints, the creativity on display here is great. I’m looking forward to reading Anders’ 5th or 6th books, once her writing & storytelling chops have caught up with her beautiful, fascinating sci-fi visions.

The City in the Middle of the Night is the newest novel from Charlie Jane Anders. It also happens to be the first novel I’ve read by her. I know, don’t beat me up. I loved it! And I’ve already added all of her previous works to my massive TBR pile, so we’re good. I’m not ashamed to admit that the first thing that caught my attention about The City in the Middle of the Night was the cover. It’s absolutely beautiful. It seems like every time I look at it I notice another little details that I had missed previously. Between that and the striking color palette…well I was sold. The novel is set on a tidally-locked planet – meaning that the planet doesn’t rotate. Instead there is one side constantly facing the sun, and the other in complete darkness. There’s a slim slice of land that acts like the equivalent of dawn or dusk. Where the conditions aren’t quite ideal…but they are survivable. It’s in this small slice of land that humans, the distant relations to the first colonists to flee earth, made their homes. Each city has a different structure, set of rules, and even their own view on life. It may be a strange system, but it works. Mostly. I almost never draw a quote from the description of a book, but this one is just such a perfect summarization of the novel that I can’t resist: “If you control our sleep, then you can own our dreams…And from there, it’s easy to control our entire lives.” The City in the Middle of the Night was an utterly enchanting read, from cover to cover. I loved the main character, and many (but not all) of the people she met. I loved the structure of the world, the city, the politics, and many other details. It was all so thoroughly thought out; it was hard to do anything but fall headfirst into the world. Charlie Jane Anders explores so many different concepts through the course of this novel. It’s almost too difficult to fully take them all in. There’s the perspective on survival; how people would survive on a twisted planet such as this one. There’s the concept of culture; how much or little space a group of people need before they form their own traditions and way of life. There’s politics; how some cultures moved past the concept of individuals and went for the bigger picture (in their minds, at least). There’s the concept of gender and sexuality; how it’s okay to be yourself, and not be afraid of being different. There’s the concept of self; how much change can a person go through while still maintaining their sense of self. I’ve only just scratched the surface, there’s so much more to this novel. But you have to read it for yourself to see the true depths of it all. I loved the main character. Her constant self-questioning and determination was really quite beautiful. She’s loyal, accepting, and willing to change her life for the sake of those she loves and respects. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a character quite like her…I don’t want to use the term ‘pure’ but nothing else really fits either. She’s truly open and trusting, possibly in defiance of what she’s gone through. There was so much I loved about this book, it’s actually taking most of my willpower not to continue babbling about it. I think most of the impact would be better experienced than talked about, for obvious reasons. So I’m going to force myself to stop here. I think that the novel has the potential to become a series, even if it isn’t currently listed as one. While this novel did fully wrap up most of the plots, there are still a few points left open. I suspect that’s in hopes of a second (or more) novel, which I’m fully in support of. I’d love to see more of the planet and how things fall out in the long run.

Having loved All The Birds In The Sky, I was dismayed by this follow-up: not because it's serious and dark where Birds is light-hearted and, um, also dark, but because its exposition is lumbering and its characters are cartoonish. A key early moment, where our main protagonist encounters an alien many generations after first contact and instantly intuits something no one has ever grasped about this species, is a fair representative of Charlie Jane Anders' approach throughout the book: for this character to have the world-changing arc the book needs her to have, this thing needs to happen, and so it does. It isn't plausible for the character, it consigns all previous human civilisation to braindead barbarity in a way which while sadly plausible remains wildly underexamined for the rest of the book, and it creates the sense that anything at all may happen at any moment in this story. We're going where the plot diagram requires.Again: I adored All the Birds in the Sky. It felt integral and well conceived and full of insight. This feels like a first draft. If it had been the book that introduced me to this author, I would have given up on her on the spot.

While it started off strong with some compelling world building it quickly turned into a slog with repetition of the same handful of distinguishing elements lazily and repetitively tossed into seemingly to keep the sci-fi/fantasy credentials of the story certified. No flora to note and only two examples of fauna that I can recall. The interesting conceit being that they are called "bison" and "crocodiles" while bearing no resemblance at all to the creatures we know by those names. The latter is defanged (literarily) of its impact when about a quarter of the way through it is given a new "respectful" name.That, coupled with the painful disorientingly contemporary teen angst filled dialog amongst and between the four all but indistinguishable female leads (Sophie, Bianca, Alyssa, and…Mouth) made for an exceptionally disappointing first 50% of this book.And, it certainly didn't help that whatever real conflicts there may have been in the tale (at least 3 separate "quests" are neutered within the first third) are clearly secondary to the (romantic?) will-they-or-won't-they relationships between the two pairs of leads.So, no, I did not finish. I don't think I knew what I was getting into.