Reviews with content warning for Death - The City & the City

I’ve had a daunting tome of a novel by China Miéville sitting on my literal to-be-read shelf for a number of years. The City & the City is not that book, though I read an ebook edition so can’t really comment on its thickness, intimidating or otherwise. Going in, I knew almost nothing about The City & The City or China Miéville, but another bookclub member had praised the introduction for helping elucidate what on earth is actually going on.

China Miéville’s fantasy concept is certainly unique. While there’s little to no actual magic involved to stop it, Beszél and Ul Qoma don’t feel like places that could exist in the real world. At the same time, The City & the City is a relatively straight-forward police procedural, with familiar detective characters and quibbles over jurisdiction.

Even after the introduction making things explicit right off the bat, The City & the City is a dense read. There’s no skipping merrily along, eating up entire chapters at one gulp. There’s a lot going on, multiple characters and factions to follow, strange rules and customs which have no equivalent in the real world. As a murder mystery, it never really feels like the reader is being invited to attempt to solve the crime. Indeed, it would be difficult for anyone not a native of Beszél or Ul Qoma to do so.

The satisfaction of the ending, then, doesn’t come from the revelation of the murderer. Instead, watching Taylor Borlú walk into a whole new life is bittersweet, but hopeful. China Miéville conveys the sense that this world will continue to live and breathe and grow, even after the reader has closed the book.

Content Warnings

funcharge's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Content Warnings

nickvc's review

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adventurous mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

Content Warnings

booksthatburn's review

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challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

THE CITY & THE CITY is a detective story in a strange but non-magical setting which manages to feel as off-kilter and wondrous as some fantasy worlds, but without the level of vivid detail that would usually imply.

I love the immersive world-building in THE CITY & THE CITY. This was my second time reading it, and I caught the little hints that I didn't know how to place or didn't understand the importance of the first time I read it. The interplay between the city and the city is too interesting of a thing to spoil here, suffice it to say that there is a definite sense of place in the book. I appreciated the finicky bureaucracy and red tape bound up in this premise. It has a singular focus on the MC and his understanding of events as he tries to solve a woman's murder in his city. My one quibble is that it feels like the book shifts away from trying to solve her murder and becomes focused on the circumstances in a way that felt like it decreased the importance of her death. It was easy to forget by the end that this was a murder mystery and not just a story of political intricacies and border crossings. Part of that is because her death isn't the central mystery, really, she's a catalyst for the real story of this guy and his place in the cities. The MC cares about her death the whole time, to be clear, he just has to deal with a lot of other stuff. Between that and the choices over who dies and lives in the confrontation at the end, it did leave a bit of a sour taste for me in how the secondary characters were treated.

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