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3.9 AVERAGE
3.9 AVERAGE
adventurous
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
The setting was very interesting but I would have enjoyed more focus around the politics. I was totally against Breach the whole book so the ending was incredibly disappointing. It was basically a very boring mystery set in a cool but underutilized world.
challenging
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A strange, Kafkaesque police procedural based on a fascinating premise whose implications are well explored. The situation has a sort of Shopenhauer-ish/Lovecraftian horror to it that I found quite appealing. I enjoyed that he makes self reflexive fun of the term 'interstitial', which is sometimes applied to this kind of fantastic fiction.
challenging
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Ingeniously conceived, a city divided into two cultures and two different sets of governing laws and the citizens of both not even allowed to look at citizens from the other side in one of the many parts of the city where the two states wind around each other like poison ivy and rub up so closely. It hints at recent conflict in former Yugoslavia, or possibly even the post-war division of Berlin. There is a detective story for a plot, but it's a pretty uninvolving one that moves at the pace of an arthritic snail. The wonder is to behold the weaving of the world. Characterisation is virtually non-existent. So like the city itself, this book is divide against itself.
challenging
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Well written police procedural mystery that mixes the paranoia of Lovercraft and Orwell with a good mindfuck from K.Dick. Not your run of the mill fantasy story, and a fan who likes a good world build. Slow build, but the City (and the City) are as much characters as the people.
I have often had the (admittedly unoriginal) thought that borders are artificial and really in our in heads. Mieville takes that to the extreme in this book where the physical borders are fuzzy, but the mental ones are more impenetrable than any wall.