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A review by leksikality
The City & the City by China Miéville
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
It's a really interesting concept to blend the genres together with but it's executed very poorly by someone totally unfamiliar with at least one of them.
Crime is a phenomenally difficult genre to pull off. There are the requisite tropes to navigate without being hackneyed, as well as balancing the right amount of mystery and infirmation throughout the narrative.
This did not do that. The seeing/unseeing concept turned out to be fairly disappointing - not so much a thing as a not-thing or an almost-thing - and after a certain point it seemed to be utterly superfluous. Explanations were thrown in haphazardly and not in a particularly meaningful way. For example, early on a witness hesitates to say "wolf" which in itself is okay, maybe weird but not the most essential part of the seen. 20 chapters later we find out why and it's just an arbitrary tourist tidbit if the cit/ies - not at all relevant.
The characters aren't very distibguishable - similar speech patterns, which could be passed off as cultural if everyone from both cities and elsewhere didn't share them. Of course, the narrator here also wasn't very good at separating out the characters.
From about the last third on, it felt like Mieville gave up on the story. Borlu just knew all these things suddenly that no one else did/could figure out, including the reader.
Giving this 2 stars is really generous, and mostly for the sake of the idea.
Crime is a phenomenally difficult genre to pull off. There are the requisite tropes to navigate without being hackneyed, as well as balancing the right amount of mystery and infirmation throughout the narrative.
This did not do that. The seeing/unseeing concept turned out to be fairly disappointing - not so much a thing as a not-thing or an almost-thing - and after a certain point it seemed to be utterly superfluous. Explanations were thrown in haphazardly and not in a particularly meaningful way. For example, early on a witness hesitates to say "wolf" which in itself is okay, maybe weird but not the most essential part of the seen. 20 chapters later we find out why and it's just an arbitrary tourist tidbit if the cit/ies - not at all relevant.
The characters aren't very distibguishable - similar speech patterns, which could be passed off as cultural if everyone from both cities and elsewhere didn't share them. Of course, the narrator here also wasn't very good at separating out the characters.
From about the last third on, it felt like Mieville gave up on the story. Borlu just knew all these things suddenly that no one else did/could figure out, including the reader.
Giving this 2 stars is really generous, and mostly for the sake of the idea.