A review by tasharobinson
The White City by Elizabeth Bear

3.0

I really wanted to like this novel more, given that the prose style is very pretty and mildly baroque, and Bear does an excellent job of setting a scene when she thinks it's worthwhile to do so. But it was just too slight and oblique, with too much left out. It's sort of a murder mystery, but I kept getting the impression that Bear was more interested in describing Moscow and her characters than in the story; she'll go from a detailed description of a character's feelings in a moment to a bare-bones summary of important events, which makes the book feel lopsided and a bit underdeveloped. Less than 200 pages is not much space for a story that takes place in multiple timelines, introduces so many characters, and then divides its focus between them. It feels like it could have been twice as long — or stayed short, but shifted the focus more toward what was happening and less toward everyone's inner landscape.