A review by nocto
The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders

emotional hopeful inspiring medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

I read the beginning of this as a sample ebook a while back but I’m rapidly running away from ebooks these days it seems. Paper books are back to holding my attention a lot better. So I didn’t carry on after the sample chapter at that time but I did check the book out when I spotted it at the library.

The book is set sometime in the future on another planet where the descendants of a group of people have left the dying earth are settled. The initial story is set in the city of Xiosphant and centres on Sophie who is a student there. Xiosphant is a disciplined and divided society. The city is regulated into an artificial day and night cycle that its inhabitants must abide by. The inhabitants themselves are regulated into some kind of caste system, Sophie’s roommate Bianca comes from a higher class than she does. Early on in the book Sophie gets thrown out of the city for a minor offence and how she deals with that event sets off the chain reaction of the plot for the rest of the book.

I really enjoyed the story, it’s a wild adventure tale for a lot of the time and the world building is fantastic. The planet comes to life as you read. Though much of it is inhospitable to humans it’s not just an empty backdrop for human colonisation. You gradually uncover what’s happening elsewhere. Another main character comes on the scene and the story swaps between the two viewpoints.

In some ways the book was longer than I felt I wanted it to be, but yet there were characters who I wanted to know more about who didn’t get enough time on the page so I think that’s pretty balanced really. Definitely an author I’ll look up again.