China Mieville is an author I’ve admired more than I’ve enjoyed. I like the ideas behind his books, but his baroque style of writing has always been a little too much for me. I think conceptually his Bas Lag books with their melding of horror and steampunk are pretty fascinating but they feel too much like work for me to really enjoy.
I found his last book, Un Lun Dun, written primarily for young adults about an entire other fantastical city of London to be much more entertaining. And when I saw the advanced press for his latest, The City and the City I was very curious.
Reading China’s editor speak about how and why the book was written, specifically for his ailing mother, and that it was unlike anything else that he had written previously I found myself an advanced review copy. While I was not asked as others with advancers not to spoil the central conceit of the book I will honor China’s wishes as well. Mostly because I think this story is one that’s best revealed through our narrator’s eyes.
We begin at the scene of a murder for a young woman who police think may be a prostitute, her body dropped at the scene of a decrepit skate park. We meet Extreme Crime unit Detective Tyador Borlu. As Borlu begins to look into this case we begin to learn more about the victim, an American exchange student as well as the duality of Borlu’s city Beszel and it’s uncomfortable neighbor, the much more modern Ul Qoma. We begin to learn how these cities are linked and how they are segregated.
Mieville drops in comments and hints about the dual cities from jump and it’s fascinating to see him create this world with all of it’s history and little secrets. We learn about an ultra secret organization that punishes breaches between the cities called accurately enough Breach. These agents are urban boogeymen who seemingly appear from the shadows and disappear people who have breached.
Borlu follows this investigation to his neighboring city og Ul Quoma where he teams with a local cop. There is a fair amount of political intriguw, some interesting detective work and some far out conspiracies taking hold. The book takes a dazzling turn into the slightly fantastical as Borlu begins to piece what really happened to the murdered American and follows the case to it’s not surprising, but really enjoyable conclusion.
The ending was exactly what I hoped for and really opens up the possibility for Mieville to revisit Bezel and Ul Qoma again. Mieville seems like a different writer here. The writing is stripped down and much more direct than his normal works. It feels like we’ve been following Borlu forever after a few short chapters. If you like cop stories, mysteries or literary fantasy this is a book for you.
I think you might see this be the book that makes China mainstream.
[...] originally published in Rescued By Nerds on 2009-05-28 [...]