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112 of 119 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Incredibly Realized Setting, April 27, 2009
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I have awarded five stars to lesser books in the past, but now the bar has been raised; I know what a five-star novel is really like after reading _The City & The City_.
It's a detective novel written in the first-person; the narrator is Inspector Tyador Borlu of the Beszel Extreme Crime Squad. The writing style is relatively spare, reminescent of Dashiell Hammett. The narrator constrains himself strictly to observable phenomena and tells us nothing of characters' inner thoughts or emotional states, which makes the action seem very immediate and the narration very stark. Police procedures are presented believably but without too much detail. The case itself is not terribly elaborate. It starts with a murder, but about two-thirds of the way through I felt that the murder was no longer the focus. Inspector Borlu's investigation leads to fringe political groups, an archaeological site, a foreign country, and to somewhere else entirely. The setting of the novel is what makes the story work. There wouldn't be a story if it wasn't set in Beszel and Ul Qoma. It's a totally original concept, like nothing I have ever read before.
Beszel is a gloomy, decaying city which seems to be located somewhere in Eastern Europe. Ul Qoma is a bright, bustling city that seems either Arabic or Turkish. The relationship between the two cities is the central theme of the book. I can't tell you much about it without spoiling the beautiful unfolding of the novel. Of course Inspector Borlu takes everything for granted because he lives there; it's all familiar to him .. so instead of explaining things as one would to a foreign visitor, he lets details emerge through descriptions of sights and events, and the reader slowly pieces together details of the setting. One's understanding of the situation gets deeper as the novel progresses, and even though it is completely absurd, I found myself easily suspending my disbelief and becoming totally absorbed in the story. This impossible setting is PERFECTLY executed so as to seem plausible. Beszel and Ul Qoma deserve to be included in the Atlas of Fictional Places, they are so well constructed. Even the languages (as reflected in names of people and places and a few idiomatic sayings) consistently support the mood and "flavor" of the two cities.
The two cities may be a clever metaphor for the Situation of Man, but the book's highbrow literary qualities will not get in the way of its pure entertainment value. The best fiction I have read so far this year.
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61 of 67 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A change of pace, but still peculiar, May 29, 2009
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Much ado has been made of the change in tone and character in this most recent book, and it's true that the language is a dramatic departure from his typical baroque style, but it still bears something in common with pretty much everything Mieville writes: it requires quite a lot from the reader.
There are books that you can read at a surface level, just taking in the words one at a time as they lay out character, setting and plot much like a computer loading an image. Mieville's books - and to a lesser extent his stories - tend to be more like jigsaw puzzles without the box. In his more fantastic work, it's less jarring than here because even at his most outre, he tends to tread familiar paths as far as story and plot, so you can keep up.
This, on the other hand, is a bit of noir fiction/magical realism, and it's a bit jarring to read about a hundred pages of the book before you're really given a handle as to exactly what's going on.
That aside, the overall plot of the book - not to mention the characters and, of course, the cities themselves - makes for a good read, but be prepared to devote a considerable amount of your brain's memory cache to this book until you're finished.
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18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Something different, May 11, 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
I enjoyed this book, and found it a worthwhile read, but did not love it as unequivocally as the reviewers below.
On the plus side, Mieville's style is distinctive, literary and interesting. "The City and the City" isn't something you've read a dozen times before; it's original, and for that reason alone it's worth reading. The SF and mystery genres seem to breed dozens of cut-rate "me too" novels for every truly interesting work, so just reading something new and different is worth a couple of stars alone. The characters are well-drawn and interesting, as are the cities of Beszel and Ul Qoma.
On the minus side, every page of this book talks about the intersection between the cities in some way - the alter, the crosshatching and so on. After a while, we get it; the point doesn't have to be belabored. Speaking of the point, we also get the point about subcultures and minorities and what we see in daily life versus what we don't, which is all well and good. But either I missed the point of the novel as a whole or just didn't get it, because at the end my first reaction was, "so what?" I understand that Tyodor has changed as a result of his experience, but I would expect that from a character written by a good writer; again, my though was "so what?" The ending left me cold, as if the book just stopped. I got the impression that the identity of the killer just wasn't that important; that it just got picked out of a hat, and tossed in right at the end to satisfy those who would be disappointed if a murder mystery never identified the killer.
Having said that, "The City and the City" is at least worth borrowing from the library. The pros outweigh the cons, and if you don't love it, you will likely at least enjoy it.
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