So last night I stayed up for 5 hours reading/finishing the book I have been on for the past few weeks. It was one of the best books I have read of recent. It is called The City & The City by China Mieville. He calls it “weird fiction” which places the genre in a sort of weird middle ground. I first heard of the book when it tied for the 2010 Hugo prize with The Windup Girl, another book I have read. The Hugo prize is a prestigious prize given out for Science Fiction and Fantasy writing each year, and I find that the selections are very deserving. But it is hard to classify this as sci fi or fantasy, yet I in some grey sense of the idea of fantasy, it fits in. It is more of a detective story set in a slightly fantastical setting. Nothing pulp, like magic or dragons, just a regular world with a twist…
The story follows a detective solving a crime. The twist is a very odd concept that is ingrained in everything that goes on in the story and the author remains very dedicated to the concept. Maybe it is that dedication to the concept that makes the story so interesting. The concept is also slowly revealed in the first 20% of the book (once you get a Kindle, you are stuck using percentages) as you remained veiled that something odd is going on until it is finally explained. He then continues to weave this odd world as the protagonist travels through it. The mystery continues to slowly develop and get more mysterious, but at the same time, I felt that the end result was more of a let down. The major drawing point for me was the mystery and the concept in which it was twisted with the setting. Yet in the end, it seemed to lack some of that spectacular oddity that fleshed out such an interesting world. The characters were interesting, but dull. They held some personality, but seemed to have odd mood swings and were hard to be believable. Sometimes it was frustrating reading their conversations or trying to understand their odd behavior. It also hurt that he would spend some time developing a character and then forget them as the story moved on. It feels like the characters become a vehicle for the actual star, the setting, which for me was true. But the setting doesn’t draw any emotional investment, I don’t feel bad when a building gets blown up or a character moves to another house.
So I find the “hangover” from the book very minimal, which is sad. Usually when I read a good book, it means the characters are very developed and I am drawn into their world. I develop an emotional attachment/investment in the characters and begin to care about them somewhat, as their adventure is something I am beginning to share in (this is why I have to stop watching movies about heartbreak, those suck). When the story is over, I usually end up sitting around realizing that the adventure is over. The characters are done and I will not get to know what happens from then on, which is tough. In this book, there was none of that, which makes it seem a let down compared to past books.
I would recommend anyone who is interested in something slightly different to try this. It is a unique book that is hard to classify. The concept is good because of the dedication the author has for it, but it inevitably damages the characters and you are left with a setting and a mystery and some random blobs of characters that you really don’t care about. I would still say read it, its like a new food which is always worth a try.