Scan barcode
Reviews tagging 'Animal cruelty'
The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders
6 reviews
melodyseestrees's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Graphic: Death, Violence, and Police brutality
Moderate: Body horror, Homophobia, and Blood
Minor: Animal cruelty, Animal death, and Confinement
abookwormspov's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Body horror, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gun violence, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Vomit, Police brutality, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Murder, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, War, and Injury/Injury detail
beccaand's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Graphic: Death, Toxic relationship, Violence, and Police brutality
Moderate: Animal cruelty, Body horror, and Homophobia
Minor: Animal death
puttingwingsonwords's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Death, Genocide, Gore, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Toxic relationship, Violence, Police brutality, Grief, Murder, and Alcohol
Moderate: Animal cruelty, Confinement, Homophobia, Blood, Vomit, Death of parent, and Colonisation
Minor: Suicidal thoughts
bookcaptivated's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Graphic: Death, Genocide, Violence, Blood, Grief, Murder, and Toxic friendship
Moderate: Animal cruelty and Body horror
Minor: Animal death and Lesbophobia
mireanthony's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
I read Charlie Jane Anders' novel All the Birds in the Sky in summer of 2016 as my relationship with my college boyfriend was ending and I was trying to figure out what to do after I graduated, and it affected me to an extent I could never explain or justify. My strange kinship with that book, the feeling that it had somehow been written for me and my circumstances specifically, followed me through The City in the Middle of the Night, as well. I couldn't even begin to guess at why exactly I feel this way, except to say that this book, like All the Birds in the Sky, understands that what makes good science fiction is philosophy, not technology.
Between when I read All the Birds in the Sky and when I read this book I learned that Charlie Jane Anders is a trans woman. I remember the day I stumbled upon her twitter and something clicked. Oh, I thought, oh, that's why her writing resonates so much with me. She's trans, as well. I couldn't help but read The City in the Middle of the Night through a lens of queer transformation and the friction between society and the individual that transformation causes. It's not a hard read to do; the themes are central to the story.
The City in the Middle of the Night follows Sophie as she grows from a teenager who lacks words to communicate her burgeoning attraction to her best friend Bianca, through a series of traumatic events involving police, politics, and the system of timekeeping on Sophie's tidally locked planet. Xiosphant, one of two cities in the twilight strip between the light side and dark side of the planet January, operates under strict and meticulous order, a substitute for a daynight cycle turned into an oppressive system for keeping the townspeople docile and controlled. Sophie and Bianca are part of a group of teenage dissidents more concerned with sitting around discussing philosophy than actually doing anything, until Sophie taking the fall for a minor crime of Bianca's leads to the police parading her through the town and forcing her into the frozen wastelands of the dark side of the planet, forcing her into the night to die. But Sophie does not die, because she meets a creature there that can communicate using touch telepathy and is a member of a race that has inhabited the night since long before the colony ships came to January, since before humans discovered fire. The creature, a gelet, shows Sophie a memory of a city deep in the night, a city kept alive through bioengineering but also through collective memory, collective will, and a love story that the gelet have mythologized into their religion and politics.
This is not always a happy book, and it is a little slow-paced at some points, but it is full of delicious worldbuilding and the kind of commentary on our world that only science fiction can really touch. It is an meditation on the nature of communication, religion, memory, trauma, time, and love. It is, as far as I'm concerned, a perfect science fiction book. And it's queer!
Graphic: Panic attacks/disorders and Police brutality
Moderate: Homophobia and Toxic relationship
Minor: Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Confinement, and Gun violence
Climate catastrophe and the depletion of resources looms large in the background of this book but it is happening on a planet very unlike our own and is dealt with in ways that bear little-to-no resemblance to the situation on Earth.