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

adventurous challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Gosh, what an interesting book! I'll admit, the bits about Bianca and Sophie, and Mouth and everyone else didn't grab me as much as I would have liked, probably because their relationship remains so static throughout. It was the parts with the Gelet that made me keep reading all the way to the uncertain ending. 

That said: even though it didn't make for the most satisfying reading experience, I appreciate what Anders was doing with Sophie/Bianca and Mouth/Alyssa, and in a kind of parallel way, humans/January itself. Getting stuck in the same relationship patterns, repeating them again and again even though you know better and ought to be growing out of them in some kind of narratively satisfying way ... that's incredibly real, and also underexplored in science fiction, where themes of progress (and retrogress, with eventual triumph) tend to prevail. 

Having read Anders in both forms, I think I love her short stories better than her novels. (No shame in that, I feel the same way about quite a few authors!) But I'm glad I read this book, even so.

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