The political thriller gets weird
5 stars
If I recall correctly, China Mieville wanted to write a novel that his mother might read. Presumably she was into crime fiction or political thrillers. What came out at the end is just as weird and inventive as China's other work. In fact it's up there with his best.
Mieville's approach to genre fills me with joy. "Mainstream" fiction, he argues, IS a genre, a niche. In other words, we genre fans are not the weirdos, you supposedly conventional readers are. In that light it's no surprise that his take on a crime/political thriller comes out as a bizarre, mutated version which is completely in keeping with his fantasy and science fiction works.
A city which is divided politically and ethnically not by a green line, but by the life-long psychological training and conditioning the denizens are given, is so weird that at first you think it's about a city …
If I recall correctly, China Mieville wanted to write a novel that his mother might read. Presumably she was into crime fiction or political thrillers. What came out at the end is just as weird and inventive as China's other work. In fact it's up there with his best.
Mieville's approach to genre fills me with joy. "Mainstream" fiction, he argues, IS a genre, a niche. In other words, we genre fans are not the weirdos, you supposedly conventional readers are. In that light it's no surprise that his take on a crime/political thriller comes out as a bizarre, mutated version which is completely in keeping with his fantasy and science fiction works.
A city which is divided politically and ethnically not by a green line, but by the life-long psychological training and conditioning the denizens are given, is so weird that at first you think it's about a city with a dimensional rift or a gateway to an imaginary realm intersecting the physical space . But no, it's the tyrannical imposition of a political reality, embraced by the majority of the populace. It's a societal hallucination which is turned from a social construct into something so close to a physical reality that the reader and the non-citizens in the novel, often falsely perceive it to be a concrete phenomenon.
Over time this idea has gained strength, because the whole of the United States, with its red and blue divide, is starting to look like "The City and the City" since the book was written.
My good review comes with a caveat. China Mieville's writing is so crammed with ideas and unfamiliar concepts, it can sometimes be hard for the reader to latch on to his stories. Sometimes they are just not "page-turners". Or as a fellow SF and F fan puts it "China's just too boring". In some of his other books I've felt that. Sometimes his unique strengths in other areas make up for it. Sometimes, dammit, his stories ARE page-turners, especially "Railsea", another of my favouirites by China.
Anyway, "The City and the City" MIGHT NOT be for you. But it is definitely for me.