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the_lady_lily) wrote2011-12-06 09:58 pm
the_lady_lily) wrote2011-12-06 09:58 pm
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City and The City - China Miéville
I have been saying for a while that I should read more Miéville, just as a general principle; The City and The City seemed like a good choice, not only because I could pilfer it from G's shelves, but also because it won the 2010 Arthur C. Clarke Award, the 2010 Hugo Award, and the 2010 World Fantasy Award. Which looks like a fairly good pedigree to me.
I will admit that I found myself unconvinced for the first few chapters, mainly because there seemed to be a degree of descriptive travel writing going on rather than world-building. Now, this may be a feature of this particular reader, who has a habit of reading a fair bit of foreign fiction, where you're dropped in a world that's completely natural to the writer, and you have to pick up how the world functions as you read; indeed, piecing together that part of the human experience is part of the pleasure of reading, say, Tolstoy or Casanova. So having someone hold your hand while you walk into the world feels intrusive, as if it's trying far too hard.
However. However however however. About three or four chapters in and I couldn't put the book down, because Miéville had stopped doing descriptive tour-guide narrative and started doing world-building. And the world is pretty darn spectacular - just close enough to ours to feel like it works, but far enough for it to - well. To enter the world of sci-fi/fantasty. I can see why Miéville likes the label "weird fiction" - close enough for reality, far away enough to allow oddness.
The structure of the plot is a standard police procedural, a murder whodunnit, where the police forces of two cities must cooperate to work out who has perpetrated this particularly unpleasant crime and why. The twist in the story is that the two cities occupy the same geographical space, layered over each other and intertwined between each other. The occupants of the city have to unsee each other's buildings, tourists aren't allowed in without strict training, and ignoring the rules leads to Breach, and the invocation of Breach isn't pretty.
The characters are actually interesting, likeable - the protagonist is strangely detatched, but a believable detective, someone who gets his teeth into something and then will keep worrying away at it, terrier-like. There is a lot of academia in there, and I have to say I think that was my favourite bit - not only was he writing academics, he was writing archaeologists and archaeology grad students, which was awesome. As in, a well-realised portrait of That Sort Of Person at both levels. And the resolution was pleasingly neat - not trite, not quite, but - fitting, I think. Appropriate. And rather dryly wry on the nature of the protagonist, which we'd seen from the beginning - it worked.
So, yes. Deciding to read more Miéville was definitely one of my better decisions.
I have been saying for a while that I should read more Miéville, just as a general principle; The City and The City seemed like a good choice, not only because I could pilfer it from G's shelves, but also because it won the 2010 Arthur C. Clarke Award, the 2010 Hugo Award, and the 2010 World Fantasy Award. Which looks like a fairly good pedigree to me.
I will admit that I found myself unconvinced for the first few chapters, mainly because there seemed to be a degree of descriptive travel writing going on rather than world-building. Now, this may be a feature of this particular reader, who has a habit of reading a fair bit of foreign fiction, where you're dropped in a world that's completely natural to the writer, and you have to pick up how the world functions as you read; indeed, piecing together that part of the human experience is part of the pleasure of reading, say, Tolstoy or Casanova. So having someone hold your hand while you walk into the world feels intrusive, as if it's trying far too hard.
However. However however however. About three or four chapters in and I couldn't put the book down, because Miéville had stopped doing descriptive tour-guide narrative and started doing world-building. And the world is pretty darn spectacular - just close enough to ours to feel like it works, but far enough for it to - well. To enter the world of sci-fi/fantasty. I can see why Miéville likes the label "weird fiction" - close enough for reality, far away enough to allow oddness.
The structure of the plot is a standard police procedural, a murder whodunnit, where the police forces of two cities must cooperate to work out who has perpetrated this particularly unpleasant crime and why. The twist in the story is that the two cities occupy the same geographical space, layered over each other and intertwined between each other. The occupants of the city have to unsee each other's buildings, tourists aren't allowed in without strict training, and ignoring the rules leads to Breach, and the invocation of Breach isn't pretty.
The characters are actually interesting, likeable - the protagonist is strangely detatched, but a believable detective, someone who gets his teeth into something and then will keep worrying away at it, terrier-like. There is a lot of academia in there, and I have to say I think that was my favourite bit - not only was he writing academics, he was writing archaeologists and archaeology grad students, which was awesome. As in, a well-realised portrait of That Sort Of Person at both levels. And the resolution was pleasingly neat - not trite, not quite, but - fitting, I think. Appropriate. And rather dryly wry on the nature of the protagonist, which we'd seen from the beginning - it worked.
So, yes. Deciding to read more Miéville was definitely one of my better decisions.
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I have met Mieville, at a very small event here.. He is fascinating to hear, if a little unnerving to behold.
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I can forgive it the early chapters being a bit hand-heldy, as it's a complex world he's about to drop on us, and I think jumping straight in might just be too confusing, and lessen the impact. (Or maybe I've read too many books this year where I have gotten lost at how the world works, as they deliberately threw too many of confusing ideas at you, and there's no way of juggling them all in your head without multiple readings). And it *is* a crime novel - it's got to have suspense, and, yes, by a few chapters in, the suspense of how the hell these two cities worked had built up to just the right level for it to be the correct time for the world building to occur.
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Funny, I thought of it as the very opposite of hand-holdy. Borlú has no reason to remark on the strangest things in his world because they feel completely natural to him, which is why he describes these INCREDIBLY WEIRD DETAILS in such a detached, passive way. He focuses on his job -- which is the one thing that is not weird to a real-world reader -- and the rest we have to pick up in snatches. I thought it was a brilliant move on Miéville's part; the first time I think I detected something strange was when he said near the end of an early chapter "I saw a woman who wasn't there, and we both looked away." I was screeching WTFWTFWTF at the page, but Borlú saw no reason to enlighten me until much much later, and that only because he is forced by circumstances to deal with outsiders.
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Yay for Mieville
Re: Yay for Mieville