Mieville gives us yet another truly imaginative setting, a place unlike any other of which I've ever read; I found it particularly thought provoking on multiple levels given what's happened in the world around me in the past eight years. That's not to deny that at times the setting feels contrived, or that I eventually tired of descriptions of the mechanics of how it works, but these are relatively minor quibbles. I can't really say more about the central conceit without getting into spoiler territory.

The book has an openly acknowledged debt to Raymond Chandler, and indeed the twists and turns of the plot felt like something that, with a few obvious changes, would have felt right at home in Philip Marlowe’s 1940s Los Angeles.

My complaints about this book center on fairly shallow and not particularly compelling characterization. Dhatt is the guy who drops the f-bomb a lot. Corwi is the lady who says “yes, boss” a lot. Ashil is the authority figure who eventually needs help. Yolanda and her hapless beau Aikam seem like simpletons. Given a little more patience and attention to detail, and a lot more empathy, and I could have cared about all of them.

This is a good book, well worth your time, but with more compelling characters is could have been a great book. ( )

While this book is pretty confusing to begin with, it's definitely worth sticking with. Mieville's worldbuilding skills are great as always, and although this wasn't quite so epic in scope as the Bas-Lag books, there's still clearly a lot going on in the cities where the book is set. It's pretty much a detective novel, except for the setting - two cities which happen to be in the same physical location, where citizens of one city can't look at or even acknowledge those from the other (unless they go through passport control).

Anyway, on the Mieville scale I think this was better than Iron Council but not quite as good as The Scar. Still a good read, though. ( )

Recommended!

I don’t dare describe the storyline in The City & The City beyond the publisher’s synopsis because I risk ruining the striking world that Mieville creates. Trust me, the less you know about the book going in, the more powerful the experience of reading it will be.

Most times when someone tries to blend two distinct genres – in this case science fiction and hard-boiled crime – it doesn’t work. It this case, it works so well that the science fiction steals the show by fading into the background. Let me explain. Mieville’s writing initially struck me as broken, unclear and difficult. There was little flow to it and I had to reread sections while I tried to get the gist of what was going on. However, what I found as I continued on was that this style had real purpose. The whole point was that Inspector Borlu inhabits a broken, unclear and difficult place filled with impossible rules that are often broken but impossible to enforce. Mieville is able to shape his writing to where it actually becomes part of the location. As the story progresses, the writing actually adapts to follow the changing environment of Inspector Borlu, and Mieville did it so deftly that I didn’t consciously realize it had happened until I was nearly finished with the book. But while the immense scene-building was challenging my perceptions, the story itself moved smoothly along as a hard-boiled detective novel. I particularly appreciated how Mieville managed to dangle what seemed like a somewhat obvious plot carrot in front of the reader only to convincingly pull it away. I mentally applauded that twist with the wish that other writers would do the same more often.

My only trivial gripe with the book was I felt that some of the characters were a bit underdone. While the story is told from Inspector Borlu’s first-person perspective, I thought that there was room to flesh out those around him a bit more. However, the real stars of the book were the cities themselves. Mieville’s imaginative eye for detail is rivaled by very few. He creates a unique environment that is a blurred reflection of the world we ourselves exist in – a dark, brooding tale of deception and gritty human commentary. The City & The City is not straight-line storytelling – and that is exactly what makes it so good. If you have a little patience early on, you will be rewarded with a truly unique story told by a master of the art of scene-building. ( )

Inspector Tyador Borlu investigates crime in Beszel, in Eastern Europe. This is no ordinary city, however. It is interlaced with its twin city, Ul Qoma, and the buildings, people and events of one must be "unseen" by those in the other at all times. When a mysterious body shows up, Borlu must investigate, who she is and where she came from, without shaking up the connection between the two cities.

This is a brilliantly conceived and unique setting, which is undoubtedly the strongest character in the novel. Mieville captures the claustrophobia and paranoia of life in a totalitarian regime perfectly, and sets a cracking good murder mystery in it, to boot. The characters never quite came into three-dimensional existence for me, but the story is page-turning enough without that. ( )

This book is an entertaining police procedural inhabiting the same space as a philosophical examination of the arbitrary artificiality of borders and nationalities. It calls to mind Italo Calvino's _Invisible Cities_ and had me enthralled from start to finish. A book that will recall to you the magic of the in-between spaces. Fantastic, in every sense of the word. ( )