City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders

I’ve been waiting to read this book for a long time. I’m not sure why, I must have read a short story by an author before or maybe was just really intrigued by the premise. It was out at the library forever until finally, finally one day…
It’s the concept, really, that’s the main draw here. Set on a tidally locked planet, this is a strikingly original world colonized and created and divided, morphed, terraformed and shaped by Earthlings to make their own. In this world, two cities stand, as different as can be. One, regimented strictly down to minute details, into work and sleep ratios. One, unruly and free spirited. And then there’s the wilderness surrounding and dividing the two.
The protagonist of this novel will traverse all of that territory, driven by an impossible love. The characters in this book are mostly quite young, which is important to remember, because these sort of obsessively passionate unrequited loves are primarily a thing of youth, when there’s a certain lack of experience driven aptitude and energy for it.
And so, for the love of Bianca, Sophie will live, die and just about any crazy thing. Sadly, Bianca isn’t worth the love, the dynamic is essentially right out of My Summer of Love or similar, but this isn’t a logical thing, it’s on a different level entirely, it’s tragic, but it’s the motor of this entire story.
Through the unforgiving conditions, the oppressive gloom and the brutal light of the skies above, Sophie will navigate the politics and dangers and agendas, revolutions and insurrections, befriend magical creatures and distinctly magic free people and eventually will come to reinvent herself as someone who isn’t merely defined by her one love.
It’s a grand adventure, it really is, a coming of age story too, I suppose. A character forming quest set in a magnificently imagined world. It’s science fiction blended with fantasy, genre wise, so that a classic colonization scenario has a lot of (not sure quite how to describe it) middle ages(no, not that, not really) flavor. The Earth they left behind was a place of city states, a throwback to the Age of Enlightenment, which informed the selection of colonists and subdivision of labor on the ship and subsequent racial and cultural divisions. It’s very clever and different. The new colonized world isn’t as progressive as you’d think, not socially (Sophie’s love very much doesn’t dare to speak its name) not politically, they have a Prince and a very strict monarchal rule. (At least one of the cities does.) There’s so much going on and it’s all pretty spectacular to behold. A real feast for the mind.
So did it live up to my expectations, which for not just reason were very high indeed? Yes, it did, mostly. I absolutely loved the writing, the originality, the wildness of the author’s imagination. I found the characters to be interesting, dimensional and engaging, although Bianca mostly just stays a classic sort of socially climbing manipulative mean girl. The planet and all that’s on it were awesome. And the entire novel very much had the epic quest thing down. But, and the buts here are relatively minor and would never make the Kardashian cut, the novel read so slowly. Granted, I was sleepy, but that isn’t unusual, and I’m by no means a slow reader, and this novel read long, way longer than 368 page count should have warranted. And the other thing is the ending…didn’t love it. That was the main detractor for me really. I expected more, it was such a grand production and then it kind of…just ended. I was reading the last chapters thinking, ok, time to wrap things up, much needs to be wrapped up, and the percentage was approaching 100 and it wasn’t being wrapped up. And when it did, it was almost…well, maybe not hastily, but at least way too casual for this novel and for all the investment (time and emotional) it took.
But aside from that, this was an excellent space adventure and I enjoyed it very much. Well imagined and thoroughly entertaining story that should delight lots of science fiction fans. Recommended.