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The City & The City |  | Author: China Mieville
Publisher: Pan
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
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Seller: ndhbullseyebooks
Rating:  56 reviews
Sales Rank: 1392
Media: Paperback
Pages: 373
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5.1 x 1
ISBN: 0330493108
EAN: 9780330493109
ASIN: 0330493108
Publication Date: January 1, 2010
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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Product Description
When the body of a murdered woman is found in the extraordinary, decaying city of Bes el, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks like a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlu of the Extreme Crime Squad. But as he probes, the evidence begins to point to conspiracies far stranger, and more deadly, than anything he could have imagined.
Amazon.co.uk Review
Certain writers absolutely defy categorisation – and China Miéville is most definitely of that rarefied company. His prose is exhilarating, poetic, coruscating with ideas and atmosphere – and it has enhanced a body of work that has almost no parallels in modern writing. Heretofore, if Miéville has brushed shoulders with any identifiable genres, they are those of fantasy and science fiction – which makes his remarkable new book, The City and The City, such a surprise. The author’s publishers compare this novel to Philip K Dick, Raymond Chandler and 1984 – which at least gives a series of corollaries for this book, however tentative. There are elements here of the crime thriller, but very much refracted through Miéville’s highly individual imagination.The body of a murdered woman is discovered in the remarkable, crumbling European city of Besźel. Such a crime is par for the course for Inspector Tyador Borlú, who is the premier talent of the Extreme Crime Squad – until his investigations uncover evidence that bizarre and terrifying forces are at work – and soon both he and those around him will be in considerable peril. He must undertake an odyssey, a journey across borders both physical and psychical, to the city which is both a complement and rival to his own, that of Ul Qoma. Like all of China Miéville’s work, The City and The City will not be to everyone’s taste – the very individuality of the prose and the surrealistic inventiveness will not attract those preferring more prosaic fare. But for readers who hanker after untrammelled imagination – and look for literary fare unlike anything they have read before (even, it has to be said, by Miéville himself), then this is a journey to be undertaken. But with caution, perhaps⦠--Barry Forshaw
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 56
 I judged the book by it's cover...oops! September 6, 2010
Milton Fontaine (uk)
I agree with another reviewer, this could have been a really complex noir-like thriller with twist and turns, but I was actually a bit disappointed. Sure it has an interesting idea, although a rather typical one,based no doubt on the ethnicity in eastern Europe.But it kind of leads you on and then promptly dumps the good,rather mysterious idea in favour of a crass geopolitical one.I found that a bit flat to be honest,and then he does something which I hate in books...he raced towards the end as though he couldn't wait to get it over with.Of course you get this with all thrillers,that's the whole structural point, but with this book, none of it seems to matter,the story has lost it's lustre.Nevermind.
 Superior Fare August 30, 2010
Paul Rutherford (Berkshire, UK)
A very good SF political thriller, with a central idea that is both challenging and thought-provoking; two cities occupying the same space, with both populations taught to 'unsee' the other. Mieville uses a police procedural plot to maintain narrative drive, but his real achievement is to sustain his core theme and explore its implications.
Great premise wasted on a mundane plot August 17, 2010
Mark Poles (Cornwall, United Kingdom)
And it really is a fantastic premise. The way the two cities interact / don't interact / almost intereact is realised very deftly by an obviously talented author.
But, but, but...
For all the clever two cities stuff, the plot is essentially a rather mundane conspiracy whodunnit that rarely surprises or grips the reader. Characterisation is pretty non-existent. We are told very little about any of the supporting characters.
Oh, and did the publisher not use a proof-reader? There are grammatical errors all over the place - not just writing style oddities, but sentences that literally do not make sense. At one point I came across what I swear was the sort of note that the author might have scribbled on the manuscript to remind himself to go back and expand on something, never imagining it would get printed in the final book as part of the text.
Thinking on, this would have made a good short story where the interesting setting could have carried the plot. There just isn't enough plot here to justify a novel.
One final thought. If you read a lot of reviews on Amazon, you will almost certainly come across people who decide they hate a book (sometimes without reading it) because they dislike the author's politics. Strangely you get this a lot in science fiction (try reading some Robert Heinlein or Peter F Hamilton reviews). I'll hold my hand up and say that I find China Mieville's politics difficult to stomach (as did the 98.8% of voters who didn't vote for him when he stood as an MP in the last election). However, in his defence, those politics have no impact on this novel - I doubt anyone would be able to even tell which party he represented from the book - so they shouldn't affect anyone's review scores. Review the book, not the politician.
Great read but left me a bit unsatisfied August 13, 2010
Mr. Jr Ward (London)
The City and The City is a unique and fascinating book. Plus it is a good one.
Set in the fictional Eastern European city of Besz it follows a policeman as he tries to work out who killed a young woman found on an estate. As Inspect Borlu chasing down his suspects the scope of what is going on expands and we soon realise that Nationalists, fascists, politicians and even worse may be involved.
So far, so fairly standard.
The City and The City is a book with a highly original setting, however. The clue is in the title. There is another city that Borlu visits called Ul Qoma. Where this city actually is adds a huge new element to what would have been a merely interesting thriller.
I really enjoyed this book but it didn't quite do it for me. Apart from Borlu, all the characters seemed a bit flat. It is very well written but for reasons I can't go into, the book didn't quite go in the direction I wanted it to. I then found myself with a few questions that hadn't been satisfactorily answered and I don't think it was because Mieville was being purposefully enigmatic. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book but on reflection wanted something slightly different.
The City and The City has won numerous awards though, so it obviously completely satisfied some. It is good, atmospheric, clever, Kafka-esque, and so forth, but didn't quite tick all my boxes. Maybe it will yours - there isn't much out there like this, so you should give it a try.
Unfilmable, smart noir thriller July 18, 2010
Ikarus
The city & the city is a crime thriller set in a slightly alternative reality, in the cities of Besz and Ul Koma. It is also a work of significant imagination: Besz and Ul Koma are two cities that cover the same ground, but choose to act as separate, independent city states. People in Besz "unsee" people and buildings that are in Ul Koma and vice versa. Enforcing this strict regime of selective tunnel vision is a mysterious force called Breach.
One day, a murdered woman's body is found in Besz, and a police detective from the extreme crime squad is set on the case. But there is something strange about it, and her, and soon he finds himself in over his head in conspiracy theories, corruption, and international liaisons...
China Mieville has an enviable imagination. Perdido Street Station was a benchmark, and while his other novels are not always up to the same standards of tour-de-force-ness, The City & The City is absolutely, on many levels, a work of genius. The satirical premise is almost credible, the detail is impressive, and the story is gripping. In fact, it is almost a 5 star novel.
The things that work against it, in the end, are the resolution of the crime (I was a little disappointed), and the fact that he does stray from a perfectly realistic world into the borderline supernatural (especially when it comes to Breach), without being entirely consistent about it. In some scenes, reality is stretched in the same way that a wire fu action scene in a movie might stretch it, or Watchmen the comic book. Not all the way into definite super-reality, but enough to make suspension of disbelief an issue in an otherwise painfully realistic novel.
I'd definitely recommend this book as a fantastic, standalone example of Mieville's power of imagination, and a decent noir crime thriller. 4.5 out of 5 stars, really...
Showing reviews 1-5 of 56
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