I download the Amazon “free samples” of books before I buy. If I can’t make it through 5%, then I put the book aside, no damage done. I don’t even track it. Most of those are quickly forgotten. But when I make the buying decision, I commit myself to reading the book. I still have a way out though: I can abandon it and put it under the category “Books (not finished reading).” I still review those books, but I don’t give them a rating as I don’t think it would be fair. However, I still have thoughts about the book that I want to share with readers, and possibly reasons why I abandoned the book. So I write reviews.
The City in the Middle of the Night almost became a Book (not finished reading). It was truly hard work for me to stay with it. It’s a fairly large book (5907 locations), so it was a slog.
In the far future (approximately the year 2500 plus on Earth) a number of earth city states build a space ship to leave for another planet. They call it the Mothership, and it’s a generation ship. The journey takes long enough so only the great-grandchildren of the people leaving will actually be alive when they arrive. The City in the Middle of the Night plays on the target planet many centuries after they arrived. The Mothership, while still in orbit, has lost contact with the colonists, all the space shuttles are defunct, most technology is lost, and the people have devolved to a feudalist society similar to what we had in Europe during the dark ages around the years 500 to 1000. There are just two main cities where most of the population live. Xiosphanti hosts a highly regulated society where everything people do is structured by the government. Argelo is a bustling trader city where everything goes but resources are scarce and crime is out of control.
But that’s not the major point of the book. The planet is a tidally locked planet, similar to how earth’s moon is tidally locked, and the same side always faces the earth. Their sun is a bright, hot sun, so bright, that any exposure to direct sunlight is instantly deadly to humans. The day side of the planet is constantly baked by the sun, and any water on that side is always boiling. The night side is completely dark and always frozen. Humanity has to live entirely on a narrow ring along the terminator, just below the horizon of the day, so there never is any direct sunlight. Within just a few kilometers they can go from bright daylight and warmth near the day side to arctic condition on the border of the night side. Notwithstanding what weather conditions on such a planet on the border between day and night would consist of, and whether it could allow for sufficient stability for humans to live, such a narrow band where life can exist is pretty challenging, and it would shape everything about the lives of the people there. As is turns out, there are “monsters” that live in the night, and any human that ventures too far in that direction has perished – which has been going on for centuries.
I now have told you everything that I found interesting about the book. As it turns out, with so much potential, the story is pretty much about four young women, Bianca, Mouth, Alyssa and Sophie, the protagonist, and their relationships with each other, and their adventures. Take away the deadly sun on a tidally locked planet, take away that they live in a devolved society many centuries after landing from an interstellar generational journey, the story is about four girls making their way in a tribal, brutal society where everyone has to fend for herself. The characters are not well developed, the psychobabble made my eyes roll, and nothing about their feelings and responses is credible. And it goes on for an entire book. Here is just one page:
Seeing Bianca depressed makes me feel soft inside, like my bones are chalk. I sit down next to her, careful not to mess up her dress. Her curved neck looks so slender.
Neither of us talks. I’m not good at breaking silences.
“I don’t even know why you would want to be friends with me,” she says.
I get up and fetch the teapot from down the hall, and a few moments later I’m pouring hot tea into a mug, which I press into Bianca’s hands. “Warm yourself up,” I say in a soft voice. Bianca nods and takes a big swallow of the acrid brew, then lets out a long sigh, as though she realizes she’s back where she belongs. We keep stealing the teapot for our own dorm room, because hardly anyone else uses it, but some busybody always sneaks into our room when we’re out and reclaims the flowery globe for the common room, where it technically belongs.
“Warm yourself up,” I say a second time. By the time the tea is gone, Bianca’s bouncing up and down and cracking jokes again, and I’ve almost forgotten that I never answered her question about why I want to be her friend.
— Anders, Charlie Jane. The City in the Middle of the Night . Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition.
Just. Very. Boring.
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