Lucas Blogs About Books

Oh, another inductee to the name much larger than the title on the spine club. So, what's this book's deal? Well, Hypothetical Reader, The City in the Middle of the Night  is Charlie Jane Anders's follow-up to the stellar: All the Birds in the Sky . Oh, right! You fucking loved that book! You're damn right I did! What did you think of this book? It's good. Not as good as All the Birds in the Sky ? Not as good. Although it is also notably, an entirely different genre of speculative fiction. While Birds  was a blend of urban fantasy and near-future sci-fi set in San Francisco, City  has more of a New Wave Science Fiction vibe. It's set on January, a tidally-locked planet whose day and night sides are equally inhospitable to human life, leaving only a narrow band of twilight with a few settlements. It's been a long time since humans first came to January, following an ecological disaster on Earth, and now the technology that's allowed th...

Huh, how considerate of that reader to hold the book so that his webcam could see the title and author. Charlie Jane Anders'(s?) All the Birds in the Sky  is one of those books that makes you feel sorry for whatever you read next (Seriously, how is anything in the to-read pile supposed to top that ?). It makes you want to sing along to your iPod while you ride your bike home from work. Or you know, some other thing that makes you feel weirdly alive. I'll cut to the chase, this is the best novel I've read in a while. Not one of the best. Not the best in a particularly genre. The best. Certainly the best novel I've reviewed since starting this blog. Which reminds me,  this'll be a normal review. Hypothetical Reader's not in this one (sorry to Hypothetical Reader's hypothetical fans). My enthusiasm for this book is so unabashed, there's no need to temper this review with a rhetorical device. This is the story of Patricia Delfine and Laurence Armste...