Review: The City & the City by China Miéville

I found this book a bit underwhelming. The actual murder mystery isn’t all that gripping. The characters are flat and don’t change at all throughout the story. The dialog is mostly uninteresting. All that’s left is the central premise, about two overlapping cities where the citizens have to pretend the citizens of the other city don’t exist, or face harsh penalties from a mysterious organization called Breach. While somewhat unique, I found this premise utterly implausible when taken at face value, and only mildly interesting when interpreted as a metaphor for real life. Yes, there are things we all choose to “unsee” in our lives, but so what? What’s the bigger point? What leads to that? What do we do about it? Those are the interesting questions, and the book doesn’t really touch on any of them.

In short, meh.

Rating: 3 stars