(China Mieville)When we were in Rome, I was ordered to read another China Mievelle book (having finally talked my wife into reading Perdido Street Station despite having bug-headed ladies). Since my wife was reading Kraken on the Kindle, and two people reading a book at once can lose the other's place, I gave The City & The City a shot, and I think I made her mad by repeatedly asking "So this gets better, right?" and "When does this get interesting?" until I realized that, ha ha, no, it doesn't get better, and it gets interesting when you put it down and pick up another book.
Here's the problem: Mievelle has an interesting idea, but nothing else. The interesting idea is that there are two cities, occupying the same physical space, and they both make it a law to ignore the other (kind of a "I'm not speaking to you" writ city-sized). What does Mievelle do with this idea? Nothing; He throws it out there and leaves it to die like a flopping fish. This should have if anything been a short story, but even then I don't know if there's enough meat for that here. If this had remained just an idea un-fleshed out in his notebook, nothing of value would have been lost.
Grade: F+
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