The City in the Middle of the Night

The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders, 366 pages

January is a tidal-locked planet, where the Earthborn colonizers have settled into two cities in the dusky area between the absolute light and the absolute darkness. Xiophant is a highly regulated place with bells tolling the hours and automatic shutters creating "nightfall"; a crazily complex economy with ten different kinds of currency; and a rigid language and social structure. Argelo, on the other hand, is a chaotic, time-free, slap-dash mess of a city ruled by nine competing crime families. The story, however, revolves around two women: Sophie, a lower-class student in Xiophant, who takes the fall for a crime that she didn't commit; and Mouth, the last member of a nomadic people that once traveled through the dusk, but is now a smuggler braving the wilds between the two cities. As the tale unfolds in its many twists and turns, we see outlaws and uprisings, threats both human and non-, and the toll that ignoring the past can play on people on both the micro and macro scale. Anders has created here an odd world full of strange flora and fauna, yes, but she's also created a story that resonates much much closer to home. While it took me a bit to get into, I loved this book, and I'll be ruminating on it for some time to come.