I love almost everything The Brothers recommend I read. But The City and The City is by far the most radical, interestingly obscure detective mystery I have ever read. No doubt Mieville is a genius, no freaking doubt. Reading The City and The City he asks you to try and keep up with the scene, and the scenery and how it is and un-is. All the while tantalizing you with the murder of a young woman of unknown origins in a City near a City of unknown origins. He is juggling water balloons filled to bursting with ideas and creation and steadily, page by page, he throws one at you which catches and explodes in your face or your mind or your throat. While the rest spin up and down, dizzying you with their half-seen beauty.
I have just finished it. I feel like the characters are standing around me chatting to themselves, unseeing me and my reminisces, my room and my alien mannerisms. They have crosshatched into my life and I will miss them when they drift away, lost in the intercese between their hard covered world and my own soft centered, self centered space.
If I turn now and catch a glimpse of Cowri, or Dhatt, or the etherial avatar Tye, will I be in Breach?
Don't think I'll chance it.
Thank you Brothers.
Thank you China.
