The City in the Middle of the Night

Charlie Jane Anders
The City in the Middle of the Night Cover

The City in the Middle of the Night

sweko
6/5/2019
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Very nice novel, told alternatively from a third person and first person perspective.

The story has a bleak setting, on the tidally locked planet of January, where the last few remaining Earth cities moved via a generation ship. It's heavily implied that we managed to screw up the Earth first, and that the flight was a mostly desperate measure.

On January, the day side is extremely hot and bright, and the night side is too cold and totally dark, so humanity can only live on a narrow strip between the eternal day and night. And there are monsters lurking in the night. So, the society is crumbling, the technology is failing, but that has never stopped people from inventing bureaucracy and authoritarianism.

Our heroes, in a nice remove from the usual speil, don't want to change the system, but are dragged along by circumstances through what could be a revolution and/or final unification with the native intelligence.

Very workable as a standalone novel, but would not mind to see it expanded into a series...