The city in the middle of the night

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Title :

The city in the middle of the night / Charlie Jane Anders.

Title:

The city in the middle of the night

Author:

Anders, Charlie Jane

Format:

Books

Physical Description:

366 pages ; 25 cm

Edition:

First edition.

ISBN:

9780765379962

9780765379979

Production / Publication Information:

New York : Tor, [2019]

General Note:

"A Tom Doherty Associates book."

Summary:

""If you control our sleep, then you can own our dreams . . . And from there, it's easy to control our entire lives." The bestselling author of All the Birds in the Sky returns with a strange, haunting, and deeply human tale. Sophie serves coffee at an underground cafe. She stays in the shadows and listens to the troubles of the parlor guests, but does not draw attention to herself for one simple reason: Sophie is supposed to be dead. When a nationalistic revolution forces Sophie from her safe haven, she must make a dangerous journey to a new city, one that revels in hedonism and chaos. After joining up with a band of smugglers, she finds herself on a long and treacherous path that will lead her far closer to the truth of her entire world---and to the dangers that lurk even in the light of day" --

Language:

English

Genre:

Fantasy fiction.

Science fiction.

Subject Term:

Women revolutionaries -- Fiction.

Exiles -- Fiction.

Life on other planets -- Fiction.

Imaginary places -- Fiction.

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Material Type	Library	Call Number	Item Barcode	Location
Book	Searching... Andover - Memorial Hall Library	FICTION ANDERS	31330008774071	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Billerica Public Library	SCIENCE FICTION/ANDERS	33934004161429	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Boxford Town Library Storage	FIC ANDERS	32115002056156	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Burlington Public Library	F ANDERS	32116003607245	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Carlisle - Gleason Public Library	F ANDERS	32117001973555	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Chelmsford Public Library	SCI/FIC/ANDERS	31480011217863	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Georgetown Peabody Library	SF ANDERS	32120001255650	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Hamilton-Wenham Public Library	SF ANDERS	30470001689651	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Haverhill Public Library	SCIFI/ANDERS C	31479007060964	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Littleton - Reuben Hoar Library	SF ANDERS	39965002120474	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Lowell - Pollard Memorial Library	SCI FIC ANDERS	31481005364968	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Methuen - Nevins Memorial Library	SF AND	31548003222552	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Middleton - Flint Public Library	F ANDERS	32126001656623	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Newburyport Public Library	FIC ANDERS C	32128003734218	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... North Andover - Stevens Memorial Library	S-F ANDERS	31478010119650	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... North Reading - Flint Memorial Library	FIC ANDERS, C.	31550002325386	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Rowley Public Library	FIC AND	32130000924016	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Westford - J.V. Fletcher Library	F ANDERS (SF)	31990004727884	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

LOCUS AWARD FINALIST!

"This generation's Le Guin." --Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less

Charlie Jane Anders, the nationally bestselling author of All the Birds in the Sky delivers a brilliant new novel set in a hauntingly strange future with #10 LA Times bestseller The City in the Middle of the Night.

"If you control our sleep, then you can own our dreams... And from there, it's easy to control our entire lives."

January is a dying planet--divided between a permanently frozen darkness on one side, and blazing endless sunshine on the other. Humanity clings to life, spread across two archaic cities built in the sliver of habitable dusk.

But life inside the cities is just as dangerous as the uninhabitable wastelands outside.

Sophie, a student and reluctant revolutionary, is supposed to be dead after being exiled into the night. Saved only by forming an unusual bond with the enigmatic beasts who roam the ice, Sophie vows to stay hidden from the world, hoping she can heal.

But fate has other plans--and Sophie's ensuing odyssey and the ragtag family she finds will change the entire world.

Reviews (6)

School Library Journal Review

This sci-fi adventure is filled with hope and compassion despite overwhelming darkness. In the distant future, humans have abandoned Earth to colonize January, a tidally locked world where half the planet is in constant darkness while the other half is always in sunlight. Sophie is exiled to the frozen, shadowy side after taking the fall for a crime committed by her friend Bianca. The story alternates between the perspectives of these two young queer protagonists. Through incredible world-building and storytelling, this book immerses readers in its strange setting. Teens will empathize with the inhabitants, both human and other. Although the narrative is slow to begin, the ending will leave readers wanting more-hopefully a sequel is in the works. VERDICT Mesmerizing. For fans of Frank Herbert's Dune and Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows.-Melanie Leivers, Palm Beach Country -Library System, FL © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publisher's Weekly Review

Nebula Award winner Anders (All the Birds in the Sky) sets this riveting genre-bender on a tumultuous planet split into frigid darkness and searing sunlight. On the lighter side, in the rigidly controlled city of Xiosphant, shy student Sophie adores her friend, the outspoken Bianca. After Sophie takes the fall for Bianca's petty theft, she's left to die in the frozen wasteland, but she establishes a psychic bond with the creature that saves her. This connection gives her heartbreaking insight into the world of a sentient race Sophie dubs the Gelet, who have been hunted relentlessly by humans. Sophie later reunites with Bianca, now a violent revolutionary, and they fall in with a group of smugglers, including the fierce Mouth, who seeks an artifact linking her to her nomadic ancestors. After an outbreak of violence, they flee Xiosphant, and Sophie is shocked to learn that Bianca wants to use the Gelet, labeling them "animals." Anders's worldbuilding is intricate, embracing much of what makes a grand adventure: smugglers, revolutionaries, pirates, camaraderie, personal sacrifice, wondrous discovery, and the struggle to find light in the darkness. This breathlessly exciting and thought-provoking tale will capture readers' imaginations. Agent: Russell Galen, Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Guardian Review

The dark side of the planet January holds a surprising lesson in compassion for an outcast Charlie Jane Anders's Nebula award-winning debut All The Birds in the Sky (2016) was a quirky if ramshackle combination of futuristic science and magic that held together largely through the charm of Anders's voice. Her follow-up is a more carefully structured work: classic SF in the mode of Ursula K Le Guin or Octavia Butler. The planet January is tidally locked to its star, one side scorched by constant sunlight and the other a frozen wilderness of endless night, with human settlement confined to the narrow twilight zone between the two. Life is hard, sustained by ancient technologies that are starting to fail, the darkness behind the cities populated by terrifying monsters. The story begins when student Sophie takes the fall for a theft by her roommate, the more confident and beautiful Bianca. Punishment is extreme: Sophie is thrown to the night-side to die. She survives by connecting with the alien "crocodiles", telepathic creatures whose compassionate intelligence belies their giant pincers and tentacled hideousness. The main narrative is about the possibility of rapprochement between humans and aliens. Humans loathe the alien Gelets, and to the Gelets we are "piles of hot meat, giving off fear chemicals". It's well done if hardly original - decades ago Star Trek 's Captain Picard met aliens who saw human beings as "ugly bags of mostly water". This is a long novel, and it's not in a hurry to get where it's going. Anders's plotting isn't thin, exactly; it's just that storyline isn't what she finds most interesting. Instead she draws the reader into the socio-political detail of her imagined world: "Circadianism", the governing system of Sophie's home city, creating artificial 'Timefulness' to regulate its citizenry; or the Argelan language, which lacks tenses, qualifiers or distinctions, but has "a million different terms for relationships: lovers, parent/child, teacher/student, friend". This is a millennial's novel, featuring young people trying to make their way through an uncaring, corrupt and intermittently violent world. If this middle-aged reviewer found it sometimes hard to like the dramatis personae, that doubtless says more about the gap between real-world generations than about the novel. Though sometimes judgmental and self-righteous, Anders's characters are also emotionally sophisticated and passionate, and this is heartfelt and absorbing fiction.

Kirkus Review

After environmental sci-fi/fantasy (the award-winning All the Birds in the Sky, 2016) and pop-culture dystopia (Rock Manning Goes for Broke, 2018), Anders shifts gears for this sweeping work of anthropological/social sf.In the distant future, the descendants of a colony spaceship have settled precariously on the hostile planet of January, swarming with vicious predators and dangerous weather patterns. One side of the planet continually faces the sun, while the other faces the frozen dark of space. Humans have built two main cities on the light side: the rigidly rules- and caste-bound Xiosphant, where guards wait to seize you for the slightest infraction, and the more licentious Argelo, run by various warring gangs. In Xiosphant, shy, working-class student Sophie idolizes her upper-crust roommate, Bianca, who loves parties and seeking power. But Bianca's flirtation with revolution drives Sophie first into the brutal hands of the police, and then into the saving pincers and tentacles of January's nightside-living, sentient native species, dismissed by the colonists as brute beasts. But these creatures, whom Sophie dubs the "Gelet," develop a psychic bond with her, and their willingness to share understanding and friendship changes her forever. One person the new Sophie slowly manages to influence is Mouth, a smuggler and survivor of an otherwise extinct nomadic band, who's desperately seeking both a connection to her lost past and a reason to forge a future. But ultimately, Sophie can't exert a similar influence over Bianca; despite Bianca's claims of caring for her, she chooses to exploit Sophie's vulnerabilities instead of granting her the understanding and acceptance Sophie craves. In our world, Bianca would represent the worst kind of faux "woke" liberal. She's an angry woman who thinks she's making a difference, but she doesn't really want to help people or even listen to them; she just wants to be the one in charge and profit from it. Watching Sophie come into her own and gradually (and almost too late) realize that the Bianca she loves doesn't exist is inevitable, sad, and, eventually, empowering.Anders contains multitudes; it's always a fascinating and worthwhile surprise to see what she comes up with next. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Night and day are places, not changes occasioned by the rotation of the planet; the only two human settlements are treacherously far apart; and life is harsh, bound by incineration and impossible cold. Mouth is an outsider in the city of Xiosphant, part of a traveling band of trader-smugglers, the Resourceful Couriers, and the only survivor of the nomadic Citizens. In Xiosphant, time and sleep are tightly regulated. Sophie, who has made it into the university and has always had trouble sleeping during the shuttered times, becomes part of a group of student revolutionaries. Caught, sentenced to be executed, and forced to climb Old Mother Mountain, Sophie encounters a deadly, tentacled indigenous life-form that saves her from bone-shattering cold and, communicating through thought transference, befriends her. Violence, politics, betrayal, love, friendship, encounters with alien predators, and experiences in a dying city entwine to create a conflicted world in an even stronger novel than Anders' Nebula Award-winning All the Birds in the Sky (2016); a tale that can stand beside such enduring works as Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Frank Herbert's Dune (1965), and Dan Simmons' Hyperion (1989).--Diana Tixier Herald Copyright 2018 Booklist

Library Journal Review

Anders's much awaited follow-up to All the Birds in the Sky takes the reader to the distant planet January; its dark and light sides are fixed, with no day/night cycle. Humanity clings to life in two cities along the dusk line, one authoritarian and regimented, the other libertine and chaotic. Two young women are caught up in violent revolutionary politics that lead them to revelations about their world and eventually to a third strange and secret city. Anders's ambitious worldbuilding is reminiscent of China Mieville, making facets of January vividly alien and human by turns, and the protagonists' journeys as they cope with and grow past their separate traumas are an entirely relatable odyssey. Narrators Laura Knight Keating and Jennifer O'Donnell alternate viewpoint chapters centering on Sophie, naïve and afraid, and Mouth, scarred and closed off, and their readings are expressive and personal. VERDICT Recommended for readers who want tales of life on strange worlds, such as Ursula K. Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness and encounters with the unknown like Carl Sagan's Contact. ["An intricate tale of colonialism and evolution on both physical and social levels": LJ Winter 2018 starred review of the Tor hc.]--Jason Puckett, Georgia State Univ. Lib., Atlanta