The City And The City - China Mieville
Not sure how to feel about this one overall. Interesting concept, clever and well read use of postmodern philosophy to create a kind of "real" magic. - I couldn't stand the prose. Too much use of sentence structure that seemed to do nothing but slow you down. It'd be one thing if it felt like the author was being creative, but he uses the same tricks over and over again, and I never seemed to get used to it. The characters were rather thin, although it definitely pulled off the "hard boiled detective" thing it was going for. I did like the mystery, but I found the conclusion and the reveal of the "magic" to be kind of disappointing. I found some of the characters to feel off. It's a feeling I find in my own writing, when I come back to it I often feel like certain characters just sort of flow, no resistance, not against the story, the reader, the author, or anything. Things are defined primarily by what they are not, so when a character is written as only what they are it feels like a facade. They don't feel real in a very real and in your face kind of a way. Then again, maybe it's realistic, police officers are police officers. So a story with a bunch of police officers that don't get too much time in the spotlight are only ever that.