Book Review: The City & The City by China Mieville

I decided to read The City & The City because it won a Hugo Award. So far it has made me question the sanity of everyone who voted for it. It's made me question my own sanity for continuing to read it past the first 5-10 pages.

First, I really hate when writers feel the need to invent new words for everything. It takes the reader out of the story when they have to consult the cheat-sheet they are required to create and maintain in order to keep up with the story and the over-use of invented terminology. Sometimes this amounts to needing to create an English translation of the story while you are reading.

Another thing I find annoying is bad grammar and punctuation. This book has an over-abundance of both. Proper punctuation is sparse, and there are too many extremely short, non-sensical sentences. I had to read some sentences three or four times to figure out what the writer meant. Good punctuation would have resolved the problem.

The plot, so far, is completely unfathomable, other than a detective trying to solve the murder of a woman. So far I have read nothing that makes this book science fiction. Nothing I have read in any synopsis lends me to believe this is a science fiction novel, either, but more of a political fiction. I am completely baffled why this was even nominated for a Hugo, and even more baffled how it won the award for Best Novel.

I have NO idea what all the seen/unseen business is about, or the cross-hatching of streets. Nothing in the first 10% of the book has explained it, either. It is as though the writer assumed that I would already know everything about this setting, though how I was supposed to already have this knowledge, I have no idea. Why not take a paragraph or two and clue me in? Why make me feel like I'm the only one who wasn't let in on some enormous joke?

The City & The City has an air of "Look how clever I am", without actually being clever at all. This is simply really bad writing. I don't have time to bother with really bad writing where there are so many well-written books out there just waiting for me to read and enjoy.