Showing posts with label China Mieville. Show all posts
Showing posts with label China Mieville. Show all posts

Monday, May 20, 2013

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.