✍ Scribed by China Mieville
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
The City & The City. Mieville is well known as a modern fantasist (and urbanist), but from book to book he's tried on different genres, and here he's fully hard-boiled, stripping down to a seen-it-all detective's voice that's wonderfully appropriate for this story of seen and unseen. His detective is Inspector Tyador Borlu, a cop in Beszel whose investigation of the murder of a young foreign woman takes him back and forth across the highly policed border to Ul Qoma to uncover a crime that threatens the delicate balance between the cities and, perhaps more so, Borlu's own dissolving sense of identity. In his tale of two cities, Mieville creates a world both fantastic and unsettlingly familiar, whose mysteries don't end with the solution of a murder. --_Tom Nissley_
Starred Review. Better known for New Weird fantasies (_Perdido Street Station_, etc.), bestseller Miéville offers an outstanding take on police procedurals with this barely speculative novel. Twin southern European cities Beszel and Ul Qoma coexist in the same physical location, separated by their citizens' determination to see only one city at a time. Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad roams through the intertwined but separate cultures as he investigates the murder of Mahalia Geary, who believed that a third city, Orciny, hides in the blind spots between Beszel and Ul Qoma. As Mahalia's friends disappear and revolution brews, Tyador is forced to consider the idea that someone in unseen Orciny is manipulating the other cities. Through this exaggerated metaphor of segregation, Miéville skillfully examines the illusions people embrace to preserve their preferred social realities. (June)
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When the body of a murdered woman is found in the extraordinary, decaying city of Beszel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks like a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad. But as he probes, the evidence begins to point to conspiracies far stranger, and more deadly,
SUMMARY: NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BYTHE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE SEATTLE TIMES, ANDPUBLISHERS WEEKLY When a murdered woman is found in the city of Beszel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks to be a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borluacute; of the Extreme Crime Squad. To inv
BONUS: This edition contains a *The City & The City* discussion guide and an excerpt from China Miéville's *Kraken*. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY *THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE SEATTLE TIMES*, AND *PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.* When a murdered woman is found in the city of Beszel, somew
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY *THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE SEATTLE TIMES*, AND *PUBLISHERS WEEKLY* When a murdered woman is found in the city of Beszel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks to be a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad. To inv
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY *THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE SEATTLE TIMES*, AND *PUBLISHERS WEEKLY* When a murdered woman is found in the city of Beszel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks to be a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad. To investiga