Survival tale incorporates romance, political fable
Following her awardwinning first novel, “All the Birds in the Sky,” which artfully combined science fiction with magic, Charlie Jane Anders turns to a darker and more hardedged scenario with her second. “The City in the Middle of the Night” is set in the far future on a distant planet, which is tidally locked, meaning the same side always faces the planet’s sun.
The human settlers, descendants of the survivors of a generationslong starship voyage, are precariously confined to a twilight zone between the searing heat of the sun side and the frozen darkness on the other. To make life even more hazardous, the planet is given to violent storms, and dangerous native creatures informally called “crocodiles” and “bison” — even though they really resemble neither — roam the darkness.
While this sounds like the setting for a harrowing tale of survival — and at times it is, such as in a sequence featuring a treacherous journey across the planet’s Sea of Murder — Anders focuses largely on the alliances, loves and perceived betrayals of her main characters. She deftly contraststhe cities of Xiosphant and Argelo, which have adapted in different ways to the punishing environment.
In harshly regulated Xiosphant, Sophie has earned a scholarship to the prestigious Gymnasium, where she feels isolated because of her working-class background. She’s secretly in love with her roommate, the wealthier and somewhat
spoiled Bianca — who in turn is involved in what the government views as a radical student group. When Bianca steals a few “food dollars” from the Gymnasium and the police raid the student group looking for them, Sophie takes the rap. Instead of a night in jail, she’s made an example of, forced to climb a nearby mountain into the frozen darkness with little hope of survival. Saved by one of the alien “crocodiles,” she manages to make it back to the city, where she hides out, fearful of being found by the police.
Meanwhile, a group of itinerant traders arrive in Xiosphant, and among them is Mouth, one of the last survivors of a nomadic group. Mouth hates city life, but when she learns that a document revered by her people is housed in the local palace, she is determined not to leave until she can steal it. Like Sophie, Mouth is something of an exile, and the most rewarding aspect of Anders’ plot involves these outsiders learning whom to trust in an environment that is as unstable politically as it is geologically. Bianca, for example, is fully radicalized by what she believes is the police murder of Sophie, but is furious when she learns Sophie has secretly returned without contacting her. And neither she nor almost anyone else believes Sophie’s insistence that the natives actually have a highly developed civilization of their own; for Bianca, they’re just dumb animals to be controlled, introducing a rather pointed colonialist theme.
Anders sets out to do a lot in this novel. It’s at once a troubled romance, a political and environmental fable, a story of first contact with aliens, a rousing adventure complete with sea monsters and pirates, and, toward the end, an almost visionary evocation of an alien way of thinking as we learn more about those crocodiles and their world. That she succeeds at balancing all this is a testament to her growing sophistication as a novelist.
“The City in the Middle of the Night” is a darker, edgier tale than “All the Birds in the Sky,” with its grim setting and more desperate and brittle characters, but those characters stay with us. Anders makes a convincing case that the decisions they make, even when motivated by personal passions and resentments, are crucial to the very survival of their world.