Book Review: The City & The City by China Miéville
In a brief, one‑minute vlog, the reviewer rates China Miéville’s novel The City & The City as “half brilliant” on their personal Brilliant‑to‑Bollocks scale. They liken the book’s dystopian atmosphere to George Orwell’s 1984 and highlight its noir elements, noting personal enthusiasm for noir writing. The reviewer mentions difficulty following some of the novel’s descriptive passages, attributing this to their neurodiversity; they resorted to watching the TV adaptation to clarify the plot. They find the novel’s central premise of “seeing and unseeing” intriguing and see it as a vehicle for political commentary on contemporary issues. Overall, they praise the prose and style but feel that some descriptive choices hide too much information, leading to confusion for them.
