The first novel by China Miéville that I read was Embassytown which I enjoyed but found that it wasn’t all that it was hyped up to be. I did love the book’s premise though and, if anything, that of this book is even more far out. The City and the City is first and foremost a police procedural but I’d say it counts as science-fiction as well as the entire book is really about its unique setting itself. In the end, I feel that Miéville still doesn’t fully justify how the city could possibly work as he describes it but damn if he hasn’t gone most of the way and thought up all kinds of possibilities that I’d never even imagined in fleshing out the physical reality of his city.

Tyador Borlú is a police inspector in the city-state of Besźel. He is assigned to investigate the murder of Mahalia Geary, a foreigner whose body has been found on the street. Following the clues, he learns that Mahalia is actually a student in Ul Qoma, the twin city to Besźel, and is interested in the unique history of the two cities. These cities actually inhabit the same physical space but are notionally and legally distinct. Some streets and neighborhoods are entirely in one city or the other. But others are crosshatched, meaning they are in both. Natives are trained from birth to distinguish the differences between the two cities in terms of colors, dress, architectural styles and even the gaits of people. They must unsee, unhear and unsmell the sights, sounds and smells coming from the foreign city. Failure to do so means breach and this seems to be one of most heinous crimes possible. As you might expect Tyador determines that Mahalia was killed in Ul Qoma and her body disposed in Besźel. Believing that this constitutes a clear case of breach, he is prepared to hand over the case to the mysterious authority that handles such crimes, known simply as Breach. But then evidence emerges that the body was transported across the border legally and so he must go to Ul Qoma to assist on their end of the investigation.

The way that the setting is so firmly rooted in some version of our world both makes it feel more real and, for a time, helps obfuscate just how weird the twin cities are. We can gather from the clues that this is somewhere in eastern Europe. We know that the US exists because it recognizes Besźel and has placed sanctions on Ul Qoma and so on. There is a pleasingly well-developed backdrop of political and economic problems with Besźel having fallen behind Ul Qoma in terms of development and there being factions in both cities who want to unite the two or have one completely conquer the other. The detailed step by step investigation that the book walks us through is great as well as Tyador has his officers try to find and interrogate witnesses, identify the van the corpse was dumped from, find its owner and so on. It’s a very satisfying crime novel with all the usual trappings of conspiracy at the highest levels, anonymous tips from a mysterious source, cross-border shenanigans reminiscent of the Cold War era, and so on. Tyador is likable enough as the grizzled detective who just wants to bring the poor girl some measure of justice. I really appreciate that most of the characters in the novel aren’t odious personalities and that the plot doesn’t devolve into a tiresome chain of mutual betrayals.

But of course the real draw of the book is the very detailed description of the seemingly impossible arrangement of these two cities. In the parts of each city that can completely total, that is belonging solely to one city, life proceeds pretty much the same as everywhere else even though the residents of Besźel need to blank out the sight of the taller towers of Ul Qoma over their own skyline. In the crosshatched areas however they must learn to be aware enough those of the other city to avoid collisions and accidents but not to register them consciously. Of course there must be consideration for vehicles going out of control and inadvertently crossing the border, or criminals smuggling goods from one city to the other, or other disasters, and incredibly Miéville covers a large number of these edge cases. The novel teases for a long time how in extremis the rules are actually enforced and whether or not Breach has access to more than human technology or mysterious powers to be held in such dread by the citizens of both cities. How the distinction between the two cities ever came about is shrouded in mystery and the uncovering the seemingly impossible artefacts of this Precursor era is part of the work of archaeologists like the deceased Mahalia.

Though Miéville takes these explanations astonishingly far, including a look into the inner workings of Breach, I do note that it doesn’t quite cover all eventualities and some secrets of the twin cities are left unanswered even at the end. Of the mechanisms that are described, I’m doubtful that many will really work in practice. For example, being able to differentiate between the residents of the two cities by gait alone is kind of a stretch. Miéville wants to play with the idea that the barrier between the two cities is notional and arbitrary, but the minds of the people who live there, trained and acclimatized to always follow the rules, make the barrier real. But all that means is that is it’s really just another kind of cultural taboo and as events in the plot prove, when push comes to shove, taboos absolutely do get broken. Similarly there must be more to Breach than just culturally inculcated dread in order for it to be as effective as it is in enforcing the rules even if it isn’t perfect. I think that the rulers of each city must know more about the Breach than is let on but the book doesn’t pick up on this thread. I still love this as a high concept book of course as even dreaming this setup up is an amazing feat of creativity, never mind the work that has gone into fleshing out all of the details.

I don’t usually read thrillers or crime fiction so I’m not the best judge of the genre. As far as I can tell, this is a solid detective novel as Tyador works the case with old-fashioned but reliable techniques and all of the clues are joined up plausibly. As a science-fiction novel, I’d rate it as top-notch as it is an incredible piece of world-building and its themes of notional places and hidden spaces between cities are just so strong and evocative. I ended up not liking Embassytown much as it’s full of interesting stylistic inventions but in the end I don’t think it added much that is truly new. The City and the City however I loved as it conjures images of all of my childhood fantasies of hidden places and secret cities and it’s so grognardy in how it goes into every little detail of the cities. I wasn’t a fan of Miéville before but I certainly am now.