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The City in the Middle of the Night

2/5. Two human cities with opposing approaches to society exist precariously in the day/night meridian of a tidally locked planet. A student from the regimented and autocratically governed city encounters one of the native aliens, and things start happening.

I did not like or particularly get this. To be fair, I read it in chunks over six months, thus the not getting, which seems a direct result of not particularly liking. There are lots of elements here that should work for me – intertwined pairs of women with intense relationships, debates about politics and persuasion and empathy – but there was just something sketched and incomplete about this. Also, I really do not enjoy reading about someone get taken advantage of by the same person in the same way over and over and over and over again. At a certain point, you start to blame her for her own victimization, which is not fun.

Surprising after how much I enjoyed peeling back the layers of her All the Birds in the Sky. And listening to her talk on her podcast (Our Opinions Are Correct) clearly a lot of thought went into this book. I just didn't get it back out again.

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