Annotations are helpful for librarians, booksellers, and anyone else who regularly suggests and recommends books. While they give some in-depth details, they also provide a neutral overview of the book including information about the book’s genre, setting, number of pages, and a plot summary. They also offer read-alikes so if someone like X book they might like this one. as I build my writing-about-books muscles, I’ll work to provide annotations for books I’ve read, a professional-style review, and some personal thoughts. Hopefully they are helpful and enjoyable!

Annotation

Author: Charlie Jane Anders
Title: The City in the Middle of the Night
Genre: Science Fiction
Publication Date: February 11, 2020
Number of Pages: 363 pages of official story plus a Translator's Note at the start of the story and an Acknowledgements section at the back.
Geographical Setting: Various locations on the planet January where descendants of the humans of Earth ended up after Earth became uninhabitable. Primary locations include Xiosphant, an orderly and oppressive city, Argelo, a city that never sleeps and where anarchy reigns, the titular underground city of alien creatures, and various other geographic locations.
Time Period: The distant future. Although some dates are mentioned, both human cities as well as the alien city all seem to track time differently making exact dates difficult to note.
Series (if applicable): This appears to be a standalone book.

Plot Summary: January is a harsh planet that Earthlings inhabited after generations of space travel after Earth became uninhabitable for reasons that aren't entirely clear. Half the planet is a fiery desert where the sun never sets and the other half is a frozen wasteland sunken in darkness. There's a small habitable region where humans have set up cities while dangerous alien creatures roam the rest of the planet.

Sophie is a student from the poor side of Xiosphant who is lucky to be in college at all. She is befriended by Bianca, a socialite in training whom Sophie would do anything to please. In an attempt to save Bianca from punishment, Sophie is blamed for a crime she didn't commit, forced to leave Xiosphant and left for dead when she saved by an alien creature. After returning to the city there are a series of mishaps that force both Bianca and Sophie to flee Xiosphant and befriend a band of smugglers where pensive and angry Mouth, of a decimated nomad tribe, gets most of the attention. As the group makes their way to Argelo, they encounter aliens and save one another yet still find it difficult to trust and love each other.

After reaching Argelo, Sophie wants nothing more than to win Bianca's love while being more and more drawn to the aliens in their underground city. Meanwhile, Bianca is hell-bent on saving the Xiosphanti people from oppression and works to raise and army of rebels. Mouth is working through an existential crises of her own but none of these women can achieve their goals without the others.

Told through the perspectives of Sophie (first person narration) and Mouth (third person narration), the story follows these three women as they work to achieve their dreams, which might just turn out to be nightmares.

Content warnings: Toxic friendships, racism and colonialization, body horror.

Subject Headings: Science Fiction-- Alien Contact (according to bookshop.org)

Appeal/Characteristics of Romance present in this book:

Explores social, moral, intellectual, philosophical, and ethical questions against a setting outside everyday reality- this novel explores all these factors in spades! We see racism, oppressive governments alongside anarchy, neither of which seems to benefit the general population. The three main characters struggle to determine who they are against heightened odds and the books grapples with the issues of people needing to find a home for themselves while wreaking havoc on other places and populations. Anders gives readers much to think about in this work.
Setting is crucial and invokes otherness of time, place, and reality-- the main setting is an alien planet and each city is completely unlike the others; each with its own sense of time. Readers are well aware they are not on Earth even if the characters are grappling with very human issues.
Offers a range of styles and language crafted to suit the story line that reinforces the speculative nature of the genre-- the book opens with a "translators" note about the contents explaining to the reader that English terms have been used to describe events, experiences, and creatures for which there are no actual English equivalents. Readers enter the story fully aware that language is going to be key but also with a level of confusion since the concept of reality is put under question.
Aliens and otherworldly creatures emphasize the otherness of these stories-- the "crocodiles" are key to the story. They offer an alternate life experience of shared memories, lack of time, and biotechnology knowledge outside human comprehension. They draw some characters in and repulse others and the story really revolves around the humans' interactions with these creatures.
Ideas are emphasized more strongly than action and the story unfolds at a leisurely pace-- While there are quite a few action scenes and plenty of danger, much of the story takes place in the characters' heads as they grapple with their own existential crises. This slows the pace of the novel making for a slow, leisurely read versus a fast-paced action book.

3 terms that best describe this book:

Pensive
Suspenseful
Slow-moving

Relevant Non-Fiction Works and Authors

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus- While this book takes place on Earth, a major concept is explores in The City in the Middle of the Night is colonialization, which is what Mann explores in this book. Mann presents an Americas that is hard for us to imagine just as Anders presents aliens with a way of life that is complete foreign to our own.

3 Relevant Fiction Works and Authors

Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer- Vandermeer also presents an alien world and uses language to keep the reader questioning reality and unsure of whether the words used to describe situations and things are really true. Annihilation is faster-paced than Anders's novel but just as thought-provoking. Annihilation also has a movie adaptation which may draw in sci-fi viewers and is a potential cross-over for Horror fans.
Dark Eden by Chris Beckett- This novel also features humans left by a mothership on a lonely planet with limited light. There is a large cast of characters and the story is told from multiple perspectives. Like Anders's novel, Beckett's is also considered thought-provoking.
Semiosis by Sue Burke- this novel appears to check many of the same boxes as The City in the Middle of the Night. It is set on an alien planet that offers little comfort to the refugees there. Alien life is discovered in the roots of plants; aliens using plants to care for the planet is a sub-plot in Anders's story. Though Semiosis is considered Hard Science Fiction while The City in the Middle of the Night aligns more with Soft Sci-fi, the multiple perspectives and dramatic nature of Burke's story is likely to appeal to readers that enjoyed Anders's tale.

Reading the Whole Collection

Readers of The City in the Middle of the Night may enjoy listening to Gustav Holst's The Planets for a heightened reading experience.

Professional-style review

THE CITY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT
BY CHARLIE JANE ANDERS | RELEASE DATE: FEB. 11, 2020

January is a planet that is half fiery desert melting in the sun and half frozen wasteland entrenched in darkness, and in-between these extremes humans struggle to maintain order and survive while some outcasts seek to upset the delicate balance of society.

Xiosphant is a city in the small habitable portion of January that thrives on order. Xiosphant's rulers regulate everything from what money can be spent on to when inhabitants wake and sleep. Sophie is a quiet new adult from the poor side of town who made it to college and befriended the vivacious Bianca, a rising socialite with an anarchist agenda. Argelo is another human city of endless parties and chaos that is home to a band of smugglers, including angry Mouth, who transport illegal goods into Xiosphant. Through a series of mishaps Sophie befriends a native creature, a "crocodile," and in an attempt to save her beloved Bianca the two humans are thrown in with Mouth's gang when they are forced to flee Xiosphant. Sophie wants nothing more than Bianca's love and to live with the crocodiles in their underground city but Bianca is hell-bent on saving the Xiosphanti people from oppression. None of this can be done without the help of off-kilter smuggler Mouth who has to work through a few existential crises of her own. What should be an engaging and action-packed read is actually a slog as Anders juggles too many things in the course of the book. Trying to tell a story about colonialization, climate change, love, friendship, rebellion, past trauma, and an alternate human history is just too much and the story loses focus and falls flat. Bianca proclaims "I want to demolish everyon'e expectations. I want to keep surprising them all until they die of surprise" but readers are unlikely to be overwhelmed by surprise. Instead they are more likely to find themselves wanting to strangle Sophie for repeatedly failing to realize Bianca is using her, or strangle Mouth for refusing to give up a futile crusade to rescue a piece of her past despite knowing it was created under false pretenses and will only lead to ruin.

Anders's tale attempts to bring diversity and nuance to science fiction but ultimately confuses and bores the reader with too many storylines and weak resolutions.
ISBN: 978-0-7653-7997-9
Publisher: Tor

Personal Thoughts

I was very excited and ultimately rather disappointed with this book. I should note that I didn’t pick this volume out for myself: it was part of a grab-bag order I purchased to support a local bookstore at the start of the pandemic. I told them my likes and they snagged things from their shelves and sent them to me. I suppose this goes to show that limited communication in recommendation interactions isn’t always the best.

Anders is a local author for me and I love the various bookish events she does around the city and her podcast, Our Opinions are Correct with Annalee Newitz is always a good listen. Unfortunately, I didn’t find Anders’s enthusiasm or humor reflected in the pages of The City in the Middle of the Night. There was just too much going on that wasn’t tied together well and somehow, even with all the action and plot points, reading the book felt like a bit of a slog. I’m also not a huge fan of books that are heavy on character development, at least not in a single volume, so what was a turn-off for me could be enjoyable for others.

I’m torn because I want to continue to support Anders and she is quite prolific but my reading experience with this book makes me hesitant to pick up her other writing. I may eventually try her new young adult space opera series that begins with Victories Greater Than Death.

Final resting place: In the end this was not a volume I wanted to keep in my personal library so I put it on the shelves of my neighborhood Little Free Library.