#the city in the middle of the night

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

[haveyoureadthisqueerbook]

[charliejaneanders]

If you order via Folio Books, you can get any of my books signed, personalized and adorned with a drawing of a cat doing *whatever job you specify*.

Just a heads up: you need to order in the next few days for books to ship by Xmas.

[ilikereadingactually]

The City in the Middle of the Night

The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders

it's been quite a while since i actually carried a physical book around with me so much that it got this banged up! but once i started this one i didn't want to stop, so it went to the beach with me, got banged around in my bag and my hands across several modes of public transit (it's HARD to get to LBI without a car!!), and then got rained on when the sky opened up and we had not brought a beach umbrella. but! i finally finished it, once it was dry and i had time again after reading workshop manuscripts. and what a world to come back to, after flexing my brain muscles very hard for a week!

such WORLDBUILDING in this book!! it's truly astonishing, and probably my favorite aspect. every location on this alien post-generation-ship planet where humans have settled feels entirely lived in, whether it's ancient or it's only been a few generations. humans are hanging on by a thread, straddling the thin line of habitable space between eternal, searing daylight and eternal frozen dark, in ways that just feel so accurate to us as a species. they're erasing their own cultures in favor of assimilation, or they're reclaiming those cultures again, or they're partying all night, or they're living under an unbreakable tight schedule. students and pirates, scavengers and poverty and extreme wealth, melting pots and salad bowls of Earth cultures arranged in drastically new ways of life. it's so fascinating, and then there are also WICKED COOL ALIENS. aliens who communicate with psychic tentacles and share every memory! who build underground cities and don't have any need for individual names!! (this is a thing i have loved since being obsessed with Gargoyles as a child, i have a feeling it's come up in a review before.)

and leading us through this intensely wild and deep world are alternating POV protagonists Sophie—a shy scholarship student whose life changes forever when she takes the blame for something her crush Bianca did—and Mouth, a scrappy smuggler who's lost everything and keeps trying to find her way. i loved them both and was infuriated by them simultaneously, sucked in by all their lovely human flaws and foibles, Sophie's tenderness and her inability to see through Bianca over and over again, Mouth's stubbornness and singlemindedness even when she came around to better paths. there was so much going on here, and so much more i would love to know about how this world has progressed after the end of the book!! (but i do love a story that doesn't tie everything up neatly, and leaves the world and the reader with hope for the work yet to be done.)

the deets

how i read it: as i said above, a physical copy this time! it's been sitting on my tbr shelf for a while, i'm glad i finally got to it.

try this if you: dig really thought-out alien worlds and cultures and politics, love when people who feel like outsiders find their communities and callings, or like to yell out loud about intrigue and people frequently behaving foolishly for good reasons.

some bits i really liked: Sophie being extremely relatable

Every so often, Bianca puts on a dress made of iridescent petals, or violet satin, and disappears, along with a few others from our dorm. There's always some party, or banquet, that she needs to go to, to nurture her status among the city's elite. She stands in the doorway, the silhouette of an upward-pointing knife, and smiles back at me. "I'll be back before you know."

___

Every time I think I know what's wrong with me, I find something else.

___

Bianca asked if I trusted her, and I said yes, and I meant it. This thing with Dash is just part of whatever she's planning, and she's in control of the whole situation. I look at the taut line of her pale neck and exposed back, as she leans toward Dash, and I choose to see a harpoon gun, aimed and cocked.

[hetchdrive]

thinking about The City In The Middle Of The Night. thinking about adapting your body to a new world, a harsh environment that you weren't made for and which should easily destroy you, except. except you lived through the worst thing that could possibly happen to you. you suffered and you're changed but you lived. and there's something out there in the dark, in the night, something living and breathing and thriving in this place that has pushed your society to the brink of collapse. and that thing can change you, can make this place habitable. changing and growing can save your society, but first it can save you. so you become something else, something that is you but more-than-you, something that scares the first girl you ever loved. something she thinks is monstrous.

but if you're a monster, then you're a monster that was always meant to be, and you're the one who is going to survive here. you're the future, while her way of life leads to nothing but dead ends. and you and your new friends can remake everything together, can change these fragile bodies, can transcend them. you're not trapped anymore. you're free.

anyway. never has a book been more obviously about trauma and transgender identity and i think everyone ever should read it but especially people who love sci-fi.

[mollybongwater]

snow banks on the planet january

lawrencexhardy

[livingfictionsystem]

"You cannot organise luck.

Or make the perfect wind.

Or bridge night and day with your foolishness.

You will never again taste such beauty, cradled by chaos."

--"The City in the Middle of the Night", Charlie Jane Anders

[lunegrimm]

#WerewolfWednesday 🌕

These two were insanely popular as tapestry designs & even the extras were gone within hours! I still get messages about them at least once a week so I'm currently doing a re-run of them!

Opened a form now to see if enough out there are interested 👀

I will leave it open for ~3 weeks now. Updates will follow depending on if/when the goal has been reached!

[hijinxinprogress]

12 year old tim realizing robin’s not coming back to gotham and deciding that it’s Batman’s fault so he has to ruin the little bit of sanity and peace of mind Bruce has managed (read: struggled) to keep in his grasp:

[illustratus]

Madonna Laboris by Nicholas Roerich

[rise-against-the-machine]

Uhhh,, help…? (fully aware that I was the one to tag him in my story post, but I just hoped he’d see the fanart project I made. I never thought he’d REPOST it??)

I’m like actually kinda starstruck rn?? THE Alex Shelley?? Idk if I’ll ever peak higher than this lmao

[solariex]

someone save me from the idiots ive been stuck with for 5+ years...

[misspoetree]

[2/24]

❄❄ kp + text post advent calendar ❄❄

[fictionadventurer]

*

[tardis-technician]

Guys I am so sick

[opalprincess]

Love being out late up to no good 🙈