The City in the Middle of the Night
- 368
- Pages
- about 7 h
- Reading time
- Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel
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About the book
The City In the Middle of the Night is a 2019 climate-fiction novel by Charlie Jane Anders. It is set on a tidally locked planet, where human life, surrounded by hostile alien life, is mostly divided between two archetypically different urban sites. The main story focuses on two characters whose actions take them outside of the cities.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 6.7 across 142 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 48% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Science fiction average of 7.8. That is how 7.3 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.3 | 14 | 10% |
| Hardcover | 6.7 | 128 | 90% |
Reader voices
The most-liked reviews on Hardcover (credited to their authors).
“Idk if it's because I listened to the audiobook instead of reading the physical book, but I just didn't like this story and all of the characters kind of sucked and not in a good way. I didn't really care about any of them.”
“This is the kind of novel that spends so much time on Big Ideas that it forgets to develop a story or interesting characters. I read a third of it before deciding that it wasn't for me, and in that time I genuinely could not…”
Frequently asked
How long is The City in the Middle of the Night?
It has 368 pages — shorter than 66% of the ranked books in Science fiction.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Science fiction — with scores between 7.2 and 7.3, closest to this book.
