In The City in the Middle of the Night, a young girl is banished into permanent darkness, but she survives by befriending the creatures who live there.
January is a tidally locked world, with a permanent day side and night side, and the human colonists live in the thin strip of twilight between the two extremes. Only one person has ever gone into the night and lived: Sophie, a shy girl from the dark side of town.
Sophie’s bond with the native inhabitants of January may be the one thing that can save the entire human race. But she just wants to save her best friend Bianca, who’s hell-bent on launching a revolution.
Sophie and Bianca team up with a group of smugglers, the Resourceful Couriers, to cross the Sea of Murder and travel across their world. But one of the Resourceful Couriers, a girl named Mouth, has a secret agenda of her own that could get everyone killed.
Read an excerpt from the book here!
“Anders’s worldbuilding is intricate, embracing much of what makes a grand adventure: smugglers, revolutionaries, pirates, camaraderie, personal sacrifice, wondrous discovery, and the struggle to find light in the darkness. This breathlessly exciting and thought-provoking tale will capture readers’ imaginations.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Anders contains multitudes; it’s always a fascinating and worthwhile surprise to see what she comes up with next.” — Kirkus (starred review)
“An even stronger novel than Anders’ Nebula Award–winning All the Birds in the Sky; a tale that can stand beside such enduring works as Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, Frank Herbert’s Dune, and Dan Simmons’ Hyperion.” — Booklist (starred review)
“Anders weaves an intricate tale of colonialism and evolution on both physical and social levels.” — Library Journal (starred review)
“One of America’s most inventive writers has done it again: City In the Middle of the Night is a breathtaking work of imagination and storytelling, set in a world of originality, intelligence and empathy. Each page holds wonders, making the case for Anders as this generation’s Le Guin.” — Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less.
“I'm astounded by Charlie Jane Anders' imaginative powers and the scope of her storytelling. Again and again, I was struck by the richness of this world and the people in it. A stunning novel.” Edan Lepucki, author of Woman No. 17.
“The City in the Middle of the Night is a wildly inventive, inventively radical, and radically subtle mad rush of a novel.” — Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler’s Wife.
“The City In The Middle of the Night reads like a classic from another timeline; it's the kind of pure, high-concept, far-future science fiction that presses all my buttons. This book has notes of Ursula K. LeGuin and Philip Pullman.” — Robin Sloan, author of Sourdough.
“A tale that unfolds with precision, presenting wholly original ideas, new and beautiful life forms, and chillingly extrapolated and corrupt societies. I highly recommend [it].” — Anthony Rapp, Star Trek: Discovery
“The City In The Middle of the Night does everything right. The world is so strange and so familiar. The characters are beautiful and ugly and flawed and perfect. The action keeps you on the edge of your seat. Charlie Jane Anders has imagined a future for all of us and does not shy away or sugar coat what that means. It is a tender, quiet, introspective, brash and loud tale of revolution and love. The journey you go on is so vast that you lose track of time and come out a changed person at the end. At once more human and more alien.” — Daveed Diggs
Read what people said about All the Birds in the Sky here.
