 The city and the city lives and breathes across liminal spaces, somewhere opposite… Doubletink. China-Mievils-Noir creates one of the most unique locales in fiction, a city that has two cities, Bezel and Ulquoma. The citizens of one learn to unsee the citizens, the buildings and all that occurs within the other. That's why a comparison to Doubletink is an easy one, where Orwell's idea demands the embrace of two different notions at once, contrary between them. Mievils and Signe is an act of willful omission. It is a skill learned throughout childhood, cultivated through puberty, to be mustered by adulthood. To see, to act knowingly towards anything going on in the city or not a part of, is the worst offence, the act of breaching. Once you do it, once you've breached, they come for you. The boogeyman of both cities, the clandestine organization known as Breach. Shadows that pair from every corner, unstoppable and answerable to no one. Breach is an organization even the governments of each city fear, and with good reason. Protagonist Tia de Borlu, police inspector of the Extreme Crime Squad of Bezel, is no different. Tia de Borlu is just the kind of hardball detective you're imagining. A descendant of a long line of detectives who's in a humanity services motivation to dig deep into the foulest, most inhumane crimes. A moral compass is not an easy thing to have in Bezel, and even more difficult to navigate in Ulquoma. The murder Borlu investigates leads down one impossible mystery after another. Inviting speculation, talk of conspiracy, and the best detective duo since Kitsuragi and Dubois. Okay, yeah, this coalesium came out ten years after this novel, but I just read it now, so you'll have to forgive me for crossing the timelines. The greatest difficulty comes from the city itself, from its rules. Cross-hatched, alter and total areas make navigating first Bezel and then Ulquoma a difficult but fulfilling task for the reader. Me, Avel's introduction, deployment and mastery over the complex ideas juggled to create these two unique city-states existing through metaphysical understandings of space. Well, it is the stuff of inspiration. His ideas are the kind of ideas I at once wish to play with in fear that I would be unable to do anything with, not outside the realm of blandest impersonation. That's a kind of fears and awe that Me, Avel inspires in the reader, especially in the writing readers such as myself. Because beyond the imaginative strength of this novel rests a metaphor that makes the idea of unseeing so accomplished. This ability to unsee a whole other city beneath the city you live in. It reflects the way reality functions. We all unsee what we refuse to be witnesses of, gazes averted, thoughts turned away from extreme poverty, homelessness, acts of pettiness and suffering and even violence. If we are lucky enough to have the choice. Me, Avel's work is a study in perception. In how far the human mind might go if it is stored from early on to place all this imaginative power, all its volition to the task of seeing one half of what's before you while unseeing the other. It's a potent work and among the most deserving works of all the accolades that it has earned, among them the Hugo, RCC, Clark, Locusts and World Fantasy Awards. And in a moment of pure serendipity I got a brand new copy of it now destroyed by annotations at half price. Life is good I know. I'm not going to tell you much by way of character analyses or plot description. You get to find out for yourselves and you should. What I will say is that the city and the city was among those rare books that had me convulsing with laughter at moments I least expected. Sure enough, China, Me, Avel can write. And I look forward to reading more of his works. Thank you for watching, listening and so on and so forth. If you enjoyed this video, please don't forget to share it with your friends, smash that like button, subscribe, subscribe, subscribe and always, always be ready to come back for more. I enjoyed this, didn't you? Let me know in the comments. I'll see you next time. I'm Philip Magnus, you're not, bye!