The City in the Middle of the Night

On the planet of January, one side is in permanent daylight and the other side is permanent night, with people managing to live on a strip of moderate light between the two extremes.

Sophie, a shy teenager, breaks the rules and is sent to the dark side to die, only she survives.  While she is in the dark, she meets telepathic creatures who, despite their terrifying visage, are kind-hearted—a shock to someone raised in a community who believes the creatures (and others) are awful because of the way they look.

Together with her best friend, Bianca, they decide to save… show more.

This was the second book I read by Charlie Jane Anders, who is one of my living literary idols. This book is a feat of world-building, but what I find most compelling about it is its examination of what it means to be alien, what it means to belong. The story is unexpected in many ways, but it was deeply comforting for me. Even if it’s frightening, letting yourself be vulnerable can lead to magical and enlightening experiences.

Readers have been exploring human colonies on tidally locked planets for about as long as science fiction has existed, so it’s fantastic how well this adventure novel can give the reader a brand-new perspective on what, exactly, an improved version of our world might look like. You’ll have a difficult time predicting the end of this story from its beginnings. Events force the protagonist to learn new and sometimes horrifying things about her world and the people close to her, and like her, we can’t hold onto unproven assumptions if we really want to make the world a better place.… show more.