Sounds Of The Countryside

It's usually very quiet round here, but last night there was music- or, at least, a bass line. I couldn't tell where it was coming from but my best guess is the hostelry on the main road- which is a field or two away- was hosting a heavy metal evening or a wedding reception of something along those lines.

Talking about noises, there's something in the vicinity that keeps on going bang. We suspect it's a bird-scarer.

The City And The City: China Mieville

Two city states with very different cultures occupy the same space. Citizens of one state are conditioned to "unsee" everything that appertains to the other- which gets to be really tricky in "crosshatched" areas where the two rub up against one another and the roads carry traffic of both nationalities.

This excellent dystopia is animated by a fairly conventional police thriller which ends with one of those stand-offs where- instead of getting on with it and trading shots- the detective and the villain jaw for pages about how and why the crime was committed.

World-building: A++

Characterization and plotting and all that novelistic stuff: B-