Metopolitan - Walter Jon Williams
It's been so quiet...
I picked up Metropolitan after reading Judith Berman recommend it somewhere the heck on her blog or Black Gate in a discussion about weird alternate-urban fantasies like Rachel Pollack's Temporary Agency, which I think I reviewed here a long time ago. I'd never read anything by Walter Jon Williams before. He classifies this as fantasy, but it is set in a semifuturistic world where the city covers the whole world. There's even a founding fathers sort of tale about Senko's battle against the Trees. The city runs on plasm, which is generated by inanimate objects such as buildings, and collected by the government to power the world. Below are infinite basements & sub-basements, above is the Shield, which the Ascended Ones put in place to keep the people of the city in. Aiah, the main character, lives in the part of the city known as Jaspeer (the parts all have different governments), and works for the Plasm Authority in a boring office job. She is a Barkazil, who are sort of like the Jews, the Arabs, and African refugees mixed, and faces discrimination from the Jasperi as well as mounting debt from her & her boyfriend's attempt to be upwardly mobile. When she discovers a huge unregistered plasm source by accident, she makes a decision to hide it and sell it for the millions it is worth. She approaches the Metropolitan Constantine, a controversial exile, and becomes drawn into his plots.
The book includes one of those woman-drawn-to-famous-figures plots that I often don't really get, but is well-written and exciting, and incredibly atmospheric. There is a sequel (also out of print), City on Fire, which I am waiting for in the mail. If you like Simon R Green's Nightside, Rachel Pollack's urban fantasy, or Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, you will probably like Metropolitan. For those who are looking for more books about people of colour, both protagonists are brown-skinned, which is kind of hard to find in urban fantasy.
I picked up Metropolitan after reading Judith Berman recommend it somewhere the heck on her blog or Black Gate in a discussion about weird alternate-urban fantasies like Rachel Pollack's Temporary Agency, which I think I reviewed here a long time ago. I'd never read anything by Walter Jon Williams before. He classifies this as fantasy, but it is set in a semifuturistic world where the city covers the whole world. There's even a founding fathers sort of tale about Senko's battle against the Trees. The city runs on plasm, which is generated by inanimate objects such as buildings, and collected by the government to power the world. Below are infinite basements & sub-basements, above is the Shield, which the Ascended Ones put in place to keep the people of the city in. Aiah, the main character, lives in the part of the city known as Jaspeer (the parts all have different governments), and works for the Plasm Authority in a boring office job. She is a Barkazil, who are sort of like the Jews, the Arabs, and African refugees mixed, and faces discrimination from the Jasperi as well as mounting debt from her & her boyfriend's attempt to be upwardly mobile. When she discovers a huge unregistered plasm source by accident, she makes a decision to hide it and sell it for the millions it is worth. She approaches the Metropolitan Constantine, a controversial exile, and becomes drawn into his plots.
The book includes one of those woman-drawn-to-famous-figures plots that I often don't really get, but is well-written and exciting, and incredibly atmospheric. There is a sequel (also out of print), City on Fire, which I am waiting for in the mail. If you like Simon R Green's Nightside, Rachel Pollack's urban fantasy, or Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, you will probably like Metropolitan. For those who are looking for more books about people of colour, both protagonists are brown-skinned, which is kind of hard to find in urban fantasy.