3.0
The White City
ByPublisher Description
Simon Morden has won the Philip K. Dick Award and been a judge on the Arthur C. Clarke Award. A popular figure on the genre scene he has also proved to be a popular author of both noir SF and extravagant Fantasy themed SF. He has also been an editor at Focus magazine. He has a degree in Geology and Planetary Geophysics. He lives in Gateshead.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesThe White City Reviews
3.0
“Not as good as the first, but great potential if there’s a third I. The series. But as a duology it’s a bit lacking. The middle pacing is what lowered this from a 4 to a 3 star.”
“I really enjoyed a big portion of this book, where it stumbles is when it’s trying to explain what Down is and where it came from. The whole book is a great journey novel, as all the characters from the previous book try to make their way to the White City. It has some great scenes concerning Crows, the manipulator of every situation, and Mary, who has become by far the most interesting character. It all leads up to a pretty tense and scary third act once the secrets of what this city is are revealed.
I won’t go into specifics of what Down is and how the portals work here since it is a bit confusing at times, all I can say is that while the idea is kind of cool it’s the explanations that are given that don’t make much sense. Especially since there are a few factors that aren’t quite explained at all. And I was expecting this book to have more of an actual ending since there isn’t a third book out there yet and no current plans of there being another book but it also ends with more questions then answers.
The reveal that Grace, one of the people who came through the portal with them in the last book and disappeared soon after, is actually a longtime resident of Down and can go through portals as she pleases is a fun reveal but there is no context to how that’s even possible. Maybe a third book will explain everything better and this book will look better in retrospect but as the last current book with no promise of a third, it’s a weird way to end this series. Hopefully we get another, I actually enjoyed this world and the characters who inhabit it.”
“The White City review
Last year, I read https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26251608.Down_Station__Down_Station___1_ , a fantasy by Simon Morden, and came away unimpressed. It was an appealing premise at first: a small group of Londoners escape disaster through a magic door, leading to a magic-infused wilderness. But it was hampered by deliberate pacing, a somewhat thin plot, and a constant niggle of arbitrariness throughout. It felt like most of what happened in it would up irrelevant.
I attributed this to a tone that Simon Morden wanted to set: that this enchanted land, called Down, was hostile and uncompromising, and that these survivors had to do their best within it. The ones that do better than the others do so by giving themselves over to the magic, at great (well… uh, maybe not GREAT) personal cost.
So I approached the sequel, The White City, with some level of optimism. I thought this gang finally had a goal, and this setting would take shape, and the book would finally realize the adventure it’s capable of.
No such luck. Every character is hostile, vindictive, assumes the worst of everyone else, and are all waiting for opportunities to backstab one another. The few likeable characters are likeable by virtue of comforting clichés. You get the impression that most of the characters (Crows, in particular) aren’t GENUINELY as bad as the writing would like you to think, but every character is quick to remind you what they all think of these murderous, deceitful bastards. And it’s easy for them to enforce this notion, since they spend so much time apart from one another, griping about whichever absent character they want to “get back at” as soon as they catch up with them.
The entire plot is a trivial sham, pretending to set up an involved and fantastical community, when really, it’s just as cruel and pointless as everything else. The inventive magic of Down Station is absent for most of the book, leaving most of the daring scrapes and escapes down to running away and hiding. There are hints that The White City will bring back some of Down Station's more involving twists (a character being slowly changed by their negative feelings,) and then nothing happens. Down is explained, after a fashion, but it feels like less of an explanation and more like something to make the reader stop asking certain nagging questions. Much remains vague, and the setting’s overarching logic is all either just naturally assumed, or lazily admitted. Down is a rude, spiteful place, and these people deserve it.
As for the quality of writing, again, Simon Morden's spare, tight narrative mode is a great strength. However, there is a strange, almost rigid formalism to the book’s structure. Every chapter, with a few exceptions at the end, is between eight and ten pages long. No more, no less. And each chapter switches like clockwork between two point of view characters. They spend most of their time separated, so that the book does not have to deviate from this. It’s almost as though, to compensate for the plodding pace, the book is divided into exact portions to make it more palpable. I suppose that’s true, but it sucks out any organic qualities the story might have. Instead of making his story more enjoyable to read, Morden just split it up to make it more difficult to notice any pacing problems.
Reading Down Station last year, there was this inkling that I read something like it before, but much better. With The White City, I finally remembered it.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14497.Neverwhere__London_Below___1_ is a novel written by https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1221698.Neil_Gaiman in 1996. It also concerns a group of people, some hapless and ordinary, others uncanny and magical, stumbling through a concealed world lost between the cracks of London. It also contains two people of colour, one a charismatic bastard who you know not to trust but can’t quite help it, another a fierce fighter who has her own ideas about what she wants. One of the characters, an innocent young man who led a sheltered life until being thrust into this place, is especially invested in going home. There’s a central hub where many of the characters gather (the Floating Market in Neverwhere's case, The White City here), hoping to find answers, or at least stay safe.
The difference is, Neil Gaiman is a humorous and inventive writer, and years of comic experience has made him good at concise but complex worldbuilding. Simon Morden, his Philip K. Dick Award notwithstanding, clearly did not come from this background. Gaiman's London Below is a nuanced and always-surprising setting, often as hostile and uncompromising as Morden's Down, but without the barren meanness, or outright deceit. Every character has their own involved motives for their journey, and when they occasionally separate, it doesn't feel like it's just so they can stew in their own resentment until the other character comes back. The plot is lively and engaging, and allows the characters to be challenged and triumph by their own virtue.
The White City is like Neverwhere if it was less fun to read, every character was motivated in the same ways, by the same things, and the setting was just a paper backdrop with holes in it. There's a few sequel-baity nuggets at the end of the story, but I think rather than hold out for Down Station #3, I'll just read Neverwhere again, with a renewed appreciation.”
About Simon Morden
Simon Morden has won the Philip K. Dick Award and been a judge on the Arthur C. Clarke Award. A popular figure on the genre scene he has also proved to be a popular author of both noir SF and extravagant Fantasy themed SF. He has also been an editor at Focus magazine. He has a degree in Geology and Planetary Geophysics. He lives in Gateshead.
Other books by Simon Morden
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