@Mark 2000: Think of it this way: The division is socially real, but physically just an illusion. Much like the value of money. The only reason we all agree that I can trade a shopkeeper a a few strips of paper in exchange for a tasty hamburger is because our society has instilled a belief in all of us that money has…

@Mark 2000: I disagree. Part of the point is that Breach are only human. All of their "mystic" powers come from gaming the system. They should be the ones most aware of how artificial the entire thing is, but instead they are the ones most intent on maintaining the artificial construction of the separation of Ul Qoma…

@kleer001: Indeed! A socialized, if not grass-roots Secret Police is a perfect way of putting it.

@mkirkland:

@wolvenhold: I, too, was caught off-guard by the "destruction" of Orciny, but in retrospect, it made perfect sense. At that point in the book, we as the reader might still be holding on to the idea that the cities are separated by some fantastical power. In that space, Orciny can still live as a hidden city. But as…

@petar1: I read that story as part of the "Dying Earth" collection. I've actually been on kind of a Vance kick lately. Really, a sci-fi author could make a career out of mining a single Vance book for crazy societies and then expanding on them. Expanding the bizarre human civilizations in just The Demon Princes series…

@jibyjiby: It would make perfect sense that political treaties would accept the Bsezel and Ul Qoma's strange laws. There are dozens of countries or locations with strange laws that even the most powerful countries accept because those are the laws of that land.

@kleer001: Either way, I applaud the distance you went for the metaphor. Well done.

@ProfessorSara: I rebelled at the realization myself, but then it sounds like I had the same thought you did. It at once made it more fantastic, and more... upsetting, in a way. Because if this were a tale of magic and the fantastic, of shadow worlds and parallel lives, it wouldn't hit so close to home. It's like he's…

@ibbers: The funny thing is, Mieville had to have written all of his previous urban fantasy/new weird stories first, to set up our expectations. It adds a completely new meta-level that's designed to hit geek readers right between the eyes.

@transitnap: While the language we were reading was English, the pacing and the word choice have a very different feel to them. Read a passage, and then ask yourself how you're hearing his words, and in particular his sentence construction. Try saying it out loud, or even try re-writing it, and you'll see that it's…

@Better_red_than_dead: I don't think that a critique of capitalism really comes into it. I think it's really more a question of pride, of shame, of power, and of greed. Basic human emotions that have no concern for whatever "ism" a person happens to be living under. That's one of the reasons why the reason for the…

@cyberathena: It hit me pretty quickly, and was one of the things that impressed me most about the book. Not just that he did it, but that he did it so well and so consistently.

@Dr Emilio Lizardo: I'd gotten the impression that if Beszel/Ul Qoma existed, it would be somewhere in the Baltic area, but I think it's left unspecified on purpose. That way, it can stand for all of those divisions.

@cyberathena: To a degree, but we know enough of the culture that there's not much to figure out. Candy sounds like a proper name, and because of our culture we've heard it used as a woman's name before. There's no big jump there.

@Dr Emilio Lizardo: I remember hearing that story. In my opinion, though, every sci-fi story that tries to avoid exposition is, to some degree, a detective story for the reader as they try and put together the rules of the story's world.

This is the second book I've read by Mieville, and the first I've liked. In fact, I liked it a lot. It reminded me of Haruki Murakami's work, and in my opinion that's high praise.

@mkirkland: I honestly think that there wasn't any magic at all in the separation of the cities. I think that Mieville was playing on our expectations as readers to think that there is something fantastical there, some mystical divide or some ancient magic, but it's all just about how messed up the two cities are.

@bookwench: I can see where you're coming from, but I really liked the idea that Mieville was kind of playing with that expectation. When one first reads the work, it seems to be a story of parallel realities and ancient mysteries, but in the end it is a tale of utterly screwed up people, who have created a fantasy…

@jcruss69: I think the point was that there wasn't any magic at all, just the way that the people's populations behaved.