The Inverted World
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A uniquely powerful novel of a society in decay. On a planet whose very nature is a mystery a massive decrepit city is pulled along a massive railway track, laying the line down before it as it progresses into the wilderness. The society within toils under an oppressive regime, its structures always on the point of collapse, the lives of its individuals lived in misery. No one knows where they are going, why they are going or what they will find when they get there. The ending of the novel provides one of the most profound twists in SF. Winner of the BSFA Award for best novel, 1974. Christopher Priest is a genre-leading author of SFF fiction. His novel, THE PRESTIGE, won a number of awards and was adapted into a critically acclaimed, Oscar-nominated film directed by Christopher Nolan (TENET, INCEPTION) starring Hugh Jackman (THE GREATEST SHOWMAN, X-MEN), Christian Bale (THE BIG SHORT, BATMAN BEGINS), Michael Caine (THE ITALIAN JOB) and Scarlett Johansson (MARRIAGE STORY, THE AVENGERS).
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This was a nice interlude between books 5 and 6 of the Dark Tower. I came to it through the Verge bookclub after discovering their discussion of Foucault's Pendulum in a podcast.
I enjoyed the concepts of this novel, but I found the end quite dissatisfying because it didn't tie up the main loose end of the disparate ageing. I can't go into more without spoiling it. The characters were rather thin, but in a sense this added to the idea that the City was the main character and it kept the book short, which appealed to me after the long Dark Tower books. It reminded me a little of another book that I read in book-club mode, The Forever War by Joe Haldeman: thin characters and time distortion. Looking back at my review of that, I gave it two stars. So this fared a little better.
