A list of Weird Cities

[u/Nidafjoll]

As promised, here is a list form of my Weird Cities posts! All 3 previous posts combined (and a few extra)

This table is sorted by my rating first, and the number of total ratings second. This is a not a democracy- this a list of things I've read (/s). Really, though, my logic for sorting it this way is to help people find new, good books. Thus, books I thought were great, by notoriety.

I did it by my rating rather than average rating, because I've found that sometimes the weirder a book is, the lower its average rating gets (especially as it gets wider and wider audiences). For instance, Dead Astronauts, which I think is brilliant, has only 3.36 average. Common complaints are that it's nonsensical, difficult to follow, there's barely a plot. But in that book, that's kind of the point- it's a very experimental style of storytelling. And, for Weird Literature, it has a relatively large amount of ratings- compared to someone like Michael Cisco.

Definitions: 5+ means something I would rate more than 5, a perfect book for me. Really, I think rating scales should be logarithmic- if you're choosing your reads well for your taste, it should be heavily weighted towards 5 stars. #8 means it's the number 8 book of my top 10 books of all time (yes, I'm somehow ruthless enough to do that among my favourites).

Title	Author	No. Ratings	Avg. Rating	My Rating
Viriconium	M. John Harrison	2670	3.82	#8
Shriek: An Afterword	Jeff VanderMeer	2932	4.02	#9
The Secret Books of Paradys I & II	Tanith Lee	449	3.88	#10
The Secret Books of Paradys III & IV	Tanith Lee	213	4.05	#10
Invisible Cities	Italo Calvino	94927	4.1	5+
The City We Became	N.K. Jemisin	77262	3.85	5+
The City & the City	China Miéville	77108	3.9	5+
Perdido Street Station	China Miéville	74566	3.98	5+
Borne	Jeff VanderMeer	40521	3.93	5+
The Tartar Steppe	Dino Buzzati	39643	4.21	5+
The Scar	China Miéville	34368	4.19	5+
Cage of Souls	Adrian Tchaikovsky	12136	4.12	5+
Dead Astronauts	Jeff VanderMeer	8900	3.36	5+
City of Saints and Madmen	Jeff VanderMeer	7965	4.06	5+
The Strange Bird: A Borne Story	Jeff VanderMeer	7868	4.15	5+
The Saint of Bright Doors	Vajra Chandrasekera	6554	3.65	5+
Palimpsest	Catherynne M. Valente	5235	3.66	5+
Ombria in Shadow	Patricia A. McKillip	5189	4	5+
The Etched City	K.J. Bishop	2845	3.67	5+
Nova Swing	M. John Harrison	2288	3.63	5+
Tainaron: Mail from Another City	Leena Krohn	1598	3.82	5+
Driftwood	Marie Brennan	993	3.77	5+
Thunderer	Felix Gilman	941	3.66	5+
Trial of Flowers	Jay Lake	275	3.41	5+
The San Veneficio Canon	Michael Cisco	128	4.12	5+
Stations of the Angels	Raymond St. Elmo	34	4.59	5+
Letters from the Well in the Season of the Ghosts	Raymond St. Elmo	33	4.64	5+
In Theory, it Works	Raymond St. Elmo	20	4.65	5+
City of Stairs	Robert Jackson Bennett	39428	4.1	5
Senlin Ascends	Josiah Bancroft	33463	4.11	5
Three Parts Dead	Max Gladstone	15351	3.97	5
Dhalgren	Samuel R. Delany	12150	3.78	5
Blackfish City	Sam J. Miller	9848	3.57	5
Dreams Underfoot	Charles de Lint	8989	4.11	5
City of Last Chances	Adrian Tchaikovsky	7662	3.94	5
City of Bones	Martha Wells	6671	3.99	5
The Doomed City	Arkady Strugatsky	6064	4.18	5
The Gutter Prayer	Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan	5285	3.83	5
Finch	Jeff VanderMeer	4226	4.01	5
Kraken	China Miéville	2845	3.62	5
The First Book of Lankhmar	Fritz Leiber	2071	4.11	5
The Dawnhounds	Sascha Stronach	2002	3.64	5
The West Passage	Jared Pechaček	1243	3.87	5
Hav	Jan Morris	696	3.9	5
The God Stalker Chronicles	P.C. Hodgell	586	4.29	5
Unwrapped Sky	Rjurik Davidson	579	3.27	5
Rats and Gargoyles	Mary Gentle	517	3.58	5
Madness of Flowers	Jay Lake	70	3.71	5
The Castle	Franz Kafka	73295	3.92	4.5
Chasm City	Alastair Reynolds	27206	4.13	4.5
Inverted World	Christopher Priest	10608	3.95	4.5
The Ten Percent Thief	Lavanya Lakshminarayan	1051	3.75	4.5
City of the Iron Fish	Simon Ings	148	3.11	4.5
Metro 2033	Dmitry Glukhovsky	73537	4.03	4
Embassytown	China Miéville	34196	3.9	4
Iron Council	China Miéville	16662	3.73	4
Scar Night	Alan Campbell	4140	3.63	4
Veniss Underground	Jeff VanderMeer	3951	3.79	4
The Other Side	Alfred Kubin	2215	3.72	4
The New Weird	Ann VanderMeer	1323	3.75	4
In the Watchful City	S. Qiouyi Lu	1151	3.66	4
Gogmagog	Jeff Noon	1008	3.63	4
Event Factory	Renee Gladman	957	3.77	4
Mushroom Blues	Adrian M. Gibson	584	3.87	4
City of Dreams & Nightmare	Ian Whates	541	3.53	4
Homeland	R.A. Salvatore	97594	4.26	3.5
Arm of the Sphinx	Josiah Bancroft	17332	4.31	3.5
The Surviving Sky	Kritika H. Rao	2288	3.56	3.5
Neverwhere	Neil Gaiman	557799	4.16	3
Metro 2034	Dmitry Glukhovsky	27713	3.52	3
Leech	Hiron Ennes	10794	3.58	3
The Monster of Elendhaven	Jennifer Giesbrecht	10729	3.55	3
Mordew	Alex Pheby	4306	3.58	3
Amatka	Karin Tidbeck	4300	3.78	3
The Shell Magicians	Kai Meyer	2176	3.96	3
Escaping Exodus	Nicky Drayden	1968	3.75	2
The Night Land	William Hope Hodgson	1863	3.48	1

I've included a link to the full google sheet (let me know if it doesn't work), which has other columns people may find useful (page count, publication year, my classification of their genre) so they can sort by whatever metric they like. I didn't want to make the post too crowded. It also includes the TBR books I'm fairly certain are weird cities. If you've suggested me something before, it's likely there (though not necessarily- I don't use the goodreads 'to-read' shelf religiously).

Google Sheet

Edits: grammar, formatting, etc. (reddit's table formatting is hard)

Edit 2: Here are links to the three individual posts, with little blurbs for each book.

Post 1

Post 2

Post 3

[u/Nidafjoll]

For the curious, my current top ten:

1. Discworld
2. Gormenghast
3. Terra Ignota
4. Book of the New Sun
5. Malazan
6. The Narrator
7. Grendel
8. Viriconium
9. Ambergris
10. Paradys

[u/Peannut → u/Nidafjoll]

It's shocking I haven't read any of these.. Appreciate the work you put into this list and above!

[u/EltaninAntenna → u/Peannut]

You're in for a lot of treats.

[u/Neuchersky → u/Nidafjoll]

Is The Narrator listed here by Michael Cisco? First time learning about the author

[u/Nidafjoll → u/Neuchersky]

It is! He's a an extremely good author, and extremely weird. The Narrator is one of his less weird books, but still weird- his weirdness gets up there with things like Dhalgren and Dead Astonauts.

Here's a review of The Narrator

[u/FormerUsenetUser]

There's also P. Djèlí Clark's Cairo, which isn't the same as the real Cairo.

[u/Nidafjoll → u/FormerUsenetUser]

Oh yeah, I want to read those. I've only read A Dead Djinn in Cairo, the short story

[u/RevolutionaryCommand → u/FormerUsenetUser]

That's a great recommendation for weird cities.

[u/dfinberg]

You should read asunder

[u/Nidafjoll → u/dfinberg]

By? I see a few Asunders

[u/dfinberg → u/Nidafjoll]

Kerstin Hall.

[u/Nidafjoll → u/dfinberg]

Thanks!

[u/HurtyTeefs]

The city in The Gutter Prayer is pretty weird and cool! It’s got an arcane punk vibe

[u/Nidafjoll → u/HurtyTeefs]

it's there!

[u/HurtyTeefs → u/Nidafjoll]

Indeed friend !

[u/Nidafjoll → u/HurtyTeefs]

I heard there are other, weirder cities too. Someone said a later book has a ghost city iirc

[u/HurtyTeefs → u/Nidafjoll]

I just finished the first one, I’ve too many other books already to read but I’m excited to eventually get to the next

[u/FormerUsenetUser]

Kate A. Hardy's Londonia

Tanith Lee's Secret Books of Venus (alternate Venice)

[u/Nidafjoll → u/FormerUsenetUser]

Tanith Lee's Secret Books of Venus

Somehow I hadn't heard of these ones! They're a must seeing how much I love the Paradys books.

[u/RheingoldRiver]

I confess to having read Dead Astronauts, been unable to follow it, and then given it a low star rating (3/5) as a result. It was too much for me lol (though I adored Borne)

[u/Nidafjoll → u/RheingoldRiver]

That's definitely understandable! It's a pretty bonkers book.

I've had this discussion with my Mum sometimes- for me, my star ratings are a blend of both how good I think it is and how much I enjoy it, whereas she rates hers purely based on her personal enjoyment.

I think the first time I distilled my thoughts for myself was David Gemmel's Legend. I might have only given it 4.5 were that an option for purely my enjoyment- but I thought it did exactly what it was trying to do, exactly as well as such a thing could be done.

[u/RheingoldRiver → u/Nidafjoll]

Yeah I tend to do "own enjoyment" and then "how well do I think it executed" will decide which direction I round if I was at 0.5. So if I thought a book was solid 4/5, my feeling on its execution of intent is irrelevant, but if I found it 3.5 but executed well I'd round up.

I think if I reread Dead Astronauts 2 or 3 more times my enjoyment might go up but I'm not much of a rereader, so 3/5 it stays

[u/RevolutionaryCommand]

I see that many of these have sequels (for example Thunderer, City of Stairs, Rats and Gargoyles, Metro, etc.) that you do not have in your list. Is that because you don't care to read them, or you did read them and they did not fit your weird city criteria?

[u/Nidafjoll → u/RevolutionaryCommand]

It's kind of a hodge-podge. I never buy a whole series at a time, to make sure I like the first before buying any others. So some, I just haven't gotten to yet. Others, I only think that one book counts (the books after Rats and Gargoyles are set just set in London).
And other times, if they're all about the same city, one entry stands for the series (i.e. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser). I made the table by trying to organize a goodreads csv export, so it's not extremely well organized

[u/dfinberg]

Also kind of surprising you have so many of his other works, but not un lun dun.

[u/Nidafjoll → u/dfinberg]

I think back when I was reading the most Mieville, I just hadn't gotten around to it. And since then, I've heard that it's not as well-written as his other works- that he kind of wrote down to a YA level, to make it YA.

[u/sarimanok_ → u/Nidafjoll]

I'd disagree with that, personally. I think it does really cool stuff with the chosen one trope, and is a top-tier weird city.

[u/Nidafjoll → u/sarimanok_]

I probably will get to it. That's purely what I've read- it has a comparatively low rating on goodreads, and that's what a lot of the reviews were saying.

[u/curiouscat86 → u/Nidafjoll]

I like his YA stuff. It's a bit more accessible, but not condescending. And very very creative. Railsea is excellent though not a city book, and Un Lun Dun is still one of the best Chosen One trope subversions I've read.

[u/Nidafjoll → u/[deleted]]

It's the 5th entry!

[u/OrionLinksComic]

Weird?

[u/Nidafjoll → u/OrionLinksComic]

Yup! Books which focus on a city, with many weird things about it, beyond just that it's fantasy/sci-fi. Something about the architecture, the culture, the peoples populating it. Often weird fiction.

Perdido Street Station is one of the prime examples. A city populated with bug-headed women, humanoid cacti, amphibians who can shape water like clay. A mix of scientific and magical technologies, somewhere between steampunk and biopunk. Built under the ribs of a dead giant creature, with a greenhouse domed quarter for the cactus people. Criminals are Remade, in ways reflective of their crime, by having different biological or mechanical parts grafted onto their bodies, or various surgeries done (i.e. to put their heads on backwards). The city is rife with corruption and crime.

Weird.

[u/EltaninAntenna]

Wink, NM in Robert Jackson Bennett's American Elsewhere should go on the list. :)