This was an absolutely splendid read and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of traversing through the various cities. There were simply too many cities that stood out, but I’ll do my best in narrowing down my favorite ones. Octavia, the city of spider webs, hovering over the void, captured my interest right away. The life of its inhabitants relied on the net to continually support them. However, as time progresses, there is a sense of uncertainty that exits because the net won’t last forever. I thought this sense of uncertainty connects to our unease and uncertainty we face today. With how COVID-19 is panning out and the multitude of disasters, uncertainty seems scary. I also loved Valdrada with its reflections and Esmeralda where there is no repetition.
Although these cities did not remind me of a particular city in real life, Armilla and Zenobia reminded me of fictional places. Armilla, the city of water pipes, reminds me of the game Super Mario Bros. In the game, Mario travels through pipes and I loved how people Armilla did the same. Zenobia, the city of heights, reminds me of Fortree city in the game Pokemon Emerald. In Fortree city, there are numerous ladders and people travel across platforms and hanging sidewalks, just like Zenobia.
Despite the vivid details, much of the cities encapsulated more than just objects and descriptions. For example, Zaira, a city that contains its past, cannot be simply described by what it has. The line, “the city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand written in the corners of the steets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, eery segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations scrolls,” encompasses this concept of history and the passage of time. These conceptual details would largely depend on who’s creating it in the virtual world, but if it were up to me, showing little wears of time in the buildings and having various statues and monuments would aid in creating this abstract concept. In this city, since it is about the past, being able to discover and read up on its history would help tremendously in exemplifying what Zaira would be like.
Throughout the novel, the use of time was used to convey an impression of the city. Most commonly, it was used to give an ominous feel of uncertainty or destruction. In the case of Octavia, time represented a sense of uncertainty and impending doom. In Leonia, time conveyed the message of innovation and eventually the destruction from excess garbage and its own innovation. Time also represented a loss of morals and decay as shown in Clarice and Eutropia.