City of Others is a contemporary fantasy set in Singapore, following a civil servant, Benjamin …
A pageturner about a bureaucrat with a heart of gold
4 stars
City of Others' brave protagonist, Ben, is a middle manager in an under-funded and under-appreciated government agency. His job is to serve the public (human or not), while staying on his superiors' good side--there are still KPIs to hit even if you have to tangle with quasi-immortals and make deals with jinnis. See, Ben is an Other, and his Department of Unusual Stakeholders serves the city's supernatural citizens. His department mates are Others too, people mostly just like you and me, but able to see what regular people can't. Because of the Don't Kaypoh Effect, most people are not aware of the supernatural because they don't care to be--as the little boy in The Sixth Sense (1999) observes, "People only see what they want to see."
Ben goes into crisis mode when he notices something wrong with the sixth floor of a flat in a housing estate called Clementi, …
City of Others' brave protagonist, Ben, is a middle manager in an under-funded and under-appreciated government agency. His job is to serve the public (human or not), while staying on his superiors' good side--there are still KPIs to hit even if you have to tangle with quasi-immortals and make deals with jinnis. See, Ben is an Other, and his Department of Unusual Stakeholders serves the city's supernatural citizens. His department mates are Others too, people mostly just like you and me, but able to see what regular people can't. Because of the Don't Kaypoh Effect, most people are not aware of the supernatural because they don't care to be--as the little boy in The Sixth Sense (1999) observes, "People only see what they want to see."
Ben goes into crisis mode when he notices something wrong with the sixth floor of a flat in a housing estate called Clementi, which is in danger of sinking into a strange watery shadow dimension. The waves have already claimed the life of a dog. The Clementi mystery seems tied to a widower called Mr. Tan and Ben will have to become the best version of himself in order to get to the bottom of it. But life keeps getting in the way. His boyfriend wants to spend more time together, he never has time to eat dinner with his dad and there’s a new intern he needs to school…
Here's some of my favourite bits from the book:
The Don't Kaypoh Effect as the reason behind why regular people can't see the supernatural. (The term roughly translates to mind your own business, part of the city's unspoken code of conduct.)
How the author plays with the term "Others" and how this interplays with its real-world deployment. "Others" is a racial category the government uses for people who are not Chinese, Malay or Indian, such as Eurasian, Hausa, Samoan... You get the idea. But in City of Others, this term is stretched even further to encompass supernatural beings. Ben is also an Other and outsider in more ways than one, since he is queer.
Vanguard, Singapore's homegrown answer to Capcom's Umbrella Corporation, is said to have ties with Ujong Holdings, a clear analogue to a certain state-owned private-limited company. Vanguard is also said to "no longer understand anything but knowledge and power". There are plenty of little nuggets like this, of criticisms levied at a system the author has learned much about in a decade of working for the civil service.
Binder One, a mysterious oathbinding stone of unknown provenance, is so potent even supernatural power players desire it.
Ben is a Gardener, a cultivator of his own soul, which is presented as a mangrove jungle inside of him. I really liked how this functions as a magic system and an allegory for the power of self-mastery. It's also a great excuse for deploying wonderful turn of phrases and imagery associated with nature.
