[ Overall Thoughts ]
In The Watchful City is a lushly written collection of short stories of different formats within a framing narrative. The framing narrative takes place in a biocyberpunk setting, following Anima who is one of eight 'nodes' tethered directly into the Gleaming and tasked with maintaining the city and its citizens' lives. This requires Anima to transport ær consciousness through the Gleaming into various animals nearby any incident that requires ær attention. The setting of the framing narrative gave me Matrix vibes, but make it nature. The imagery is vibrant and detailed and was almost too much for me to wrap my head around, which fostered a fantastical, far-future feel.

When a traveler appears at Anima's door with a strange case full of a variety of objects, æ is able to explore the lives of the previous owners of the objects. These stories provide glimpses of lives, sometimes in a moment of joy or triumph, sometimes in a moment of tragedy.

"We still cannot enter someone's soul to navigate the interior sea of the mind. But we can take a moment, a story, that illuminates their spirit, if only one facet. Yet that is what makes life the brilliant gem that it is: the collection of all those facets into a prism. A lens."

In The Watchful City proved to be imaginative and addictive; I found myself putting the book aside simply because I didn't want to finish it and have it be over. I do wish we'd had more time in the framing narrative to see more of the city and Anima's role there to better understand æ and ær motivations. Overall I really enjoyed the characters, world, and writing style, and the framing narrative worked so well to tell many different stories in several formats.

[ Suggested Audience ]
Readers who like a good framing narrative and descriptive, vibrant prose.
Readers looking for futuristic sci-fi and are intrigued by the label biocyberpunk.
Readers who enjoy short stories and varied formats.

[ TL;DR ]
In The Watchful City was an imagination-grabbing trek into a futuristic world of connection and separation, interspersed with glimpses into other lives in the form of short stories.
Content Warning for discussion and depiction of suicide