Perdido Street Station

Rating:
Summary: pleasantly novel
Review: By novel I mean different. Different from most of what you can read in some interesting ways which you might read about in the other reviews (and prodigious shame on people, including the Amazon editors, who give away plot details), but for me, different in this most important way: it is unpredictable.

Writing fiction is a difficult balancing act between many different factors. One of the continua that is most important to me is the range including predictability and believability. To please me, an author must surprise me and yet maintain my suspension of disbelief (by not surprising me too much).

Plot twists must therefore be unexpected and yet have the groundwork laid for them long before they occur. To give enough information to make something seem obvious when it happens and still be unexpected is rare, and yet Perdido Street Station excels in this area. The development of the story is continually surprising, yet never jarring (well, except perhaps for Isaac's decision at the end, which makes sense to me as a decision made by his character and yet seems somewhat inconsistent from his actions earlier in the book. A minor point).

In addition to the pleasure of reading a book that does not follow a predictable plot formula, the prose is well done (unlike a lot of SF) and despite being set in a dystopian megacity, manages quite effectively to convey glimpses of the simple joys of being alive.

Five stars is a limited scale, and I wouldn't say this is as good a book as some of my all time favorites, but for anyone who has run out of burningly brilliant classics to read, you will find your time well spent here.

Rating:
Summary: A mind-sucking experience
Review: The characters and plot diversions in this novel are literally mind-blowing (or mind-sucking may be a better description). Cactus people, brain sucking moth-monsters, aquatic frog-girls, a multi-dimensional spider with a scissor fetish, living garbage heaps, well you get the idea, and that's not even getting to the main characters. All set in a dirty and disturbingly real locale called New Crobuzon.

In actuality, the main character of this novel is the city of New Crobuzon itself, not any one or more of the multitude of people and creatures we are briefly exposed to - any critique of the lack of character development or of a wandering plot has too be weighed against that fact. The lives of Issac and his odd assortment of friends and associates are just one minor sub-plot in the grand story of New Crobuzon. It's just that the stories unfolding in New Crobuzon are a bit more bizarre and unsettling than you might have read before - and that's exactly why Meiville ultimately succeeds with this novel.

Rating:
Summary: MAXED-OUT NEWNESS
Review: You'll find it hard to put this book down to get your meals. This is maxed-out inventiveness within tightly artistic internal rules. It is completely true to its own organization. Think Dickens. If you think it isn't well proofed, you need a bigger dictionary and a bigger language mutation and world view. Think Frank Herbert. The plot is likewise tightly constructed and pushes its readers' ability to overview the totality while immersed in the fascinating details. It is not predictable. It is not a sappy moralist play ("moral" in the doublethink current degradation of the word). But it is an ethics play--ethics which go beyond its internal integrity and reach out to a new rationalist and individual integrity suitable for a new view of what it means to be human. And it does this on so broad a swath of human experience as to give it universality and depth. It is a work of new art, a total mood, a new integrity for a world maxed-out on new communications and new experiences; and is, perhaps, a new literary genre.

Rating:
Summary: Puerile
Review: Do you believe video games are the new art form? Still playing D&D, though you are 28 years old? Then you may appreciate this book. While others have rhapsodized about PSS below, I cannot share that enthusiasm; indeed, I find it disheartening. With most UK authors, one can usually expect a command of diction and grammar to elevate the prose. Not so, here. I suspect that anyone who finds this book "edgy" or in any way literary probably hasn't read books of that kind. Perhaps the elements are unfamiliar and novel to those who usually read sword and sorcery stuff; after all the hype, I was surprised by how familiar and average the book actually is. The author should spend some time honing his craft, and readers should spend some time broadening their reading horizons before heaping praise onto a book as puerile as this.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful story
Review: ... I was taken to a beautifully constructed city teeming with strange characters. I appreciated the "science" in this science fiction and the intelligence the author allowed his characters to exhibit. Through it all, this book is never boring... it is alternately wondrous, funny, poignant, scary and heartbreaking. Read it and enjoy!

Rating:
Summary: Imaginative, but seriously flawed.
Review: China Mieville's style here is impressive, invoking Dickens, Lovecraft and the 19th century in general. That and the brilliant creation that is New Crobuzon must've been what wowed the critics.

That said, I can't believe the fatal flaws in storytelling and characterization generally slipped under their radar.

I felt there were too many characters in play. One significant figure doesn't arrive until the last 20 pages! And I lost track of the villains; Vermishank, Motley, the slake moths, the mayor, etc. Some players meet abrupt ends, and some disappear for literally dozens of pages. My favorite character is given a major subplot early on, only to vanish for half the book!

The basic mechanics of the story suffer a similar fate. As Mieville bounces from character to character, plot threads are introduced, dropped, and mostly resolved (if at all) in a very unsatisfying way, especially after 710 pages of waiting to see how things turn out. In the end (spoiler alert), the remaining villains vanish from the stage, Isaac's apparent main goal is suddenly abandoned, and the heroes limp off into the sunset after horrible losses. I wasn't expecting "happily ever after," but the ending seemed half-baked indeed.

A final note: Mieville is fond of the words "stink," "stench," "greasy," "filth," and scatalogical terms I won't type here. Halfway through the book, I found myself thinking, "Okay, New Crobuzon stinks. I get it."

Overall, there's a lot of potential here, and genre crossover appeal, but I prefer tidier storytelling.

Rating:
Summary: at the risk of sounding trite-best book read in 10 years
Review: as a scientist who never reads science fiction-or truly, anything like this- i was fascinated by this book. such original ideas- as creative as edward hopper meets francis bacon. the author does stall a bit at times with his revisitation of squalid imagery and his overuse of similar adjectives describing such squalor. overall, however, this book most certainly is a work of brilliance. it might be a long time until you read something that will literally make your heart pound as this does, and carry you to another world such as New Crobudon.

Rating:
Summary: BLEW MY MIND
Review: Not for every one, for sure, matter of fact most will have trouble getting through it, but you can say the same for Joyce. Some people though have sweet spots and this one hit mine. It's like this, if I met you or knew you, the if I reccommended this book to you then it would be a complement to you. China is increditably creative, perhaps the book has faults but when you present this mountain of creativity who really cares or notices. Just stumbled on the book, knew nothing about it or the author, just killing time in a book store and the staff had given it an award. That makes it twice as special.
Question: who or how did anyone proof read this thing?
great book for those who read slowly.

Rating:
Summary: Don't let it bug you.
Review: I am not a fan of either bug fantasy or retro-science fiction (steampunk). It seems to me extremely unimaginative to create unknown lifeforms by simply mixing and matching the characteristics of known lifeforms. I also like my non-bio science to be believable and speculative with regard to our distant future, with some bits of wonder and anticipation amidst inevitable warnings and cautions.

This book artfully takes me to places outside or beyond those limiting personal preferences. Yes, there are creatures part-bug and part-human along with birdmen and frog-like beings and a host of other phantasms. But, in the hands of this particular author all of these are rendered with such elaborate craft that their inherent absurdity does not hinder this reader's fascination with their behavior and its importance to the story.

Then, in the non-bio realm, there is this book's lack of science - or the presence of absurd science. This too should have quickly sent me in search of other reading. But again I found myself held by a thin promise of logic and eventually, to my great satisfaction and growing respect, I was well rewarded. Yes, the logic is internal to the world of this book but it is there, fully imagined and sufficiently consistent to enthrall.

The world which Mieville creates in this book is very, very rich and, within its covers, very, very real and often very horrifying.

This book accomplishes a rare victory over my natural resistance. If you too suffer from my own aversions, ignore them and promptly buy this book. You should not be disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: Ooooohhh! I like it when you write filthy!
Review: So downright and wonderfully grimy I needed to shower after I had finished reading it. An overdose of gloriously fetid and corrupt (albeit at times self-conscious) writing. I've grown tired of SF, and find fantasy too silly. But this feels like something completely new and fresh (if something this rotten and stinking could be called fresh). Only read the 5-star reviews and ignore the others - the rest just don't get it.