Perdido Street Station

Rating:
Summary: Superb ! A new voice !
Review: I cannot remember how long it has been since I discovered a new voice, a writer whose vision is new and exciting. China Mieville is such a writer. Beg, borrow or steal it; read Perdido Street Station.

Rating:
Summary: A disturbing, amazing book
Review: Perdido Street Station has ruined me. I will never read another sci-fi/fantasy novel without comparing it to this absolutely amazing book. The world construction is a mix of science, magick, and mysticism and it creates an amazing, fantastic experience. READ THIS BOOK!

Rating:
Summary: Breathtaking -- like no other novel I've ever read.
Review: I just stayed up till 1 a.m. to finish PERDIDO STREET STATION, and I am still reeling from this magnificent book. Even having read China Mieville's great first novel KING RAT left me completely unprepared for the many wonders of PERDIDO STREET STATION.

In this book, Mieville creates a fully-realized world, the world of Bas-Rag, with a huge city, New Corbuzon, that is at once nearly exactly like and unnervingly different from London. He populates this world with nearly a dozen different sentient races, with cyberpunk science and magic side by side, with writing of extraordinary, compelling power and visions at once of magnificent beauty and soul-gripping horror. His story is exciting, disturbing, and enthralling. His characters are deftly sketched and utterly believable.

Mieville carefully lays out at least four different strands of story and then braids them together with unerring skill -- the kind of plotting that makes backbreakingly hard work look easy. At its surface level, it is a gripping adventure story; but it is far, far more than that, for Mieville regularly brings the reader face-to-face with the moral dimensions of his characters' words and deeds. He makes us care about their world, about their struggles to understand their world.

And, on top of that, he has left quite enough room for further novels set in this amazing world that he has created.

I beg him to write more, and swiftly. I'm about to write this guy a fan letter, and I just don't do that sort of thing.

Rating:
Summary: Engaging, rich tale, but thick writing can get a bit rich
Review: Mieville's Perdido Street Station is by any means an example of a brilliant imagination and vision at work, and worth reading by anyone who appreciates strong, original world-building. The story, in brief: an eccentric scientist/researcher, the anti-hero in a Gothic world, is asked by a crippled bird-man to restore his wings. That inspires him to develop his half-baked theories into technologies that could change society. At the same time his actions inadvertantly set in motion a series of disastrous events that disrupt the status quo and could reshape or destroy the Gothic mosaic that is the city of New Crobuzon, the location of the story. The story is strong, especially in the middle of the book. But really, the book's protagonist is first and foremost the setting. The world Mieville creates is not unlike taking the Lower East Side of Manhattan and amping it up into a surreal paean to all things super-urban. The book is set in a dark, heavy world where magic blends with a futuristic version of 19th century technology; where countless species and races, some of them half-existing in other dimensions, live atop each other in urban squalor, corruption, political oppression and artistic fermentation; where living bodies are shaped like putty into whatever the powers-that-be find useful, and where punishment is meted out not by prison time, but by making use of that technology to warp the bodies of the condemned. Just as a setting for the character of the Weaver, an incredibly cool spider-like creature that walks through multiple dimensions and takes seemingly arbitrary actions to improve the "worldweave", this book is worth the read. This story is very rich in its vision and scope, and Mieville achieves this with an unusually thick, adjective-heavy descriptive style. But the book does have some weak moments. Most authors would cross their fingers, wave a clove of garlic, and run for their lives rather than write something this dense. There's a reason for it: his ungainly and heavy style can be cumbersome and intrusive and hard to get through at its worst moments. But at his best moments Mieville can make you drop your jaw in amazement with the power of his dark, complex images, and the flavor of the writing makes possible the world he describes.

Rating:
Summary: A New Master
Review: While I read China Mieville's PERDIDO STREET STATION, about 7/8ths of the way through, my gut is clenched in a palpable fear out of empathy for the lone band of characters facing an unimagineably horrific nemesis. His writing has deftly ensnared me and dragged me down into his nightmarish realm, and I truly feel a part of the proceedings, as if the words themselves have invoked a thaumaturgic bond with the story and setting, erasing the borders between this world and the one of New Crobuzon. He has gloriously succeeded in that rarest of endeavors, wholly transporting the reader to another fantastic realm. For this remarkable feat I place him in the company of masters, such as Tolkien and Peake. He deserves no less.

Rating:
Summary: Goodbye Garuda
Review: Although hardly a masterpiece, Perdido Street Station is an engaging trip into another of the many interesting cities that cluster the fantasy universe. New Crobuzon reminded me of Lankhmar and Nessus; the dangerous, the corrupt, and the freakish intermingle like desperate singles at a cocktail party. But somehow, the place itself, perhaps due to the excessive use of negative epithets alluding to sickness, putrefaction, and general obscurity, seemed to me more uniform, drab, and desolate than complex, multilayered, and ominous. I don't consider the overall decaying mood fitting to the premise of the book. A little more variation and contrast in the outlined atmosphere of the city would have been welcomed.

Nevertheless, the main problem with Perdido Street Station is that, while initiating us to New Crobuzon and its myriad of races and activities (with ever present criminal and scientific-thaumaturgic overtones), the plot seems be subordinated to the description of the setting. Yet, this is understandable because the city itself, being a mental and spiritual location as well as a physical one, is as important as the events that take place in it. Moreover, because of the introductory nature of the work, its descriptive aspect is paramount to generating a convincing sensation of being immersed in the actual place and the incidents that come to pass in it (just like any other good work of fiction).

The first half of the book is devoted to the examination of life in the city through the particular everyday events (albeit not ordinary at all) that befall the memorable main characters and the host of colorful secondaries: Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, the genial and boisterous rogue scientist; Lin, the khepri avant-garde sculptor and Isaac's lover; Yagharek, the wingless and shamed garuda; Derkhan, the revolutionary reporter and respected journalist; Daniel, the scared informant; Rudgutter, the corrupt and despotic mayor; Lemuel, the detached but involved supplier of illegal goods and services; Benjamin Flex, the underground editor of the Runagate Rampant; Lucky Gazid, the pathetic dreamshit junkie; Jack Half-a-Prayer, the semi-legendary fReemade terrorist; the Weaver, the multidimensional oniric spider; the Construct Council, the manipulating analytical computer-entity; Mr. Motley, the arrogant, cruel, solipsistic, and manifold drug kingpin; Shadrach, Tansell, and Pengefinchess, the three mercenary tomb raiders; Andrej, the dying, kidnapped and fitfully unwilling sacrificial victim; and the Slake-moths, the dreadful psyche parasites that turn New Crobuzon into a nightmare city. The whole setup for the plot, which takes around 370 pages, is carried off very deftly. In fact, I found it the most interesting part of the novel.

In the second part, the release of all of the tension that had been carefully building up in the first happens too effortlessly for my taste. Supernatural beings turn the tide in favor of the protagonists in the most perilous moments, which is to be expected given their odds of success against equally powerful paranormal creatures. But the corporeal bad guys are the ones that come up short and end up disappointing, thanks to their lack of imagination, initiative and opposition. It is New Crobuzon itself that becomes the best ally, providing shelter, and the worst enemy, because of its intricate distances, of Isaac, Yag, and the rest, despite of the seemingly tight governmental control. However, I found the different fates of the protagonists (especially Yag's and Lin's) unexpectedly, and gratifyingly, shocking, and the downcast note with which the novel ends is utterly befitting of the somber tone of the storyline. Their efforts go totally unnoticed by the populace and are ultimately unrewarded. Furthermore, they are punished. Nothing ultimately changes in the system of the city. There are no heroes in this tale.

The level of characterization is more than adequate to give the plot the right level of intensity. The characters are depicted in all their ragged glory. They come across as real people, with all their failings and virtues. Their moral dilemmas are pondered without resorting to cheap sentimentality. The villains thankfully deviate from the psychotic or the brilliant extremes, their depravity being the cause and product of the entrenched pettiness that seems to permeate the whole society of New Crobuzon. The various races that populate the metropolis (khepri, vodyanoi, garuda, cactacae, wyrmen, handlingers, Remade) and their customs, history, and characteristics are minutely described. Science (superficially comparable and yet vastly superior to ours in the mid to late 1800s), and magic (obscurantist, intricated, and alchemic) are almost as important as the characters themselves in the resolution of the story, and often are complementary, which makes for a refreshing departure from the usual conflict-between-both-disciplines cliché. The hints to many other races, lands, philosophies, cultures, and technologies gives the whole story a richness that is not present in traditional epic fantasy and that I associate with space opera or cyberpunk.

All in all, a very interesting and sobering read that hints at more perverse yarns to take place in New Crobuzon. If you enjoy the works of Wolfe, Vance, Barker, Lovecraft, Powers, Leiber, Gibson, Sterling, Crowley, or Banks, give Perdido Street Station a try. China Miéville has done a very nice job.

Rating:
Summary: A rare treat...a big surprise for a non-fantasy fan
Review: Although I was sure that the days when I was gulping any sci-fi or fantasy book are gone in the mists of time (mostly because of disappointments and absolute trash I've been encountering over the last years), this wonderful book has rekindled my interest in this genre and added another author to my list of "every new book is eagerly anticipated".

The story of a scientist researching nature of flight and unleashing the unmitigated disaster onto the great city, and then prying into its nature and trying to stop it, acquiring enemies and losing friends, might in short seem rather unsophisticated, but don't be short-sighted: although sometimes difficult to plough through the debris of words (because of the author's encyclopedian vocabulary), the city of New Crobuzon and what's been living and happening in its slimy bowels and whirling skies, dusty attics and militia towers, grips you from some 20th page and heads on a ride that will contain demons and weavers of space webs, cactus-people and insect-people, dream-slaking monster moths and Remade humans, governmental secret experiments and drug mobsters, birds-philosophers and artificial intelligence. This is also a story of a quest for knowledge and how it can lead to disaster, that wishes to control uncontrollable, as well as such feelings as friendship, betrayal, love, crime and passion for creation are as everlasting as the world around us. I sincerely admired author's fathomless imagination and wondered why this book didn't get any awards. To his credit, Mr Mieville never goes for primitive monsters, gratuitous violence (although some scenes are blood-curdling), cheap feelings and straightforward moralizing.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who enjoys to let's one imagination soar: plunge deep into the adventures in the fantastic and frightening city-world Mr Mieville has created. I bet to make this story into a movie it'd require talents of five Spielbergs and wagonloads of sfxs.

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic World, Average Plot
Review: There is absolutely no doubt that Mieville has created a highly original, mind-boggling, fantastic world capable of surprising and delighting readers. The non-human races are by far some of the most interesting and original to have graced any sci-fi/fantasy tale. It is obvious also that Mieville has given much thought to creating his world, so rich it is. This is apparent in his exposition of the book, the first fifth of it, which presents his material in a colorful feast of ideas, concepts and above all - cultures.

But for me, it is a waste that such a fascinating world has been given such an average plot. After the initial exposition, the rest of the book basically runs like a typical, contemporary Hollywood sci-fi movie - lots of colour and action, but not much substance. It was very much like "Alien" meets "Predator". There is a distinct absence of thematic/cultural/fantasmagorial intensity in the latter 80% of the book. From the point the slake-moth crisis begins, the book loses its interest in seriously blossoming its fantastic world, and instead rolls downhill in a long Predator-style hunt/hunted action plot.

Not that action itself is no good - but I found it strange that Mieville opens up plot potentials but does not actually fulfil them with the level of substance as the main slake-moth hunt plot. Eg. Lin's mafia boss/sculpture/torture subplot - what was this leading to? What is the point of her disappearance halfway through, and reappearance at the end, broken, alive, but...adding next to nothing to the plot? Similarly, what of Yagharek? His subplot is also left dangling. I found it unsatisfying that so much is made of Yagharek's quest, but no resolution or explanation is reached at the end. I do not mind plots left to dangle but which succeed in being provocative. In this case, it does not.

Therr are many cultural aspects of the book's world which is mentioned, but not at all developed. For example, the city's individual sections, stations and buildings have wonderful names - as a reader, I would be more satisfied if I understood why they have these names. Many races are shown in the book, but each really deserve an entire book of their own - from the Khepri to the Vodyanoi, the Cactacae, Garuda, the Remade, even the Construct Council - all these may have isolated incidents or small plot contributions that deal with them, but each is too rich in literary potential to be contained in one single book. One prime example I must highlight is the Weaver itself - *that* really deserves further exploration. I feel that it was a disservice to this wondeful creature to relegate it to a mere tank in this book, popping up from time to time delivering its high poetic language (which I loved) - only for the purpose of slashing at moths.

If I may humbly suggest: "Perdido Street Station" is too 'small' to contain the richness of Mieville's vast imagination and kaleidoscopically rich world. I hope the author would write more books based on this world.

Rating:
Summary: About Bloody Time!
Review: It's about bloody time, that a new fantasy novel is just that: new and fantastic. If like me, you love the genre, but like me have got increasingly fed up, nay bored by the constant glut of books in this field that deal with dwarves, elves, albino whatnots on quests for rings, swords, curtain rails etc., by pseudo Tolkein authors; then take a chance on this book, I don't think you'll be disappointed. At last a fantasy book that doesn't assume its readership is 11 and a half years old. Yep! a fantasy book for adult readers. Good plot, good characters, good prose, good grief it's excellent!

Rating:
Summary: Not just Dickens, but Gilbert & Sullivan too...
Review: This is my favorite of what one reviewer called the 'steampunk' genre. The characters and the milieu are interesting and varied. I understand why some reviewers thought the description of one decaying neighborhood after another became repetitive. But I thought CM captured the feel of an old, complex city: there are lots of distinct locales, most of them falling to pieces. The book isn't flawless: the monsters are (unintentionally, I think) silly, the 'science' doesn't have much of the feel of the real thing, and the plotting gets increasingly tedious. A strength that I didn't see mentioned in previous reviews is that the book is often funny -- I'm thinking particulary of the Mayor's audience with the Ambassador from Hell.