Rating: 
Summary: Down in the Depths of a Sprawling, Fantastic London
Review: Of all the great cities of the world, London inspires the most extreme mixture of love and hatred. Visitors (and many residents) don't understand why anyone would want to live there: it is dark, depressing, dirty and deprived; the vast differences between the very rich and the very poor evident everywhere. But it also commands a fierce loyalty in those who recognise its curious depths, especially authors, like Charles Dickens, Iain Sinclair, Michael Moorcock or Peter Ackroyd, who are most aware of it's multi-layered psychogeography, the accumulation of level upon level of the grime of history and memory. But why, you may ask, am I talking about London? Well, make no mistake, despite its fictional alias, New Crobuzon, Perdido Street Station is as much about London as its predecessor, King Rat, and a far more successful book at that. The relative success of Perdido Street Station is, I think, actually due to, rather than, in spite of, its fantastic nature. King Rat was a little to eager to place itself in the contemporary youth culture of the London underground music scene, and a little too precious in its use of fairy tale. This book however is a kind of infinitely exaggerated London transformed in climate and setting, full of garish colour and foul stench, packed with the human (and inhuman) refuse of wave upon wave of hopeful but ultimately disappointed migration. It is a dreadful but exciting place, a tightly controlled dictatorship with a vibrant anarchic underbelly. The characters are both archetypes, but also memorable individuals: the freelance scientist who accidentally unleashes a terrible creature on the city; the human/insect sculptress who makes incandescent art for gangsters; the exiled birdman convict, who has lost that which made him what he was, his wings, for committing a crime which he cannot make humans understand;and my favourite - for a more alien alien I have rarely seen described - the completely inhuman spider-god, who weaves the webs between worlds. Add to this a whole supporting cast of the more or less villainous and vile, bizarre races and crazed architecture, self-assembling robots and the punished 're-made' human cyborgs, curious drugs and unsavoury sexual practices, and you have a potent brew. Yet, it is almost too strong. By the time a climax in the story is required, it is almost a let down, a disappointment. The city itself is so densely textured, so varied, so well imagined, and unfolds like a kaleidoscope of vulgar delights, that it can only overshadow story and plotting. Perhaps I am asking for too much: I certainly think New Crobuzon deserves its rightful place amongst the greatest fantastic worlds ever created - I could SMELL the place by the end! - but the story is just stretched too much and the resolution too frantic, for me to give this a final fifth star. But don't let that dissuade anyone from reading Perdido Street Station, it is an astonishing book.
Rating: 
Summary: Get down and dirty
Review: Let's be frank: this is a great grey grimy grotesquerie of a book - and it's fabulous. Quite apart from providing one of the few truly alien aliens in speculative fiction, it manages to throw more ideas around - from the familiar yet bizarre to the bizarre yet familiar - than anything I have come across in a while. And it does so WELL. But it does have its flaws. For one thing, it's about a third longer than it needs to be - further evidence, I think of either the cowardice or laziness of commercial editors. And I think Mieville does wallow in things a little overmuch. Nonetheless, easily one of the books of the year as far as I'm concerned. Not for the impatient, the easily offended, or for those who like a neat happy ending.
Rating:
Summary: Mieville's genius is vivid, indeed.
Review: In a word China Mieville's Perdido Street Station is breathtaking. It may well be the new magnum work of contemporary science fiction. A speculative masterstroke slung with verve, yet maticulous care in vibrant, pulsing imagery; it is a must read. Mieville offers a world so textured, so layered, so stunningly brilliant and wholly realised that it is a joy to visit, and a chore to leave behind. Readers dare not jaunt through the rich, enthralling land Mieville has cultivated from the fertile ash of his mind. Rather they must buckle themselves in to the coster-cart and allow themselves to be warped and flung through the neo-steampunk thrillrides of his urban funpark, and then gasp breathless for a thick lungfull of the atmosphere created by his fierce prose. China Mieville is a genius. Read the inside flaps of the beautiful delux Del Rey paperback and let your mind wander through the story tid-bits it teases with, and then plop down your money without delay. You'll be glad you did.
Rating:
Summary: Stunning
Review: I read this book a year ago when it first came out in the UK. Twelve months on it remains as vivid. Moments of writing, flashes of scenery, drop back into my mind.
Rating:
Summary: The First Time You Have Been Here
Review: To claim a given book is an entirely new experience is probably inaccurate; too many books have been written. However there are some works that are such a unique read that they come as close to unique as a work can. "Perdido Street Station", is such a book, and the Author China Mieville is just such an Author. How this person finds time to produce a work such as this and read for his PhD at the London School Of Economics is pretty impressive in itself. You can also put aside any preconceived notion of what Economists may look like, for Mr. Mieville is as far from Alan Greenspan in appearance as one can get. I cannot classify this book with any other that I have read. To illustrate the unusual place this book describes and the apparent contradictions that abound there is this. If you can imagine a society that has analog computers that have gained sentience but then use black powder flintlock guns as weapons, you are on your way. If you believe art is something that originates and flows from the mind, this Author has an artist you will never forget. The book is large in size, scope, and complexity, yet it all works it all makes sense. There is a character that has committed a crime for which he seeks to recover from. The crime is not unique; however the law that codifies what he has done is extraordinary. Simply stated this individual committed, "choice theft". I don't know if there are two words, or a phrase of any length that describes virtually every crime that is perpetrated, in this fictional world, or in ours. It is not just a clever phrase; it governs an entire society through those two words with variables for emphasis as the only modifiers. The Author's world is inhabited with enigmatic species, humans, and Re-mades. The last of the three may seem easily defined, but to make such a presumption would be wrong. Re-mades are the result of need, criminal punishment, and sometimes for the deranged a method of self-expression. These are not the, "skin-jobs", of, "Blade Runner", fame, nor are they clones. They are about as far from clones as is imaginable. The conflict the book deals with is not unique, however it is delivered in such a manner as to deserve the distinction of being referred to as such. The world of New Crobuzon must deal with the consequences of one man's actions to reverse the results of a punishment. Or perhaps it is the result of more traditional faults not limited to the entirely human world. However you choose to read and see this dark place as you travel through, "Canker Wedge, Spit Bazaar, The Glass House, The Rim, Mog Hill, and Bonetown", the adventure will become your own. And if you happen upon the, "River Gross Tar", well that will be for you to deal with in your mind's eye. A remarkable piece of fiction that is filled with social commentary, the structure of society, and yes, even a bit of economics.
Rating: 
Summary: An Engrossing But Confused Vision
Review: WARNING: Some of my comments may reveal more of the storyline than some readers might wish to know. See the editorial reviews above or some of the other readers' reviews below if you are seeking to get a sense of the storyline which does not give away the plot. My purpose in writing is to focus on what, it seems to me, most of the other reviewers, carried away by their understandable enthusiasm for this book's obvious merits, have overlooked. Let me begin with the positives: China Miéville's Perdido Street Station is an engrossing work that, once it hooks you (and in my case that didn't take very long), is then extremely difficult to put down. You simply have to find out what is going to happen next. Miéville's prose is original and usually elegant, his characters, for the most part, psychologically real, and his narrative fast-paced and exciting. He is immensely creative (although he seems too have no sense of measure in this regard) not only in creating characters and environments, but also in plotting (one caveat here would have to be the misuse of the Weaver who soon becomes a handy but tiresome deus ex machina for baling our heroes out of every impossible scrape.) That said, the book has a number of flaws some minor, others major. First, the insistence on making nearly everything and everyone in New Crobuzon reek of decay, corruption, and filth is annoying and nonsensical. This characterization is entirely arbitrary. No reason is given for why things are so sordid, and the effort to alienate and repulse the reader reaches ridiculous extremes. For example, no one in New Crobuzon every cries without also spewing out large quantities of snot. Or consider this description: "The quad before the enormous and ancient Science Faculty building was covered with trees shedding their blossom. Isaac walked footpaths worn by generations of students through a blizzard of garish pink petals." Garish? The image is false. Applying ugy adjectives to things that are beautiful does not make them ugly. Rather it jars the reader out of the imagined world which suddenly seems artificial and unreal. The science in the book is nonsense, the philosophy muddy, the ethics horribly skewed. New Crobuzon is not principally a world of magic where it might make sense that the chief weapons would be blades and single-shot firearms. No, it is a world of high technology (and magic) where for some arbitrary reason flamethrowers exist side by side with 16th century flintlocks and blunderbusses. Criminals are punished by being remade into a dizzying variety of horrifying and pitiful monsters with talons, pinchers, claws, enoromous ..., yet Isaac, supposedly, can't graft functional new wings on to Yagorek, and the scientists in charge of finding new eyes for Mayor Rudgutter can't solve the problem of tissue rejection. Come on! Where was the editor? The action of the book takes place on a grand scale, but a little self control and some consistency would have resulted in a much finer novel. The science and the philosphy behind the Crisis Engine is incomprehensible gibberish. Miéville tries to describe the forces and processes at work in it's design and production, but they are garbled, vague and contradictory. Suspension of disbelief does not extend this far. There needs to be respect for internal rules within any created world if the thinking reader is not to roll his eyes and snort in disgust. Computers running on valves, steam and punchcards supposedly perform the myriad inexplicable calculations required for the Crisis Engines functioning. It's simply hoaky. The books most important failing, however, is in the realm or ethics where it is completely confused. The central character Isaac, fails repeatedly to behave honorably. He is responsible, through his arrogance, selfishness and carelessness, for loosing the moths upon the city leading to the deaths of many of its citizens including his friend Lublamai and the reduction of his lover Lin to a state of idiocy. When Lin is kidnapped he does not go to try to aid her. Heinously, he is able to destroy three of the moths only by kidnapping (through the agencies of Derkhan) and torturing an absolutely innocent and helpless old man whom he attaches to the Crisis Engine. And, finally, he abandons his courageous and loyal ally Yagorek apparently believing him to be forever stained by an ancient crime from which apparently, in what smacks of a sort of weird political correctness, there is no redemption. Isaac is confused in the beginning and, is perhaps, even more so at the end while the reader is left with a taste in his mouth as disagreable as if he had drunk from the fetid waters of the Gross Tar. Ultimately, the novel's end is illustrative of the failings of the whole. Miéville is undone by his determination to constantly shock and suprise, to never to do what you might expect, hence Yagorek's incomprehensible self-plucking (instead of suicide) and assertion that "I turn and walk into my home, the city, a man." An interesting man he is to, with his beak and his bird feet wrapped in rags. At this point, I finally understood the relevance of the Phil Dick quotation from the first page of the book--the only problem was that it didn't make any sense. The unexpected ending is forced and absurd. Yagorek yearns for the air of the Cymek, not the city, and being featherless doesn't make him a man any more than having his wings chopped off earlier did. And God knows why he would want to be a man anyway given that men are the nastiest creatures in this hellhole of a world. Like the book as a whole, the ending seems profound only if one don't peer too closely, reflect too long, or ask too many questions. Miéville is a talented writer. He has a fine style and the ability that so many novelists lack to create memorable characters and a fast-paced plot. If he can develop some self-restraint and a more coherrent philosophy, he could be a truly great writer.
Rating:
Summary: A dark, gaudy, sophisticated fantasy.
Review: Behold: New Crobuzon, a metropolitan city-state of more than six million, a city of opulent mansions and decaying slums, a melting pot at the confluence of two polluted rivers where humans and exotic xenians coexist with a modicum of peace; a locus for trade and industry under the totalitarian rule of a demonic Parlament and their masked militia; an urban hell where alchemical and industrial effluvia pollute the air and water, and engines of every design - coal-burning, thaumaturgical, electric, clockwork - never stop spinning. This is outre steampunk deluxe. Creating a work of such vast intricacy is equivalent to holding one's breath for a half hour and then exhaling a thunderstorm. Without warning, a virtual unknown by the name of China Mieville generated a startling, brooding tongue-and-cheek fantasy that bridges the gap between Bulgakov's noble demons, Jeffrey Ford's nebulous abstractions, and William Gibson's steely mindscapes. But unlike Bulgakov's, Mieville's demons are cruel and hideous; unlike Ford's Well-Built City, Mieville's New Crobuzon actually lives and breaths (or rather simmers and sputters); and unlike Neuromancer's all-business characters, the people from the pages of "Perdido Street Station" like to have their fun. Mieville writes with consistent wit and sting. His originality is of the spontaneously outrageous type (I especially enjoyed the electric "sacrifice without the sacrifice", and the rest of Mieville's wildly imaginative technomagic). The author's command of the language is outstanding (I actually had to fumble for my dictionary), and his imagery is vivid and grisly (though there is a good deal of foul language, and some of the narration runs overlong). Mieville's characters are genuinely original, each one having his own poison - or passion(Isaac, an outcast scientist is an especially nice surprise - he's burly and hairy; throughout the book he comes to realize that he possesses a good deal of previously unnoticed virtues and soft spots). The book focuses on rebels and outcasts as its heroes - a garuda raptor-man, whose wings were cut off for a crime he cannot divulge; a fiery political critic for a banned publication; an enraptured khepri (scarab-man) artist working on a terrifying masterpiece at gunpoint. The non-humans are spectacular: we have khepri, garuda, cactus-people, a million species of warped mutants (the Torque is a nice allusion to the A-bomb), the Weaver (a poetic, transdimensional spider demigod). Mieville's magic breaks all conventions - it is so well integrated with the overall culture. Unfortunately, the book runs into some problems: the antagonistic force the heroes are trying to destroy - the hypnotic, mind-devouring slake-moths - just don't seem much of a threat on a global scale; the plot only begins to unwind some two hundred pages into the book - everything previous sets the scene, tone, and characters; the cheerful, wildly nihilistic tone lags as the book speeds towards the conclusion - for a good fifty pages the reader is kept in the dark about the last resort plans the heres are trying to execute. The reader starts groping for answers, but that's not Mieville's job. Dissatisfaction results. Fortunately, the last chapter is absolutely spectacular. I'm definitely waiting to read more works by Mieville.
Rating:
Summary: Rich, oustanding novel
Review: The thing that I really hate about most science fiction/fantasy, is that with a few notable exceptions, the authors treat their characters as throw-aways. All to often they are insipid automatons, that exist for the sole purpose of populating spectacular worlds. The authors of these novels have great creativity and imagination, but they never turn it into anything meaningful. Not so, China Mieville, who creates characters who think and feel and have consciences. In his masterful "Perdido Street Station" he not only creates a city-state of remarkable depth and grit, but his characters are perfect fractal reflections of their environment. Some are good, some are bad, all are troubled and burdened with doubt and fear; but they are also all complex and beautiful. In a remarkable world that mixes science fiction with fantasy and populated by a jaw-dropping variety of sentinent life forms, Mieville examines what it is to be "human". That is to say he explores what it is to be passionate and compassionate, moral and amoral. His characters struggle with "right" versus "easy" or "self-interest" with an astonishing depth. There were many points in this novel when I was genuinely moved. One last point, all allegory and subtlety aside, "Perdido Street Station" is just an amazing read. It has suspense, intrigue, action and romance, and it is all written in a remarkable (almost like Dickens recording a particularly vivd nighmare) style. I truly can't recommend "Perdido Street Station" strongly enough. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: Unforgettable Feast of the imagination!
Review: This novel was a feast of the imagination!Mieville has created a world that combines the terror of the unknown like H.P.Lovecraft and gritty neocyberpunk of authors like William Gibson and Bruce sterling. Mieville transports us to the city of New Corbuzon vast city of humans,khepri-part human part insect, and other nonhuman races.Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, a brilliant undisciplined scientist is visited by flightless bird man who pleads with him to help him regain the ability to flight.Lin,Isaac's Khepri artist lover is employed by a hideous gangster.But poor Isaac has more pressing problems, one of his experiments, a strange moth escapes from capitivity.This creature feeds upon dreams and consciouness of other beings.This one moth becomes four and is a menace so terrifying that even the agents of hell are fearful of it! Mieville has extraordinary skills in world-building department and he has uncanny knack of conjures up images from our wildest dreams and darkest night!mares.Like slath-moths who prey upon minds, criminals who are transformed into horrifying remakes.City Officials who traffic with agents of hell and my candidate for the most original character of the year,An interdimensional giant alien spider called The Weaver.I might be wrong in saying this early but this novel is one to beat for fantasy novel of the year!So if you are tired of elves, dwarves and sword of this and Wheel of that;then open up this book and prepared to be transported to a place you will live in your imagination for alltime!
Rating:
Summary: Recommenable SF/Fantasy
Review: Very good read, worth buying. Enough substance to his world for seemless verisimilitude. The ending was not tidy so I continued to think about the fate of the characters after finishing the book, much like good theater. I award it four stars rather than five only because of my particular taste; my penchant for the epic as in Tolkien was not piqued in Perdido. However, within its genre it is well worth the investment. I respect and support this author's style and work.
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