Rating: 
Summary: Everything including the kitchen sink
Review: I wanted to like this book. It had come highly recommended by (and compared to) writers I admire, like Moorcock, Carroll, Gaiman, and Graham Joyce. Because I wanted to like it so much, I invested close to 500 pages before I finally gave up on it.I actually did like the first 100 pages or so, when Mieville gives us some likable and interesting characters and a few very nice ideas. But, unfortunately, Mieville very quickly abandons those likable characters, loses sight of the initial ideas, and falls completely off the deep end. The main problem here is, Mieville writes from the "no idea is too insignificant to leave out" school. No, worse than that. Mieville apparently believes that not only are his ideas so sacred that none can be abandoned, each idea must be extrapolated and followed along to the nth degree. No matter whether the idea distracts from a given scene, or from the plot, or adds nothing to the characters - the idea is King and it will rule no matter what! I mean, there is one scene where our "heroes" are being attacked by the "bad guys" and Mieville actually breaks from the action to describe the inner workings of the villains' weapons! This is a minor example. The novel is loaded with them. An objective editor was nowhere in sight before this was published. Beyond that, I can't believe that no one seems to have noticed how amateurish much of Mieveille's prose actually is. Overused phrases (I lost count of how many times he uses the phrase "at breakneck speed" - or a very close variation thereof), metaphors that just do not work, and of course all the wordiness and overwriting. It's all here. We're supposed to marvel at Mieville's imagination. Fine. Brilliant imagination. Lousy novel. The shame is, there really is a good novel in here somewhere. Wading through the muck to get to it is nearly impossible.
Rating: 
Summary: Spoilt for thought
Review: When recommending this book to friends, I always say the same thing - there are more intriguing ideas in each single chapter of this book, than most novels manage in their entire length. When you first start this book, and enter the city of New Crobuzon, it can be quite disconcerting. This is a very strange place, where the seemingly familiar can have most peculiar twists. Take your time to acclimatize and you will enjoy an experience that is both highly literary and hauntingly enjoyable.
Rating:
Summary: Digable Twistedness
Review: During the book's first scene, a fat black man screws a gorgeous scarab-headed woman, and revels in the pevertedness of it all. China goes on to bring us an incredibly complex and original world full of darkness and rich history, corrupt politics, secretive dissidents, lush ancient religions, interdimensional beings, and some of the best steampunk around. No wonder this thing won awards.
Rating:
Summary: Alas for the lack of a Sixth Star
Review: I can barely write a review of this book, because nothing I write will do justice to this wonderfully crafted, fully enjoyable book. It is not very often when one comes across a book that delights you to the very core of your being. When I read this book, I was reminded of why I love to read fantasy/science fiction novels, although trying to put this book into a specific genre would be like classifying Moby Dick as "Fiction". Mieville can write. Even if you don't like books about other worlds and other peoples, you should read this book just for the writing, to simply enjoy the way the author makes a whole world come alive with his words, makes characters seem more real then the people you see around you each day and the way he makes emotions such as fear, love and hate just leap out of the page at you. It's a great book. I can only really compare it to Jeffrey Ford's Physiognomy series, as it has a similar style and flair. But Mieville takes the ideals that Ford presented in his fine novels farther. He keeps you guessing throughout the book and just when you think you have the plot figured out, he totally changes the novel about 1/3 of the way through, before wrapping it all up in the end. I can't wait to read his next novel. In fact, the only bad thing I can say about this book is that it makes the next book you read seem hollow and boring. Not a bad criticism, I guess. Read it.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent writing and a fascinating tale
Review: China Mieville's Perdido Street Station is an exceptionally well-written book with a great story to tell. He has inhabited the city of New Crobuzon with a number of interesting races and characters. The book starts out telling its story slowly but surely and by the middle of the book you are left feeling amazed at the threat that has emerged, and how this ragtag group of characters is going to combat it. Although the penultimate (and shockingly amazing) battle takes place on Perdido Street Station - the train station where all the city's rails merge - my feeling was that the title is symbolic of all the different groups and races which must put aside their differences and fight together to defeat the nightmarish threat facing the city. The main characters are extremely well-developed and you feel like you know what's going through their heads. While China Mieville's vocabulary is quite large, he always comes up with the perfect word to set the mood and describe the scene in perfect detail. Pick this up, you won't be able to put it down.
Rating:
Summary: If he's writing like this now . . .
Review: It left Brian Stableford breathless with admiration. Jonathon Carroll thought it might be a masterpiece. Even John Clute got gushy and called it the best steampunk novel since Gibson and Sterling's. It has cryptic cover art, a dotty title page, and enough weight to keep a door open on a windy day. The author, who is bald, wears earrings and dresses like a short Darth Vader, stares out from back cover with a Byronic brooding frown. Say hello to the hottest new Brit fantasy writer since J.K. Rowling. Although I had to plow through several acres of publicity to get to this book, for once it was worth it. Perdido Street Station deserves its hype and then some. The premise: A half-bird half-human being comes to the city to get back what he's lost (his wings) and hooks up with a well-intentioned, slightly dotty genius human scientist. The scientist's artistic bugheaded girlfriend takes a commission to sculpt a living breathing nightmare. A variety of stuff continually hits the fan. There is plenty to like about this book: the Romanesque ...-banquet of setting, imagery and characterizations, the earnestly sober/secretly giggly prose, the sheer literary ballocks it took to write it and in particular, the ending. It is not happy fantasy or a book for anyone on Prozac. There is not one redeeming character in it, unless you count the bughead chick, so it qualifies as True Lit. I imagine it made more than one serious critic come in his pants. A side note: the author calls Tolkien a wen on the arse of fantasy. You gotta love the boy for that if nothing else. On the downside, it was a bit too wordy and earnest at times, but at this level of story who cares? I was impressed, grossed out and occasionally absorbed, but not dazzled by the book itself. I'm dazzled by the fact that PSS is only the kid's second book. If he's writing like this now, batten down the hatches, because in ten years he's going to blow your face off. Bend the Reads gives Perdido Street Station five stars, and recommends it as a must-read for basically everyone on the planet.
Rating:
Summary: Ho-Hum
Review: The number of people who recommended to me this piece of complete mediocrity is enraging. "What was an experience becomes a dream and then a memory. I cannot see the edges between the three. The Weaver, the great spider, came among us. In the Cymek we call it furiach-yajh-hett: the dancing mad god. I never thought to see one. It came out of a funnel in the world to stand between us and the lawgivers. Their pistols were silent. Words died in throats like flies in a web. The dancing mad god moved through the room with a savage and alien step. It gathered us to it--we renegades, we criminals. We refugees. Constructs that tell tales; earthbound garuda; reporters who make the news; criminal scientists and scientific criminals. The dancing mad god collected us all like errant worshippers, chiding us for going astray. " I can't stand such useless, ruminative rambling. If you are a fool searching for life's meaning by reading pseudo-intellectual crap, by all means, read this book. Here's a list of people you should read or reread instead of touching this rubbish: George R.R. Martin
Orson Scott Card
J.R.R. Tolkien Some of you Mieville-lovers may hate me, but I write the truth. This book is for a certain type of person: one who appreciates a novel's aesthetics and symbolism more than it's meat, it's plot, it's characterization.
Rating: 
Summary: Both amazing and disappointing.
Review: An increadibly detailed world, and the description of it is captivating. However, at times, this detailed world described with such rich language gets jarred by something being added for the sake of conveniene. It would be more forgivable if it wasn't also saddled with a plodding plot that doesn't start to really start until about 150 pages in, then goes down many dead ends while throwing out red herrings here and there with truely interesting potential. The product of a staggering imagination and a gift for language. But even in the end, I wished it had lost 100 pages or so before getting to me, and I honestly couldn't see me recommending to anyone who hadn't expressed an interest in it already.
Rating:
Summary: Damn you, Mieville...I liked my cloistered worldview
Review: I suppose first of all an acquiescence to this book's detractors: I can understand and sympathize with the complaint the book seems overwritten. Genre novels seem to increasingly suffer from the idea that grand page counts can take the place of original and interesting stories. I don't think this book falls into that category though, and here's why: 1) The great deal of 'world' left out there by Mieville, suggesting future stories to be told in this fully-realized horrorpunk world of his. In ten years, when there is a 'New Crobuzon series' or somesuch retroactive titles applied to future Mieville works, this book will be seen as ambitious and effective at laying the groundwork for a thoroughly interesting world. We recently received The Scar, which left only more world to explore. One cannot say the author lacks for ideas. 2) Nothing is taken for granted. People complain about the apparently disparate technology of New Crobuzon; there seems to be a total lack of transistor-based electronics, telephones, satellites, etc, while biological and metaphysical sciences are far in advance of what we know. Not only does this acknowledge science need not follow holistic paths; biological science can advance beyond electronics, assuming electronics even work on this world, but it is all deliberate. The author intentionally chose where different technological levels would be. A thought: All of the advanced science, Remaking or otherwise, of this world seems to be government or mob-controlled. Who is to say such technology is not hoarded? 3) One cannot help but to be drunk on the language. Unlike the unprepossessing folderol of the Robert Jordan tree-bricks, this is a book in which the writing rises to the occassion of the ideas. China isn't afraid of his words. 4) The story might seem incoherent, with its spider-leg plotlines flowing out to nowhere only to twine together at the ends, but it is an excellent commentary of how much of our own lives exist beyond our experience. Events coalesce like molasses, their overlap visible only to readers like ourselves and Mieville's 'Weavers'. Like quantum super-positions, we can only see the different aspects of the story in their own contexts until they impact on each other. In fact, I like that idea as a means of describing Mieville, along with contemporaries like Gaiman, Carroll, Kiernan, Harris, and if you want to stretch backward, all the way back to Clark Ashton Smith. Super-positional writing, which must be taken in the context of the whole rather than the parts. The difficulty in writing such a story is absurdly great, and should be respected for this if nothing else.
Rating:
Summary: Masterfull Writer
Review: It's always nice to find another reliable scifi author. I enjoyed King Rat very much so dove right into Perdido Street Station after finishing it. Great read! As others have said, the city is the star of the book. New Crobuzon is a fascinating place with fascinating "species" (although all the species are really humans). When I see a book about a new "world" with a very complex map at the beginning, I prepare myself to be overwhelmed with learning the different peoples and places of that world. But Mieville never made me feel uncomfortable. He writes so fluidly and is so easy and enjoyable to read, that I was able to relax and let him slowly introduce me to the peoples and places. I never felt like info dump overload. Another mark I give to Mieville is that usually I need to like at least one character in a book strongly, and be able to identify with them and want them to "win". But in this book I would find myself filled with a great desire for the "good guys" to win, but then would think, "Wait. Who are the good guys?" I didn't particularly like any of the characters. Didn't dislike them, just didn't identify with them. It was the city of Crobuzon that I found myself rooting for. And whether it was a man, a garuda, a vodynoia, a weaver, rebels, militia, handlings, etc. I found I was rooting for "the city" to survive and win. On the one hand I would like to know more about:
deamons
weavers
vodynoa society including undines
the forrest
the southlands On the other hand I admire an author that can write a great work without turning it into endless sequels that lose more and more of the wonder as they go on. So not sure if I want China to write a sequel or not. True scifi fans will definitely enjoy this one. Reminds me of when I discovered Hyperion by Dan Simmons in 1990. Something unique and wonderful.
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