Rating: 
Summary: Strong fantasy
Review: The Terpsichoria leaves New Crobuzon bound for a colony with convicts, slaves, and a few paying customers needing to leave the city by any means possible on board. Among the passengers is desolate Bellis Coldwine. The astringent woman has been exiled from the great city.The seafaring voyage turns nasty when pirates board the ship. Most of those sailing on the Terpsichoria are worthless to the pirates and killed. However, some including Bellis are taken prisoner to the corsair's haven, the floating island of ships, Armada. There they will either die or help the evil leadership with magic that could destroy all humanity. However, Bellis finds allies and tries to develop a third option. THE SCAR may be the fantasy tale of the year as the dark story line makes the reader feel as if he or she has entered Armada, so graphically described that the weird civilization seems real. The plot consists of plenty of action, but it is the leagues and depths of the water world and its strange yet authentic feeling populous that makes the novel so entertaining. Award winning China Mieville (see Perdido Street Station) is bound to more than just receive nominations; she is going to win many trophies for this strong story. Harriet Klausner
Rating:
Summary: A mixed successor to Perdido Street Station
Review: This book is set in the same world as Perdido Street Station, an earlier book by Mieville. I recommend reading that book before this one. They don't share characters or plot, but that book contains exposition about the world of Bas-Lag that this one does not have, so it may make this one easier to understand. My first question concerning this book was whether it would be a worthy successor to PSS. In some ways it definitely is, but in others not. The characterization is a definite improvement. Isaac and co. in PSS were reasonably interesting, but they didn't have all that much depth, which is probably why I downwardly reevaluated that book somewhat after I reread it. The characters in The Scar are considerably better, and since I consider characterization the most important part of a novel, I think it is probably the better of the two. On the other hand, Perdido Street Station gained recognition more for its fantastic setting than anything else, and in that department The Scar is slightly disappointing. I didn't find the new locales as interesting as New Crobuzon, although they're still remarkable. Also, the plot sometimes lagged a bit, and the ending contained a significant plot hole, whihc would be difficult to describe without major spoilers. I think this is Mieville's best book yet, but by a relatively narrow margin, and I doubt all his readers will agree with that contention.
Rating: 
Summary: Mining the Possibilities
Review: This is another powerhouse of the imagination from China Mieville, who certainly deserves the praise he has gotten as one of SF/Fantasy's most important new writers. This book is not as gut-wrenching or action-packed as its stupendous predecessor "Perdido Street Station," but it still demonstrates the range of Mieville's raw talent, although his lack of focus is also evident. Sheer imagination is the key to Mieville's work, and the most imaginative feature here is the book's setting. The drama takes place on a floating city made up of thousands of ships tethered together, on which Mieville creates a highly unique society and cast of characters. Other outlandish feats of the imagination are a reverse fantastic voyage along the skin of a mile-wide monster, and a beach consisting of the rust of ancient forgotten machines. And don't miss at least two truly terrifying battle scenes. Mieville can also create intriguing characters. Winners here include the interpersonally bizarre Lovers and the supernaturally swashbuckling Uther Doul, although the action is hampered a bit by a pretty lackluster lead character in Bellis. Sadly, this book also displays some of Mieville's inherent weaknesses, which are merely a function of having just too darn many ideas that should be reined in more effectively. The book can't quite justify its 600+ page length, and in the final third things start to unravel and run out of steam with just too many plot elements appearing and disappearing. The supernatural concepts that Mieville introduces are not explored fully (especially the intriguing possibility mining concept), while the conclusion really fizzles out after such an extensive build-up. However, this is still an immensely enjoyable work and China Mieville has a real future as one of the most talented new writers of the modern age. [~doomsdayer520~]
Rating:
Summary: Worthy but lesser followup to Perdido Street Station
Review: This is fantastic book. It contains the striking originality of Perdido Street Station, the multitude of races, the unique setting, complex plot & themes, and great writing. While Perdido was about New Crobuzon, The Scar is about Armada but it is also about the world of Bas-Lag. Rather than keeping you within the confines of a city, The Scar takes you across the ocean to strange islands and to fantastic places like nothing I've ever come across. Therein lies Mieville's unparalelled strength. He has the ability to take the reader to new realms to look at overwrought thing like vampires, wizards, monsters, and even epic fantasy in new ways.
I said that it was a lesser book than Perdido Street Station. I can only qualify that by saying that Bellis Coldwine isn't the hero that Isaac was, the plot wasn't as gripping as the slake-moths, and ultimately that I was already familiar with Bas-Lag.
Rating:
Summary: Worthwhile but dreary for very long stretches
Review: This is the first book of Mieville's that I read, and it made my cross-country economy-class flight more pleasant. The first portion of the book introduces us to a pirate saga, replete with coastal empires, a slave-based economy and a mixture of alien and half-alien races. While complex, the story cleverly focuses around Bellis, a character who thinks to herself a lot and fills us in on enough history to understand the plot of "The Scar" and on an emotional level that keeps us interested.
There's some technology components to the story, but this book seems to be much more epic pirate fantasy than science fiction. The pace of adventure is generally consistent, and the diction is definitely above juvenile.
I haven't read all of the preceding amazon reviews here, but "The Scar" seems to focus on tattoos as an important theme. I don't know if the author is "into" tattoos (I'm certainly not); but for something so prevalent among younger people today, it's nice to see it given some attention in literature.
The attention on scars, pain, treachery and blood certainly sets the mood in ways that my favorite adventure writers (P.J. Farmer, L.M. Bujold) don't do. It's not really gratuitous gore, but there's a lot of this stuff through the 500+ pages, which turns out to be a little much for me.
Overall, an excellent epic pirate story. Not for kids.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating, grotesque, intelligent, moving science fantasy
Review: This new novel is set in the same world as Perdido Street Station, Bas Lag, and as such fits loosely into that vague subgenre sometimes called "Science Fantasy". The Scar opens with mysterious doings in the ocean, and then we meet the noted linguist Bellis Coldwine, who is fleeing New Crobuzon to the colony city of Nova Esperancia. The ship carrying Bellis Coldwine (as well as ocean biologist Johannes Tearfly and a group of Remade prisoners including a man named Tanner Sack) does not get very far, though, before it is overtaken by pirates from the mysterious floating city Armada. Bellis, Johannes, and the other passengers and prisoners are taken to Armada, where they are informed they will live the rest of their lives. They cannot leave the floating city, but they will otherwise be allowed full citizenship. Tanner Sack and Johannes accept fairly eagerly, but Bellis is desperate to have a chance to return to her beloved home city. Soon she falls into league with the mysterious Silas Fennec, a spy from New Crobuzon who is as desperate as she to return home, in his case because he has information of a coming attack on their city. It becomes clear that the leaders of Armada are engaged in a mysterious project, and Bellis becomes a key figure when she finds a crucial book in a language that she is a leading expert in. She learns that Armada is planning to harness a huge sea creature called an avanc, and to have the avanc tow the floating city to the dangerous rift in reality called the Scar, where it might be possible to do "Probability Mining". More importantly to her and Fennec, her new influence gives her the chance to get a message Fennec has prepared back to New Crobuzon. The story takes further twists and turns from there -- it's very intelligently plotted, with the motivations of the characters well portrayed, and with plot elements that seem weak later revealed, after a twist or two, to make much more sense. But it's not the plot that is the key to enjoying the book. The characters are also fascinating. Besides Bellis and Tanner and Fennec, there are such Armadan figures as the symetrically scarred Lovers; Uther Doul, their dour and enigmatic bodyguard; and the Brucolac, a vampir, and a fairly conventional one, but still strikingly portrayed. As in Perdido Street Station, Mieville invents fascinating part-human species, hybrids of humans and other forms, in this book most strikingly the anophelii, mosquito men, and, more scarily and affectingly, mosquito women. In the end it is Mieville's fervent, sometimes overheated, imagination, that drives the book. His descriptions of cruel and dirty places, and odd creatures, are endless intriguing. Yes, he sometimes luxuriates overmuch in grotesquerie, but I suspect any application of discipline to his imagination would lose us more neat visions than we might gain by avoiding the occasional silliness or vulgarness. The book is also a bit too long -- some of this is the author's delight in showing us this or that cool gross notion he has had, but also I think his sense of pace is weak. The other weakness is one fairly common in certain fantasy: when so many weird magical things are allowed, on occasion it seems that things happen, or characters gain powers, for reasons of the plot only. But though the book is a bit overlong, it remains compelling reading, and though the magical happenings aren't always fully consistent, they really don't strain suspension of disbelief too much: on the whole, this is another outstanding effort from Mieville. I'd rank it about even with Perdido Street Station, and perhaps slightly better on the grounds that the plot really is worked out quite well, with plenty of surprises and an honest, satisfying, resolution.
Rating:
Summary: Mieville's best work to date
Review: This was the best of the three Mieville books in the New Crobuzon universe. Interesting characters, good mysteries, suspense, and a plot that keeps moving. I liked this a lot.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but not as good as Perdido Street Station
Review: While I enjoyed The Scar, I cannot recommend it as heartily as many here have. Yes, China Mieville has a way with words.
But I feel he stretched in this outing. The style that lent such depth and texture to Perdido Street Station seems overloaded in The Scar. Yes, he can tell a story.
But the ending was flat, and contained what could be considered either a gaping plot hole or just a rather inconsequential end to an interesting character (for those who have read and are wondering, remember the reason why Armada needed its rather unique "engine", and the lack of any such engine on a certain character's boat in the end) Anyone who enjoyed Perdido Street Station will enjoy The Scar. Bas Lag is a fabulous world, and one that I hope China Mieville will give us more of. The Scar was good, but after tasting Perdido Street Station, I find this meal vaguely unsatisfying.
Rating:
Summary: Vivid, Twisty, Ambiguous And intensely Readable
Review: _The Scar_ has a lot in common with Mieville's previous novel, _Perdido Street Station_. It's set in the same world, Bas Lag, where science and magic are inexorably intertwined and while it's not a sequel to _PSS_ it does allude to certain events from that novel. It's got the same richly descriptive style that fills out every dark corner in incredible detail, yet retains a level of readability that I associate with lighter, less "literary" books. It's thick, but at the same time it flies by far more quickly than an 800-page book should. It demands your full attention - skim it and you'll become hopelessly lost in the seemingly never-ending series of twists and reversals on which the plot hangs. The characters also share a certain ambiguity, where the good guys do bad things, and the bad guys turn out to be...well, you get the picture. However, unlike _PSS_ there's no attempt to portray the central character as a hero (albeit a hero who is hopelessly flawed). The protagonist, Bella Coldwine, is unlikable from the very start - it's almost her chief characteristic - and her morals center entirely on her own well-being. She's not good, she's not evil, she's just herself. She's also one of only a handful of characters whose personalities and motivations you're made fully aware of - many of the characters (some fairly major) remain ciphers throughout, others are wrapped in so many layers of intrigue you can never be quite sure if you've reached the center. If _The Scar_ has a weakness it's the rather anti-climactic ending, which is unsatisfying compared to its predecessor. However, getting to that ending is sufficiently fascinating in itself, as Mieville fills out the bizarre and unique world he first showed us a small corner of in _PSS_, that this almost doesn't matter. An unsatisfying ending, perhaps, but the book as a whole is a very satisfying read. For those who've read neither _The Scar_ or _Perdido Street Station_ and are warily eyeing reviews that mention "SF" and "magic", it's worth mentioning that the world Mieville portrays is completely unlike anything else I've encountered, and completely free of wizards, hobbits, spaceships, and so forth. There's also no attempt to portray Bas Lag as an alternate reality where X is real, or Y did or didn't happen, it's a completely different reality where some of the people just happen to look vaguely familiar, and some of the people just happen to act in familiar ways (and the two don't necessarily overlap). The plots themselves revolve around character and circumstance, and for the most part the strangeness of the universe adds texture and color but doesn't drive the story. It's not too hard to re-imagine a contemporary, "real world" version of these books that would be readable and entertaining. However, while the plots and characters are capable of standing outside of Mieville's universe, it's such a well-imagined and vividly described world, it'd be a crying shame to do so.
|
