Perdido Street Station

books:


	• Perdido Street Station China Mieville Del Rey, 2003 - 640 pages average customer review:based on 263 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Perdido Street Station

Perdido Street Station a wonderful, terrible novel. Its gritty steampunk setting and breathtakingly realised characters and creatures are astounding. As an avid reader and writer picking up that densely bound tome was probably the best thing I ever did, introducing me to an entirely new world that is far more satisfying to read about than any sword-and-sorcery universe, even the masterfully-penned world featured in Tolkein's books. It is not that kind of fantasy - most fans classify Miéville's works as New Weird - but it is a fantastic achievement to lure readers from such masterpieces.

Picking up one of Miéville's Bas-Lag books in particular unearths a rich source of enthusiasm, that will leak into the you and after only a few pages make you want to throw the book down and write something yourself. Starting and, just a few short days later, finishing Perdido Street Station was a life-changing experience, of the kind you might have after reading Iain M Banks or Frank Herbert for the first time. Its success and its sequels are a testament to the breadth and imagination of its genre-twisting world, one that is available for all to visit and, ultimately, take away with us forever.

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Just a Shot Away

I thought I really found a great read through perhaps the first 3/4 of this novel. Great Atmosphere, characters, and a plot with potential. However, the concluding chapters seem to collaspe under the the weight of the ponderous plot plodding forward. It bogs down in an attempt to tie up the many ends that have appeared throughout the novel. One particular disturbing point is the lack of a cohesive, coherent conclusion. The core of characters that have been responsible for the novel's forward movement are left dangling in literary space. Issac, Derkan, and Lin off to who knows where. And poor Yag, mutilating himself before wandering off to unknown but certainly cruel existence in the city. And he turns down an offer of comradeship with Jack Half a Prayer because it's not his battle or something like that. Very, very unsatisfying conclusion after following these characters for over 600 pages. I'm reminded of a line from the Eagle's song "City Girls"?, paraphrased as "Did Mieville get tired or did he just get lazy." Great promise, poor denouement. What is it with English writers? They seem to think that satisfying conclusions are outside the realm of serious writers. To borrow a line from Blanche Dubois, "I don't want reality, I want magic." Reality is what we get everyday. To see the promise imparted to these core characters frittered away due to dubious, hastily raised circumstances is downlifting. We are drawn to these people; we live with them, run with them, experience their anguish,their short lived success and then, and then,what? "So long, it's been good to know you." Sorry Mieville, in spite of great creativity, an inspired plot, a fantastic parade of characters of all sorts to put it mildly, you drop the ball. Dis-appoint-ment!

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Beneath the towering bleached ribs of a dead, ancient beast lies New Crobuzon, a squalid city where humans, Re-mades, and arcane races live in perpetual fear of Parliament and its brutal militia. The air and rivers are thick with factory pollutants and the strange effluents of alchemy, and the ghettos contain a vast mix of workers, artists, spies, junkies, and whores. In New Crobuzon, the unsavory deal is stranger to none?not even to Isaac, a brilliant scientist with a penchant for Crisis Theory.

Isaac has spent a lifetime quietly carrying out his unique research. But when a half-bird, half-human creature known as the Garuda comes to him from afar, Isaac is faced with challenges he has never before fathomed. Though the Garuda's request is scientifically daunting, Isaac is sparked by his own curiosity and an uncanny reverence for this curious stranger.

While Isaac's experiments for the Garuda turn into an obsession, one of his lab specimens demands attention: a brilliantly colored caterpillar that feeds on nothing but a hallucinatory drug and grows larger?and more consuming?by the day. What finally emerges from the silken cocoon will permeate every fiber of New Crobuzon?and not even the Ambassador of Hell will challenge the malignant terror it invokes . . .

A magnificent fantasy rife with scientific splendor, magical intrigue, and wonderfully realized characters, told in a storytelling style in which Charles Dickens meets Neal Stephenson, Perdido Street Station offers an eerie, voluptuously crafted world that will plumb the depths of every reader's imagination.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

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