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Title: Perdido Street Station by China Mieville ISBN: 0-345-44302-0 Publisher: Del Rey Pub. Date: 27 February, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.17 (151 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Long in action. Long in atmosphere. And simply long.
Comment: Perdido Street Station is one hell of a tome. It's brimming with colorful beings, a fully-realized world and loads of mind-opening ideas, it can serve as a jumping point for series. Meilville's words are very visual, I felt I was reading a graphic novel without illustrations. However, the pacing could've been faster, as Meilville tend to have overly-long descriptions of a character's philosophical state or the inner workings of a city's bureaucracy. But I guess that helps in making his world more vivid and real.
Rating: 5
Summary: Most significant science fiction novel since ¿Neuromancer¿
Comment: If you're like me, you've read over the years much of the older, classic science fiction (e.g., Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, Niven) and now that your tastes are more sophisticated you are on the lookout for novels that excite both your science fiction and literary sensibilities. Gibson's "Neuromancer" was such a novel for me, with its taut plot and compelling vision of the future. But, I have found that much of the recent science fiction falls flat for me, and that includes a few Hugo and Nebula Award winners. To get my fix I am usually stuck reading the umpteenth installment of the "Dune" series, but goodness the writing is nearly atrocious. So it was that when I picked up "Perdido Street Station" I was prepared to be disappointed, but I found instead an engrossing, yet literate, novel of science fiction. The fantasy aspects of the story should be acknowledged, but it is not fantasy of the Dungeons & Dragons sort.
China Mieville's story is set in a roughly 19th-century urban environment of New Crubuzon. The backdrop is one of dour weather, depressing industrialization, grinding poverty, and an authoritarian police state. The story is tightly interwoven with places throughout New Croubuzon and is the basis for shifts in mood and action. The story's richly realized narrative style is reminiscent of Dickens or Joyce, with a bit of Lovecraft.
Upon this nightmare landscape, Mieville imprints an elaborate story addressing the cycle of tragic mistake-shame-struggle-redemption (or not). The overt struggle driving the plot is against vampiric, man-sized moths that are near-invincible and have a blind hunger for souls. As spiritual and mythic as the story may be, Mieville also creates highly alien characters (along with humans) that are nevertheless open to direct empathy. A brief list to pique your interest: a noble bird-man who has lost the ability to fly; a Falstaffian, human scientist; and a beetle-headed artist who is also the love interest. Even Lucifer makes an appearance, but remarkably free of much religious baggage. Throw in a swelling revolutionary movement, and the story contains much drama.
Some may feel that the novel may have too many wheels turning to avoid going off the rails. And the environs can be unrelentingly dystopian, so that there is no contrast to the story's progress. For me, these potential criticisms did not hinder my enjoyment of this highly original and well-wrought novel. Highly recommended with five stars.
Rating: 2
Summary: Everything including the kitchen sink
Comment: 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.
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Title: The Scar by China Mieville ISBN: 0345444388 Publisher: Del Rey Pub. Date: 25 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan ISBN: 0345457684 Publisher: Del Rey Pub. Date: 04 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: King Rat by China Mieville ISBN: 0312890729 Publisher: Tor Books Pub. Date: 06 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Golden Age by John C. Wright ISBN: 0812579844 Publisher: Tor Science Fiction Pub. Date: 14 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds ISBN: 0441009425 Publisher: Ace Books Pub. Date: 28 May, 2002 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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