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Aug 22, 2007

Tommy rated it:

Fantastic short stories from China Mieville. It was great seeing this author tackle short fiction so effectively.

There is one Bas Lag story for fans of Perdido Street, the Scar and Iron Council. But I had the most fun reading the other stories, where Mieville's awesomely weird sensibilities are turned upon our own world. 'An End To Hunger' is one of the coolest hacker stories I've ever read. 'Familiar' feels like a Bas Lag creature let loose in modern London. Really, I loved the whol More...

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Feb 11, 2011

Klytia rated it:

I racconti brevi sono una forma letteraria abbastanza difficile. In poche pagine è necessario introdurre ambienti, personaggi e atmosfere, aprire domande e creare la tensione narrativa e chiudere quindi il racconto in modo consistente, trasmettendo al lettore le stesse emozioni che riceverebbe leggendo un romanzo. Nel campo del fantastico autori come Lord Dunsany, Poe, Lovecraft sono stati dei veri maestri le cui tracce sono state seguite con successo da Neil Gaiman e ora da China Miéville con l More...

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Aug 05, 2010

Merrilee rated it:

I haven't read Mieville's novels, but he is a master of the short story format. I enjoyed all of the stories in this book, because they made me think and fear and wonder at all the hidden things behind the world that we see.

A fascinating mix. I enjoyed The Tain (the novella) and Reports of Certain Events in London the best, but there was no story where I felt disappointed.

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Jan 14, 2012

Kathryn rated it:

Something I keep coming back to with China Mieville is how much he trusts his readers to not give up when they get confused. His favorite method of introducing you to ANYTHING is to drop you in the middle of a situation (or a city, or a world), and feed you little tidbits of an explanation until you finally know what's going on. Or don't. And the gaps in the information will stay in your brain so much longer than if he'd gone point-by-point through the story.

The short stories don't lea More...

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Oct 13, 2011

David rated it:

“‘It lives in the details,’ she said. ‘It travels in that…in that perception. It moves through those chance meetings of lines. Maybe you glimpse it sometimes when you stare at clouds, and then maybe it might catch a glimpse of you, too.’”

He may be best known as a novelist, but China Miéville’s short fiction is worthy of attention, too. Reading the stories collected in Looking for Jake, I feel as though I’ve gained a fresh understanding of his concerns as a writer. Miéville has often us More...

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Feb 10, 2011

Alan rated it:

I'll admit that it took me a little while to see where China Miéville was going with Looking for Jake. The first couple of stories didn't really gel for me. But as I grew more accustomed to the voice he was using, to the kinds of story he was telling... I began liking this collection more and more.

It might be hyperbole to call Miéville the Edgar Allan Poe of our age, but only by a little. Miéville displays in this volume a mastery of the frisson like very few others. And the stories More...

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May 11, 2011

Michael rated it:

Like all such collections for writers who are primarily novelists, uneven. And I love Mieville and what he is doing to genre left and right. This, though, is almost exclusively on the uncanny/horror end of the spectrum. Fixations of these stories include the Marxist/postcolonial spin on the Frankenstein trick of meeting the monster via his own internal monologue; cities fractured into horror when Something Undefinable Changed; and the Lovecraft warhorse of learning too much and being forever More...

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Sep 11, 2011

Mate77 rated it:

After reading ''Perdido Street Station'' and ''Iron Council'' by Mieville and really liking them both, I had high expectations for this collection. Most of the stories are set in London and all have some supernatural or otherworldly element to it. As in every short story collection some stories fall flat while others really shine. I especially liked ''The Ball Room'' which is a standard ghost story, ''Details'' which is a Cthulhu mythos story and ''Jack'' which was set in the same universe as th More...

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Dec 07, 2009

Mike rated it:

Looking for Jake is a collection of short stories that, for me, really worked. There is great variety in here, showcasing the authors breadth of imagination and creativity.

One of the marks of a great short story is that it sticks in your head and lingers long after you've closed the pages. There are stories in this volume that persist years later, that have changed the way I perceived certain places and that have sparked my own imagination along new paths.

China Mieville More...

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Aug 31, 2011

Craig rated it:

Man, Miéville is really a creepy creepy guy. I really enjoyed this collection of short stories, though it sort of got grating after a little while reading story after story set in the same city (London). I mean, I understand that was sort of the point of the collection, but seeing more than one post-apocalyptic scenario played out in exactly the same location seemed a bit... redundant, even with the diversity in the stories.

Favorite stories:

"Reports of Certain E More...

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Mar 09, 2011

Kersplebedeb rated it:

While there are some brilliant pieces in here, i was really disappointed by this collection. Mieville normally gets four or five stars from me, but this really felt like reading scraps from a writers' notebook, or reading a series of drafts. Perhaps short stories are not his forte?

The ideas are often great, it's the stories themselves felt a bit rushed and unpolished. i find Mieville's one weakness is how to end a story, and i guess this becomes more of a problem in a short story colle More...

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Aug 31, 2011

Eris rated it:

To confine this man's genre to that of science fiction would be far to stifling. It would cause the arms and legs to drop off of his work, it's ambulatory nature would cease to exist. He is a master of creep out, a diviner of imagination, he brings forth what you never saw coming down a road that previously didn't exist.

This collection of short stories introduces many facets of the mans writing, some which seem to be in everything and some that are only found in a precious few writin More...

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Jun 15, 2011

Nelson rated it:

London through a very peculiar looking glass. Miéville's primary mode in nearly all of these stories is to look closely at the world and discover that not all is as it seems. So, for instance, the narrator of "Foundation" is a building inspector who can hear the voices of murdered Iraqis in the walls he examines for minute faults; the guard in "The Ball Room" sees, or almost sees, one child too many in a playroom in a superstore; "Reports of Certain Events in London" More...

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Jan 23, 2012

David rated it:

I thoroughly enjoyed this short story collection. If you're unfamiliar with China, this is a great way to "meet the author" before committing to one of his incredibly dense (though wholly worthwhile) novels.

Each story was engaging and left me wanting more. They weren't all scary, but they were mostly scary. And scary in the best way. Scary in the way that lets you fill in blanks with your own demons, your own little horrors.

China paints incredible pictures with word More...

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Sep 11, 2011

Laurie rated it:

This collection of short stories showed me that, while I adore Mieville as a novel writer, I’m less fond of him as a short story author. Written between 1998 and 2005, these stories range from the incomprehensible (Foundation) to the fascinating (Reports of Certain Events in London) to the funny (Tis the Season) to the seriously creepy (Familiar) to the will-this-never-end (The Tain). There is even one set in New Crobuzon, the world of ‘Perdido Street Station’, a very good story. Mieville fans w More...

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Jan 04, 2011

Matt rated it:

I think that a short story collection is a good way to check out an author you're curious about. It helps you see their interests, themes and style as well as the depth of creativity. When I read Looking for Jake I was immediately impressed. The eponymous short story 'Looking for Jake' was possibly my favourite of the bunch with the vague and extremely creepy quietness of the apocalypse going on evoked everything I love in horror.
This book has definitely converted me to being a fan of Ch More...

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Jan 08, 2011

neko rated it:

This was an amazing collection of remarkably original works from an author with a very unique voice.

Firstly, Mieville's writing style is delicious. It somehow maintains a degree of coarseness that lends it impact, despite its fluid eloquence.

The stories themselves are each a unique approach to their subject matter. The titular 'Looking for Jake' is a sort of post-apocalyptic romance, 'The Ball Room' is a modern approach to a classically-crafted ghost story, and 'The Tain' More...

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Mar 30, 2011

Elaine rated it:

I came into this book not really knowing Mieville's style. These stories were all dark and several had a post-apocalyptic feel. Not necessarily a feel-good series of short-stories but not all books should be. Since the subject was not light and airy I will admit it took me longer to get through this book than others.

Mieville is a very good writer but his sentences are complicated (had to re-read phrases several times to get the imagery) and he uses SAT-worthy words (thank goodness my K More...

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Sep 27, 2011

Mark rated it:

Let's be clear here: China Mieville can write. He can certainly write. Very descriptive, amazingly creative, great worldbuilding, he's a 4 star writer, for sure, but I'm not sure he can really write a short story. Or rather, if he is willing to write one.

The pacing for nearly all the stories in this collection are much more novel paced. If we take the classic Nancy Kress method of judging pacing (P=E/W [pacing equal events divided by words]) then he's got way more words for each even More...

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Dec 08, 2010

Sarah rated it:

In April 2009 I stopped scheduling my reviews ahead of time. The scheduling process was making reading and blogging feel like homework. Since it's currently an unpaid hobby for me, I decided I had to stop being a slave to the calendar even if it meant falling behind on reviews. To keep things interesting on the review side of things, I started picking which book or short story to review next by random. This process has the advantage of giving every recently finished book or story the chance of b More...

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Nov 18, 2008

Becky rated it:

I really liked some of the stories from this collection (particularly "Reports Of Certain Events In London," which convinced me to check it out in the first place.) Mieville is an elegant writer and interesting worldbuilder.

However, the collection as a whole was lackluster because the stories began to follow an obvious narrative pattern. Nearly all of them had very passive narrators who either witnessed something horrific or fantastic happening and ended the story feeling h More...

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Jul 28, 2008

Robert rated it:

China Mieville, Looking for Jake (Del Rey, 2005)

Looking for Jake made me do something I've never done with a China Mieville book before-- laugh out loud while reading it. Yes, the boy does have a sense of humor that's not cynical and grease-blackened every once in a while, and it's quite refreshing to see. I grant you, the whole collection doesn't have that feel to it, but it's certainly here, and I love it. I love it just as much as I love the rest of this book, and for that matter More...

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Feb 10, 2008

Belarius rated it:

Looking For Jake is China Miéville's first anthology of short fiction, and it runs the spectrum from brilliant to questionable. Fortunately, his stories hit a whole lot more than they miss. Provided the reader is ready for Miéville's consistently dark themes (where fantasy meets horror in many cases), Looking For Jake is a treat.

The strongest stories in the anthology ("Reports of Certain Events In London," "Entry Taken From A Medical Encyclopaedia," "Go Bet More...

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Dec 09, 2007

Trish rated it:

It's too bad I couldn't have gotten my hands on this earlier, so I could have skipped Perdido Street Station; I find Mieville much more palatable in the short form.

Looking for Jake: Something is ripping London apart at the seams, and the narrator just wants to find Jake again.

Foundation: A man is haunted by the voices of the buried dead, who tell him secrets about crumbling foundations and unstable walls.

The Ball Room: Something is amiss in the children's p More...

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Nov 04, 2007

John rated it:

This book was my companion on a recent spate of work-related site visits around some of the more industrial and bleak areas of New York City’s outer boroughs. Reading these stories in that kind of a setting enhanced the impact of these very imaginative, fantastical and somewhat apocalyptic pieces, many of which are set in some kind of London (i.e. London after an invasion by mirror-world vampires, London under the domination of some metaphysical force domiciled in a local movie theatre, London More...

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Nov 18, 2007

Sus rated it:

I didn't think I would like this book nearly as much as I did. Maybe that's because what I had read about this writer made him sound -- hmm, I hate to say "pretentious"; maybe it's because my only previous exposure to him was his short story "The Familiar," which appears in this collection but also in an earlier anthology I had read, and which does not well represent the aspects of China Miéville that I like.

Anyway, this collection is great. One thing I find int More...

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Aug 24, 2011

Roxanne rated it:

This was a pretty amazing short story collection. F recommended it to me by saying it was kind of Gaimanesque, which it is - more Neverwhereish, that sort of dark and gritty urban fantasy, only Miéville is much darker and grittier than Gaiman. What intrigued me the most about these stories was how goddamn imaginative they are. Miéville has written things here that I have never seen before, and I've read a lot of sci fi and fantasy. I'm really glad I don't live in his head, but I look forward to More...

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Feb 15, 2011

Ken rated it:

BRILLIANT! usually, in any given china book, there are so many single brilliant ideas that things can get overwhelming (like the concept of hell or the dead-man avatar in 'perdido street station', or the rail golem in 'iron council', etc). in this, he really reminds me of grant morrison. BUT, with this collection of short stories, there's usually just the one great idea to sustain you through it all. i'm not usually a fan of short story collections, but man, this really really worked.

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Mar 09, 2010

Andrew rated it:

This book includes a bunch of great, weird short stories, including the first thing I read by China Mieville, which I think was originally in a McSweeney's Adventure anthology edited by Michael Chabon.

That story is about roads which move around; they pop up in different cities, and there's this whole secret society of dudes who try to find them and walk down them. I read it, and was like, "Dag, that was weird," and that's the story of why I read a bunch of China Mieville b

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Sep 05, 2008

Erika rated it:

China Miéville has fantasy horror in the bag with his crawling prose and insight into the human psyche. But I had a hard time keeping my interest in this collection. Most of the stories were reincarnations of the same mystery/horror/paranoia/big-end-reveal type plot (which is good in small doses). I skipped the overly political pieces--mostly because the subject matter and any lecture therein was made clear in the title.

I really enjoyed "Foundation," "Details," More...

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