It feels like forever since I've posted a book here. I read half of a novel that was pretty terrible, wasting a week or so before giving up on it. Then I had China Mieville recommended to me by a member of my writing critique group and started in on the 700 pages of this amazing work of fiction.

Mieville's invented city of New Crobuzon is a horrifyingly fascinating place. A steampunk slum of epic proportions and thoroughly decaying grandeur, the city itself is perhaps the most intriguing character in a list of wonderfully odd characters.

The prose is dense, dark, and demanding. This isn't a page turner, but I was never once tempted to give up. It isn't often that I have to look words up when reading fiction, but I actually paid for an iphone dictionary app halfway through this text because I was needing it at least once a chapter. Yet the vocabulary, while strenuous, seemed to fit in for me.

The story is what I've come to think of as British dark fantasy. Indeed, the closest comparison I can make is to Joe Abercrombie, whose stories, while high fantasy instead of steampunk, are just as wonderfully real and depressing as Mieville's.

There are two more books by the author set in this city. I'm very much looking forward to them, but I'm planning to read a palate cleanser first, for the sake of my sanity.