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Perdido Street Station

(New Crobuzon #1)

China Miéville (Goodreads Author)

3.97 · Rating details · 50,579 Ratings · 4,207 Reviews

Beneath the towering bleached ribs of a dead, ancient beast lies the city of New Crobuzon, where the unsavory deal is stranger to no one--not even to Isaac, a gifted and eccentric scientist who 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 h ...more

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Mass Market Paperback, 623 pages

Published August 2003 by Ballantine Del Rey (first published 2000)

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Mar 21, 2012 Nataliya rated it really liked it

Shelves: hugo-nebula, 2012-reads, excellent-reads, strange-avenues-of-mieville-s-mind, first-in-a-series, location-is-the-true-protagonist

To paraphrase Pratchett, "There's a saying that all roads lead to ~~Ankh-Morpork~~ New Crobuzon. And it's wrong. All roads lead away from ~~Ankh-Morpork~~ New Crobuzon, but sometimes people walk along them the wrong way."

(A stunning image of New Crobuzon from http://www.curufea.com)

A word of warning: if you read only for the story and plot, this book is not for you. Yes, there is an interesting storyline with mystery and danger and love and betrayal - but it is neither the strength nor the focus of Perd To paraphrase Pratchett, "There's a saying that all roads lead to ~~Ankh-Morpork~~ New Crobuzon. And it's wrong. All roads lead away from ~~Ankh-Morpork~~ New Crobuzon, but sometimes people walk along them the wrong way."

(A stunning image of New Crobuzon from http://www.curufea.com)

A word of warning: if you read only for the story and plot, this book is not for you. Yes, there is an interesting storyline with mystery and danger and love and betrayal - but it is neither the strength nor the focus of Perdido Street Station. What the book is really about is the city of New Crobuzon itself, and Mieville's amazing boundless imagination knows no limits when it comes to creating a living breathing creature of this surreal, phantasmagorical place.

"I turn away from him and step into the vastness of New Crobuzon, this towering edifice of architecture and history, this complexitude of money and slum, this profane steam-powered god."

New Crobuzon is "the sunless city of mundane betrayal and danger", a sprawling metropolis in the Industrial Revolution era-like setting. It is the melting pot of Mieville's world, with many races ~~happily living~~ grudgingly coexisting within it. Ruthless militia patrols the streets while crime bosses prosper and the courts sentence the criminals to the horrendous Remaking.

The macabre city is diseased, gangrenous, festering, filthy, covered in grime and stench, with all the vices of a huge metropolis - violence, crime, drugs, corruption, poverty, and politics.

Dominated by the eponymous bulk of Perdido Street Station, with the enormous ribcage of a long-dead ancient giant jutting out in the middle of it, built on the banks of rivers from which you'd better not take a drink, it appears to be made of the stuff of nightmares. That is, until the events set in motion by the unwitting characters of this story unleash the true sickeningly-awful meaning of nightmares onto "this old city that snores and farts and rumbles and scratches and swells and grows warty and pugnacious with age." The ultimate existential horror - the loss of the integrity of one's mind, the fear of helplessness.

"The nightmares were splitting the membrane of sleep. They were spilling into the everyday, haunting the sunlit realm, drying conversations in the throat and stealing friends away."

Mieville takes the strange and innately repulsive concepts and unflinchingly uses them to carve out the setting and the characters of his story. His amazing imagination and brilliant descriptive skills make this loud, boisterous, filthy, and terrifying place so incredibly vivid that it seemed to me that I actually spent some time there, lived and breathed it, actually felt it - which, in turn, makes me want (a) an immediate shower, (b) a full-body CT scan, and (c) immediate treatments for parasites and contagious diseases that any visitor to it would undoubtedly get.
*******************************************
I was warned about the linguistic complexity of this story. It is true - Mieville's prose can be dense and complicated and at times deliciously pompously pretentious, studded with adverbs and adjectives. Usually I would contemptuously and exasperatedly shrug my shoulders and walk away from that.

However, Mieville does something amazing with his fascinating language and melodic flow of narration (especially Yagharek's interludes), making me love it in a perversely masochistic way while reaching for the dictionary. What did you expect - after all, in this book, there is a mention of Palgolak, god of knowledge. With a library. (How cool is that???)

China Mieville, making sophisticated words cool since 1972. I bet he was born clutching a dictionary.

(Dear Mr. Mieville, thank you for 'prestigitation', 'salubrious', 'avaricious', 'penury', 'susurrus', and of course, 'palimpsest'. These words will forever stay with me. Bring on the SATs!)

********************************
As for the characters... Well, they are definitely flawed, careless, and not too likeable (yes, Isaac, I'm looking at you!), and therefore feel quite real despite their intended alienness. Lin, oh Lin, you poor thing... Construct Council - I wonder if we shall meet again, you terrifying artificial machine-god intelligence. But the tormented and mysterious choice-stealing Yagharek was my favorite throughout - and my heart was aching for him in the last few pages - the unexpected but in retrospect inevitable way to end this amazing gut-punches-delivering book.

==========================================

EDIT AFTER THE REREAD - WITH SPOILERS (November 2012):

The more I think about it, the more I find Yagharek to be the heart of this book. The earthbound garuda, punished for a crime that for different reasons is despicable both for his tribe and for us, readers - and Isaac, too. Yagharek, who in his desperate quest to fly again (and ashamed of himself for even trying) makes a journey not just from Cymek to New Crobuzon but also a mental one, from a quiet subdued creature obsessed only with its own plight to a fighter, a hero, a friend - and, ultimately, someone new.

(view spoiler)
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4.5 solid stars. Why not 5 stars then, since I am clearly in love with this book? Because I am awful, that's why. I hate insects, and all the insect-filled storyline made me feel like bugs were crawling under my skin. Brrrrrr.... Which, I suspect, may have been the intended effect. Also, intentionally or not, it feels that a few storylines were dealt with too quickly and incompletely. But overall, a great book that I loved very much and highly recommend.

"I turn and walk into my home, the city, a man."

============

By the way, my review of the second Bas-Lag book, "The Scar", is over this way.
And my review of "Iron Council", the third book set in Bas-Lag universe, is over here. ...more

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Jan 08, 2010 j rated it it was amazing

Shelves: book-club, wssfbc, sci-fi-fantasy, 2011, 52-in-2011, vote-getters, 30-day-book-challenge, signed-copy, chinatown, bas-lag

Lots of people like to accuse China Miéville of writing with a thesaurus open next to his laptop. How else to explain the frequent appearance of "ossified," "salubrious," "susurrus" and "inveigled" within the 623 pages of Perdido Street Station? Ok, so you can maybe argue that if you write a 250,000 word book, probably less than six of those words should be "palimpsest," but really, I just think he's a smart guy who carefully controls his prose.

So the language in The City & The City is strip Lots of people like to accuse China Miéville of writing with a thesaurus open next to his laptop. How else to explain the frequent appearance of "ossified," "salubrious," "susurrus" and "inveigled" within the 623 pages of Perdido Street Station? Ok, so you can maybe argue that if you write a 250,000 word book, probably less than six of those words should be "palimpsest," but really, I just think he's a smart guy who carefully controls his prose.

So the language in The City & The City is stripped down and spare, because he is riffing on detective novel tropes. Kraken is littered with pop culture references as he turns modern urban fantasy upside down. And Perdido Street Station is dripping with ~~ichor~~ grotesquely ornate nouveau-Victorian prose because that's the kind of book this is; dude clearly read a lot of H.P. Lovecraft (speaking of which, if you think this is hard to read, just try a few paragraphs of that). If you don't want to read something over-the-top, generally safe to say: don't read something by China Miéville. As Roger Ebert likes to say, this one goes so far over the top, it circumnavigates the top and doubles back on itself.

Shit (I don't mean to swear, but if you are going to read this one, you better be ready for some shit, and some shitting, and things that have recently shat [I swear, the only book with more shat than this book is [book:this book|6426609]]), how else would you have him describe New Crobuzon? A wasted, diseased, dark nightmare metropolis, where an entire neighborhood huddles in the shadows of the skinless ribcage of some ancient felled beast, where a gruff race of living cactus-people inhabits a massive, filthy greenhouse, where the polluted waters run thick with eyeless corpses and surgically altered criminals and wingless bird-men wander the streets? "Oh these words are too big! What is going on?" Ok, here you go: "The dirty city was brown. The brown water ran brownly past the dirty brown banks. A brown-skinned man in a dirty brown trenchcoat walked brownly through the dirty, brown light."

I'm not saying you are dumb if you don't like this. I am saying I like this. The world of Bas-Lag is like no place I've been before, so I don't want to hear it described with a bunch of words I hear all the time. You don't even have to know what they all mean. Think about the word "susurrus." How does that make you feel? I could have said "a whispering sound," but things don't make whispering sounds in New Crobuzon, they make susurrus ones. Trust me, this is some salubriously ossified vocabulary.

Should I talk about, you know, the plot? I don't think so. I didn't know anything about this going in except that it was set in a big, gross city and probably it was going to be hard to read (it wasn't). In broad strokes, though: it's nuts, which you know to expect if you have read one of this guy's books before. If you haven't had any good ideas lately, possibly it is because China Miéville has been slinking into your bedroom, wraith-like, to feast on your dreams (conceptual spoiler alert!). Seriously, I have read four of his books now, and three of them are densely packed with enough cool concepts to fill at least twice that many normal books. There is a reason this dude coined a new genre.

For all the muchness on display, for all of this book's wandering threads and "oh, this would be cool" pit stops, it's immensely readable and, you know, quite thoughtful. I mean, for a book with a sadistic, eight-legged, scissor-happy deus ex machinarachnid who talks in poetry and all caps. If you can find another book that manages to cram a genuinely well-developed sociological argument for Maxrism into the basic plot of Aliens on mushrooms, well... let me know. I'll read that too.

Facebook 30 Day Book Challenge Day 11: Book from your favorite author. ...more

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Feb 19, 2012 Traveller rated it it was amazing

Shelves: steampunk, urban-fantasy, four-and-a-half-stars, books-by-men

This Steampunk meets New Weird meets Cyberpunk meets Fantasy novel has so many themes, that I'm not even going to try to give it full credit with some sort of synopsis. I'm rather just going to talk about various aspects of the book as I go along with my review.

The way I felt when I finished the novel, I wanted to give it 7 stars. For a few reasons, I'm having second thoughts.

Let me start off the bat with some aspects that niggled me.

Firstly, certain aspects of the world-building:
Mieville used ...more

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May 13, 2007 J.G. Keely rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantasy, science-fiction, contemporary-fiction, novel, reviewed, horror, urban-fantasy, uk-and-ireland, favorites

My friends call me Senex ('The Old Man') because of my taste in fantasy, or they would, if I had any. It's often been noted that I'll give at least four stars to any fantasy from the Italian Renaissance, and yet rarely give more than two for anything written since the nineteen-sixties. Some have accused me of a staunch prejudice in period, but lo! it is not so.

I really love the fantasy genre, but the corollary of this is that I hate most fantasy books, because of how they mistreat that which I l ...more

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Jul 30, 2007 Ken-ichi rated it did not like it

Shelves: escape, fantasy

I feel like I've been reading this book forever. It's long, largely unstructured, and I never became particularly invested in any of the characters, so it just dragged on. The best thing I could say about it is that it's diverting. One of the quotes on the back describes it as "phantasmagoric," which seems accurate. All sorts of crazy random things, soul-devouring moth creatures, interdimensional homicidal spiders, creative reconstructive surgery as state punishment. That's all amusing to a degr ...more

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Jun 11, 2011 mark monday rated it it was ok

Shelves: i-gave-up, fantastical

my dear Perdido Street Station,

perhaps it is fated not to be. or perhaps i need to grow a bit more, until i am able to understand and appreciate your unique charms. but for now, i am just not ready. please don't take this personally - i promise that i shall try you out again sometime, perhaps soon. too many people love you, and they love you too, too much for me to give up on you altogether.

i will admit that my first impression was off-putting - the way you talked and gestured and sought attent my dear Perdido Street Station,

perhaps it is fated not to be. or perhaps i need to grow a bit more, until i am able to understand and appreciate your unique charms. but for now, i am just not ready. please don't take this personally - i promise that i shall try you out again sometime, perhaps soon. too many people love you, and they love you too, too much for me to give up on you altogether.

i will admit that my first impression was off-putting - the way you talked and gestured and sought attention only created annoyance. but still, i was determined to soldier on, knowing of the wonders that many others have enjoyed in your embrace. i thought that there must be something there, some quality underneath all of the affectation and all of the almost-desperate attempts to dazzle and to provoke. i felt confident that beneath all of the ruffles and ribbons and silky trifles and shiny buttons that there would be something interesting and of value, buried down deep. but as i undressed you, instead of a warm beating heart, i found only more rococo haberdashery. there was no there there!

but you know, once i felt the same way about samuel delany, about ronald firbank - and lo & behold: i now admire them both, i respond rather quickly to their bold instigations, their often sharp tongues, their secretly dreamy temperaments. it just took time. and i'm sure yours will come as well. but not now! i simply haven't the energy or patience to get to know you. and i am certain, in the end, my affection must mean little to you, Perdido... you are too beloved by all to be wounded too deeply by this minor affront. please do forgive my rash bout of grappling and its abrupt finish, this lectio interruptus. i take full responsibility.

this i do promise: to be continued! we will once again tumble into each other's arms, hoping for some kind of delight or satisfaction. this evening was... simply not meant to be. the housekeeper will take care of the sheets and mess; please do me a kind favor and take your leave through the servants' entrance.

'til the time of our sweet reunion,
yours,

mark monday ...more

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Mar 25, 2008 Brad rated it it was amazing

Recommended to Brad by: Ethan

Shelves: faves, speculative, mieville50, the-best, to-read-again, weird, steampunk, personal-mythology, meta-review

WARNING: This review probably contains some (but not many) spoilers, so you may not want to read this if you haven’t read Perdido Street Station yet. This review also contains plenty of vulgarity. Please don't read this if you do not want to see the "f" and other words. Thanks.

Me reading my review: I decided to read this on SoundCloud, since BirdBrian has turned me into a recorded voice madman. You can listen right here if you'd like.

I fucking hate moths.

Seriously. I hate them. They freak me ou ...more

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Nov 27, 2012 Lyn rated it really liked it

A brilliant page turner.

First of all, any book that begins with a quote from Philip K. Dick is alright in my book and promises a great story to come. This promise was kept, with interest.

Perdido Street Station by China Mieville is to steampunk weird fiction as Neuromancer was to cyberpunk – it is the definitive benchmark. An urbane, nightmarish fantasy, Perdido Street Station is similar to Mieville’s The City and the City; but where the later novel was Monte Python absurd, PSS is Charles Dicken ...more

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Feb 24, 2018 ✘✘ Sarah ✘✘ (former Nefarious Breeder of Murderous Crustaceans) rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: audio, 1st-in-series, machalo-tbr-cleaning-challenge-2018, dnf-graveyard, cure-for-insomnia, blah-blah-blah-heaven, boredom-fest, welcome-to-the-zoo, 2018, fantasy

☠ DNF at 11%. Go me and stuff.

Yet another ~~overhyped~~ book with a cult following bites the dust! Yay! I obviously read this one wrong! Or maybe I read it right but didn't enjoy it because I'd mistakenly purchased the Swahili version and read it back to front and upside down. This is the most plausible explanation, since I don't belong to the People of Despicable Book Taste Horde (PoDBTH™) and always read books right.

Had I bought the English version, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have noticed how exc ...more

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Apr 06, 2017 Stephan rated it it was amazing

Finished. I am stunned. 5-star stunned. After having read The City & the City I new I was in for something special, but I had no idea is was going to be anything like this. Perdido Street Station is a rich steampunk fantasy novel. The world is unique and filled to the brim with creative ideas and details. Every sense is involved when wandering through it.

If you want to read this, don't be faint of heart. The visuals are sometimes shocking and early on there are animal experiments, then - no Finished. I am stunned. 5-star stunned. After having read The City & the City I new I was in for something special, but I had no idea is was going to be anything like this. Perdido Street Station is a rich steampunk fantasy novel. The world is unique and filled to the brim with creative ideas and details. Every sense is involved when wandering through it.

If you want to read this, don't be faint of heart. The visuals are sometimes shocking and early on there are animal experiments, then - no spoiling - things happen to corpses and boy, do they stink. There are beasts of hell and sewers - no, not the harmless kind, these are filthy with slick walls, slime, mould, full of rot and shit. If you are prone to nightmares, here you are supplied with lots of material. Is it horror? No it is not, but there sure are elements.

Mieville's vivid language gives birth to the city of New Crobuzon. It grows in your mind, takes on form. The inhabitants, the smell, the looks.. the buildings..the city burst forth and spreads out before your eyes. His choice of words and his vocabulary is monumentous..

"Termagant!" he moaned after her. "Shrew! Harridan! All right, all right, you win, you, you... uh... virago, you spit-fire..."

There is no doubt, I like the main character. He and his friends have morals but they are challenged. Is there a good way to do something bad? Can crimes be redeemed? Many questions are posed in this book. That's part of what I like so much about Mieville's books. While telling a story he asks questions and reflects on them, indirectly. No need to deal with them if you don't want to, but if you do, you are challenged.

There was something I didn't like. At first I was surprised, but then I realized he did this in The City & The City too. Often there is this switch in the telling of a story near the end of a book, that I dislike. It occurs at the precise moment when the main character after struggling suddenly finds clarity and finally has a plan. This plan is not shared for the purpose of suspence. From this point on, the reader isn't part of the story anymore, (s)he is merely permitted to watch the plan unfold. I'm not saying this is a flaw or that this technique to build suspense doesn't work - it's just that I feel the moment happening and I feel shut out. But luckily it doesn't make the book any worse.

Now go, get the book, read your heart out. Open your mind and let Mieville draw you in, astound you, shock you, let him paint on the canvas of your imagination .. but hold tight, you are in for a real and captivating ride! ...more

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Mar 03, 2011 Ian "Marvin" Graye rated it it was amazing

Shelves: mieville, read-2012, reviews, reviews-5-stars

I Love You, I Love You, I Love You

For the fortnight it took me to read this novel, I was in another world and I was in love.

Perhaps, now, I’ll retreat from that world and substitute another or others (or perhaps even return to my own world), but I will remain in love.

Is this a fantasy love or is it real? I think it’s real.

After all, is there any love that is not partly a product of your own mind?

How can a writer make this happen? How can a reader experience this? How can a person experience it i ...more

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Oct 11, 2012 Jenn(ifer) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: dark, gr-group-coreads, read-in-2012, awesomely-weird

I'm not feeling overly inspired to review this book. I was. At first. At around the 300 page mark, still riveted by the world that Miéville created, I started feverishly composing what would have been... what could have been...

I researched Miéville's background and was prepared to tell you all about his growing up in a lower-class household with just his mum and his sister, but that he was super smart and won scholarships to all the best schools. I was going to tell you about his love for role- ...more

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Jun 02, 2009 Cecily rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: scifi-future-speculative-fict

I've read three other Mievilles before this, and they were 2*, 4*, and 5*.

I'm so pleased this was another 5*. What a wonderful, rich, steampunky, fantastical phantasmagoria this is.

PLOT

It opens with one of several short, first-person impressions: a newcomer arriving by boat at night. He’s wealthy but anguished, and the boatman fears him.

The story then opens in New Crobuzon: an ancient city (some houses nearly 1000 years old) inhabited by many exotic sentient species. We meet Lin, a khepri (inse ...more

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Mar 25, 2013 Bradley rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantasy, horror, sci-fi, steampunk, worldbuilding-sf, urban-fantasy, mindfuq, biopunk, 2016-shelf

Lesson learned after reading this?

Don't Experiment With Cheese.

Can you imagine how many problems could have been avoided had this novel had access to time-travel? It's practically the only trope not explored, and that's saying a damn lot.

Off and on through the entire reading, I wanted to declare that this is one of the most brilliant novels ever written. The sheer level of creativity and attention to detail, the fantastic explorations of ideas, the explosion of plot items and complications, and ...more

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Jun 01, 2017 Robin (Bridge Four) rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2017-reads, 4-5-stars, bb-b-2017, buddy-read, fantastic-fantasy, sci-fi, quit-crying-robin

Sale Alert: Amazon Daily Deal 18Jul18 1.99

I finished this about a week ag0 and I still can’t seem to decide if I love it or hate it.

description

I think it is kind of a little of both. The writing is wonderful and the world is fantastic. That easily made me like so many things about this book. BUT this isn’t an “and they all lived Happily Ever After” kind of book and so at the end I was left with this sad empty feeling that I didn’t like.

ツ On the Plus Side ツ

The world is fascinating and super complex. There ...more

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Jul 02, 2012 David Sven rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, horror, steampunk, favourites

What did I just read?! This book is crazy. Mievelle’s imagination is insane.

What is Perdido Street Station? Is it fantasy, is it sci-fi, or is it just outright weird fiction? It’s a little hard to explain but I’ll give it a shot.

The story is set in a totally made up universe in the city state of New Crobuzon. The setting could loosely be described as steampunk with an early industrial era feel, dirty, dank, corrupt, with a dictatorship for government and an underworld that rules the streets. Tec ...more

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Mar 29, 2008 Ryan rated it did not like it

Recommends it for: fans of steampunk

Recommended to Ryan by: io9.com

Shelves: scifi-fantasy, read-at-work

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. A story about a rogue scientist trying to harness unbelievable powers to help a de-winged birdman fly again. This should have been awesome. It wasn't. Plot lines get mashed together, or abandoned all together. It ends as a vastly different story than it started. I wanted to like this book, I really did. But now the more I think about it, the more disappointed I am.

The story is so off the wall you'll never know what's coming next. Sometimes story elements are introduced and won't make any sense A story about a rogue scientist trying to harness unbelievable powers to help a de-winged birdman fly again. This should have been awesome. It wasn't. Plot lines get mashed together, or abandoned all together. It ends as a vastly different story than it started. I wanted to like this book, I really did. But now the more I think about it, the more disappointed I am.

The story is so off the wall you'll never know what's coming next. Sometimes story elements are introduced and won't make any sense until 20 pages later. This is acceptable, but the story has A LOT of superfluous elements. Things are discussed and never spoken of again. Two prominent concepts on the back cover synopsis of this edition, weather patterns that destroy reality and the ambassador of Hell, come up only once and have NO bearing on the story. Several brief passages lead you to suspect that the mayor is a serial killer that steals people's eyes for his own use. But, of course, it's never spoken of again. Some of this is really interesting stuff, but just gives way to the more mundane monster hunt the book degrades into.

The writing started to get to me after a while. It's so overly descriptive that you can easily miss things. It's downright annoying if you have to re-read sentences frequently to dig through the dressed up language. It gets to the point that the interesting imagery looses its charm, and that's a shame.

I do know this though, I did not care for the ending. I'm not one that believes the ending always has to be happy, but this one was sooooo depressing. It just turns out terribly for all the characters you've been rooting for... for no good reason. The Garuda's new found determination feels so forced. Like the author just couldn't come up with a fitting end. The truth about Yag's crime was so... dumb. It's like the author wanted to make you like the character, and then pull the proverbial rug out from under you for kicks. Lin gets tortured half to death and ends up massively brain damaged... WTF? Motley doesn't get his comeuppance, neither does the mayor.

Apparently, The Scar picks up the author's narrative about the world of Bas-Lag. Perhaps I'll read it at some point. If you really like steampunk/neoindustrial stuff you may want to read this for the imagery alone. ...more

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Feb 02, 2014 Sanaa rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2015-read, read-books-i-own, favorites

[5 Stars] What did I just read? I'm too emotionally distraught right now to write a proper review. Don't worry because I will write one in the next few days. Regardless, I loved this. It devastated me. It made me think. it is now a favorite of mine.

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Sep 24, 2007 Brendan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Simply extraordinary.

Let's get this out of the way: yes, Mieville likes to get his vocab on. But I don't think it's out of pretension or apprehension (I've seen both suggested in reviews on this site). Mieville's using the language to draw you in to a world that is like ours, but slightly different— a dark, morbid, fantastical dystopia that's something like the dirty lovechild of Edward Gorey, Jules Verne and Charles Dickens. It's a dirty, lowdown, steam-age-with-magic setting that is immediatel ...more

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Dec 26, 2016 Markus rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2016, fantasy, science-fiction

The winds of this city are a more melancholy breed. They explore like lost souls, looking in at dusty gaslit windows. We are brethren, the city-winds and I. We wander together.
We have found sleeping beggars that clutch each other and congeal for warmth like lower creatures, forced back down evolutionary strata by their poverty.
We have seen the city’s night-porters fish the dead from the rivers. Dark-suited militia tugging with hooks and poles at bloated bodies with eyes ripped from their heads, ...more

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May 08, 2012 Nandakishore Varma rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Perdido Street Station is a masterpiece of world creation. China Mieville has created a fantastic twisted universe, as rich as Indian curry, and as weirdly fascinating as a freak show at a village fair. The city of New Crobuzon continues to fascinate long after one finishes one's journey through it.

New Crobuzon is a city in an unspecified alternate steampunk universe, positioned at the confluence of the rivers Tar and Canker. It is populated a medley of races, human and non-human: and the non-hu Perdido Street Station is a masterpiece of world creation. China Mieville has created a fantastic twisted universe, as rich as Indian curry, and as weirdly fascinating as a freak show at a village fair. The city of New Crobuzon continues to fascinate long after one finishes one's journey through it.

New Crobuzon is a city in an unspecified alternate steampunk universe, positioned at the confluence of the rivers Tar and Canker. It is populated a medley of races, human and non-human: and the non-human ones remind one of a painting by Hieronymous Bosch. There are the khepri, with female human bodies and a head which is made of an entire scarab: the head can couple with male scarabs and produce offspring, while the bodies can couple with human males for pleasure. There are the cactus people who are literally walking cactii; there are the wyrmen who are rather like flying gargoyles; there are the vodyanoi, frog-like creatures who can sculpt water; and the garudas, flying man-birds very much like the Indian mythical being with the same name. Also, there are the Remade, whose bodies have been surgically altered in most horrible fashions as punishment. There is also a Mafia don with a body composed of many conjoined ones and a spider god of sorts who travel across different dimensions on the world-web...

New Crobuzon is a republic of a sort, but ruled by corrupt politicians: the city gives one the impression of a cross between Victorian London and an America ruled by extreme right-wing Republicans (Mieville, a communist, seems to be making a statement here that any society dedicated to the service of Mammon will ultimately come to this). Crime is rampant: social inequalities are glaring: criminalisation of politics is the order of the day. The description of the dark underbelly is so stark and merciless that some sections (especially the one about the Remade whores) almost had me retching in disgust.

This universe has a sort of weird science which is a mixture of steampunk and magic. One day, a garuda named Yagharek whose wings have been removed as a punishment comes to the renegade scientist Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin. His request: make him fly again. Isaac cannot resist a challenge. His single-minded efforts conjure up a pair of wings for Yagharek sets in motion a chain of events which result in the discovery of crisis energy, the unleashing of a quintet of Slake Moths (horrific creatures who devour the mind and excrete it as nightmares) over the city, and the awakening of sentience in robotic slaves. In true disaster-movie tradition, events peak to a climax at the base of Perdido Street Station: the meeting point of various train lines, the seat of various government offices, and the tallest building in the city.

The pictorial effect of the novel is awesome. One can easily imagine the movie in 3D. The canvas is so huge and the details so intricate that it literally takes one's breath away. The author has taken a lot of pains to craft New Crobuzon, detail by painstaking detail-history, geography, politics and mythology. One may very well say that the city is the protagonist of this story...

...And IMO, that is its major failing. Mieville has spent too much time in developing his world that his story pales in comparison. His protagonists are not very likeable (especially Isaac); the story moves in rather predictable fashion; and towards the end, the novel drags a bit. At each and every point, we can see the author adding one more loving touch to his creation, expanding a detail here and there, many a time at the story's cost. This is what dragged the book down from five to four stars for me.

But as an unparalleled creation of fantasy, New Crobuzon stands alone: all you SF and fantasy fans out there, what are you waiting for? Go visit it! ...more

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Sep 15, 2011 Aubrey rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 4-star, reviewed, ever-on, r-2012, r-goodreads

Miéville strikes me as the type of author who has weird and fantastical dreams that all too easily dip into nightmares and back again, undergoing a number of cycles in a single night. Dreams that he can't help writing down to share with the rest of us. If this isn't the case, it makes the force of his imagination all the more impressive.

Streetways, devils, computing devices, insects, all merge and mutate and flesh themselves together in a riotous dance that both encircles and entraps the city of Miéville strikes me as the type of author who has weird and fantastical dreams that all too easily dip into nightmares and back again, undergoing a number of cycles in a single night. Dreams that he can't help writing down to share with the rest of us. If this isn't the case, it makes the force of his imagination all the more impressive.

Streetways, devils, computing devices, insects, all merge and mutate and flesh themselves together in a riotous dance that both encircles and entraps the city of New Crobuzon. The author is not afraid to get his hands dirty, and every slice of psychedelic meanderings is caked in filthy adjectives and suffused with an innate perverseness. And you find yourself moving faster and faster through the pages, details winking out at you as a powerful descriptive or grotesque picture pulls your attention for a brief moment before you're off again. At least, that's how it was for me.

I didn't enjoy all of the ride. Oftentimes the sights, the sounds, the cardinal directions would all blur together into a mass that I knew was a phenomenal work of imagination, but ultimately the same imagination. But the particular pieces that grabbed hold of my imagination and refused to let go were simply, in a word, extraordinary.

As I progressed through the novel, what first noticeably drew my attention were the unusual rainbow larva, one of them carried away in a whirlwind of black market activity to the lair of an exceedingly eccentric, if not mad, scientist. They grew even more interesting when they finally hatched, and to those who are wary of spoilers, I apologize, but some of my favorite aspects are tied up in major plot points, and I can't resist discussing them. (view spoiler)

Oh, you disagree? Ah well. More for me. But at any rate, I also loved the fact that Miéville was much more concerned with the world and the story than any sorts of literature conventions. He did have his plot and his grammar and characterization and whatnot. But a conclusive ending? Ha.

I'm looking forward to the sequel. Should be another phantasmagorically wonderful ride. ...more

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Aug 23, 2012 Scribble Orca added it

Recommended to Scribble by: Traveller

Shelves: closet-chauvinist, there-are-better-writers-i-d-rather, unfinished

Nope. Sorry.

A few decades ago when Mr Mieville was traipsing around foreign climes for a year I'd have been prostrating myself at the temple of his wizardry had he written this book then. I never had a problem in those heady daze with Robert Heinlein et al, so I hardly think I'd have failed to make room in my literary bed for good ol' China.

Let's just say I've arrived at the party a little too late. He's innovative rather than inventive, he's concocted a christmas cake of the fantasmagorical and ...more

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Mar 24, 2007 Conrad rated it it was ok

Shelves: owned, science-fiction

Others seem to have found PSS's world to have been fleshed out well; I thought it was implausible. No one knows what lies beyond certain parts of the world... and someone still found it necessary to invent trains. There's at least one huge city... but how there's enough food to go around is anyone's guess.

Mieville never writes five words when eighty will do, and his editor must have been asleep at the switch: I'd love to see an adjective count of this book. There are some genre-bending tricks a ...more

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Oct 05, 2012 Forrest rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I admit to being a bit inured to the "new weird". In fact, I'd say the new weird . . . is getting old. Strangeness for the sake of strangeness has lost a bit of its luster. I've read, and written, plenty of fiction in this vein. That's not to say that it's atrophied in my mind - I still appreciate the bizarre, but some of it has become so self-referential as to be an inadvertent pastiche of itself. The same can be said of the "steampunk" ouvre. I've argued before that the entirety of the steampu ...more

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Jun 21, 2011 Apatt rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, fantasy

Oh Jabber! what a pugnacious book! (Sorry, a little in-joke for those who have already read this book.)

I normally prefer to read books that are around 400 pages long or shorter because I am too impatient to slog through long books. However, I do make the add exceptions for books that really interest me. The thing with long books for me is that they must be *immersive* because once I am immersed in the story the length of the book become irrelevant. Delving back into the book feels like coming ho ...more

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Jun 20, 2011 Catie rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantasy, read-in-2011

When we’ve turned this world into a dried up husk and have to resort to shutting ourselves in to life sustaining pods and “living” within some sort of virtual environment, I vote we nominate this guy to imagine and design our virtual realities. Sure, we’ll probably end up with some weird shit, like fire breathing iguana flowers and pulsating organic clouds that rain mucus and blood (he won’t be able to help himself) but we’ll get the most detailed, complete, panoramic world, and I can guarantee ...more

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Jun 30, 2011 Lee rated it liked it

Shelves: fantasy

My first Goodreads review.

Story: 3/5

1: Being Vague, rambling plot with no little believable storyline
5: Ripping yarn. Clever, thought provoking

The story is based in a sordid police state world. Where medical advancements have bizarrely evolved yet weaponry remains in the 1700's. It is a dark and dirty setting that reminded me of Neverwhere. Unfortunately Mieville needs you to completely picture this world in your head, to a degree that is utterly frustrating at first. A description of an even ...more

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Feb 04, 2010 Chris rated it did not like it

Recommends it for: My Worst Enemy

Shelves: scifi-fan-group, fbr-2011, audiobook, made-my-eyes-bleed

Well then. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by that weak, unfulfilling ending. Why, the entire book was pretty weak and unfulfilling, so why did I hope for otherwise? Simple. I needed hope. Hope that there was a purpose behind all the awards and praise heaping I’ve seen given to this book. Surely there would be a payoff for enduring 600 pages of pretentious nonsense. But alas, I was wrong.

Story wasn’t the goal here, I suppose. More like trying to impress the literary establishment. Well, it did ...more

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Oct 30, 2013 Camille Stein rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

El violento proceso de destrucción y creación era un drama metafísico interpretado sin audiencia. Quedaba oculto tras un opaco telón de seda frágil, una cáscara que ocultaba la transformación con una modestia brutal, instintiva.

Obra vasta, enciclopédica, dotada de una mitología abrumadora. Otorgar un cuerpo convincente a un territorio tan complejo como la Ciudad-Estado República de Nueva Crobuzon requiere unas cualidades imaginativas singulares, que desde luego China Miéville posee. Si a esto le ...more

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About China Miéville

China Miéville

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A British "fantastic fiction" writer. He is fond of describing his work as "weird fiction" (after early 20th century pulp and horror writers such as H. P. Lovecraft), and belongs to a loose group of writers sometimes called New Weird who consciously attempt to move fantasy away from commercial, genre clichés of Tolkien epigons. He is also active in left-wing politics as a member of the Socialist W ...more

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“Art is something you choose to make... it's a bringing together of... of everything around you into something that makes you more human, more khepri, whatever. More of a person.” — 51 likes

“Old stories would tell how Weavers would kill each other over aesthetic disagreements, such as whether it was prettier to destroy an army of a thousand men or to leave it be, or whether a particular dandelion should or should not be plucked. For a Weaver, to think was to think aesthetically. To act--to Weave--was to bring about more pleasing patterns. They did not eat physical food: they seemed to subsist on the appreciation of beauty.” — 40 likes

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