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6.0 Stars. This book has newly joined the ranks as one of my all-time favorite novels and China Mieville has instantly become one of my favorite authors. This was my first novel by Mieville and I was absolutely blown away by both the world he created and his supurb descriptions of that amazing world. In really good fantasy and science fiction books it is not uncommon to have one or two really cool concepts or unusual takes on existing standards. This book had more of them then I could count. The
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Minus one star from the base score because it's made clear that the protagonist (Isaac the scientist) is fat about 3/4 of the way through the book. I could have fairly safely assumed he is at least somewhat fat (the setting and culture are like a fantastical New York City and he's middle-aged, ergo...), but I was so startled by the sudden plopping down of the description of his fatness that it annoyed me... I then had to "make room" for this new conception of him so far into the story, an expens
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This book took me several weeks to finally work my way through; not because it wasn't interesting, but because it continually required more effort than I expected. This might sound odd, but I really wasn't expecting to think as hard as I did while reading this. Mieville has written what I consider to be the perfect mix of Urban Fantasy and Cyberpunk and it took me a little while to find my way around his world, but in the end it was worth it. His gift, as a storyteller, is that he has such compa
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I cannot recommend this enough. If you like fantasy (not really high fantasy), steam punk, alchemy, science fiction, or whatever, read this book.
I can't really relate it to anything. It is an incredibly genuine and novel creation. Most fantasy works rely heavily on Tolkien as background material so that you know when they say 'dwarf' they mean short bearded fellow who likes to drink and dig.
This work, on the other hand, boldly created a brand new pantheon of races, places, and civilization. It t ...more
I can't really relate it to anything. It is an incredibly genuine and novel creation. Most fantasy works rely heavily on Tolkien as background material so that you know when they say 'dwarf' they mean short bearded fellow who likes to drink and dig.
This work, on the other hand, boldly created a brand new pantheon of races, places, and civilization. It t ...more
Jul 27, 2008
Nova
marked it as to-read
Jul 30, 2008
Aaron
marked it as to-read
Aug 23, 2008
Alice Lee
marked it as to-read
Oct 17, 2008
Dylan
marked it as to-read
Aug 17, 2010
Chris
marked it as to-read
Aug 24, 2011
PandaRanda
marked it as to-read
May 03, 2015
Meredith
marked it as to-read
