Perdido Street Station (New Crobuzon, #1) in Dark Fantasy and Beyond

Oct 19, 2014 Simon Watts added it

This book isn't getting a star rating. I could see myself giving either a two or a four star rating, but neither seem fair. Three stars would just be mediocre, which this book certainly isn't. So to save myself the trouble, I'm just going to fuck the star system entirely. I'm a rebel.

How to begin...

Perdido Street Station takes place in a dirty industrial mega city, filled with dirty industrial people. Mieville creates a world very much like our own, filled with tyrants of the bureaucratic, acad This book isn't getting a star rating. I could see myself giving either a two or a four star rating, but neither seem fair. Three stars would just be mediocre, which this book certainly isn't. So to save myself the trouble, I'm just going to fuck the star system entirely. I'm a rebel.

How to begin...

Perdido Street Station takes place in a dirty industrial mega city, filled with dirty industrial people. Mieville creates a world very much like our own, filled with tyrants of the bureaucratic, academic, and political variety. The descriptions of New Crobuzon and its citizens are the real appeal here, and that's really the draw. This isn't so much a novel, so much as it is the literary embodyment of a talented concept artist's Deviantart profile. The story and its characters take a side seat to the bus tour of New Crobuzon, and it's at times fascinating and majestic, and at times very slow.

My favorite part of this novel is a scene in which our protagonist Issac releases half a hundred test subjects out his laboratory window. The sheer technical prowess of Mieville is evident from the first page, and the man deserves the title of word-smith like no author I've ever read. He loves words as much as Tolkien, and this work is about a place rather than the people who live there. New Crobuzon is filled with a hodgepodge of creative races, like the vodyanoi or my personal favorite, the khepri, a race of sexy red ladies with insects for heads.

The first 200 pages of this novel were the most enjoyable for me, as they tended to focus the most on character development, which I fucking love. I liked all the characters in Perdido Street Station, but I never felt like I knew any of them. I would have liked too. They seemed nice, but I never really connected with them. Mieville doesn't develop them as much as I would have liked, and because of this rather than feeling intense, the final 200 pages didn't feel like much of a climax. Sure, exciting things were happening, but I felt nothing. It's Perdido Street Station's smaller scenes which really stuck with me. A journey to the circus, a riot at the docks, a trip to Isaac's favorite bar-- these are the scenes I loved.

I will say however, the last fifty or so pages pulled the story together wonderfully. Once the characters reconnected and actually started talking to each other again I was a very happy reader. There's just not enough of it to satisfy me. Lin and Yargrek were my favorite characters by far, and I was saddened to discover their fates, but not devastated like I'd hoped I'd be.

description

FUCK THIS GUY RIGHT HERE (You'll understand if you read it)

TLDR: READ IF YOU'RE REALLY INTO WORLD BUILDING. GIVE IT A SHOT IF YOU'RE A BIG FANTASY FAN, BUT NOT YOU WANT A CHARACTER DRIVEN NARRATIVE
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Oct 15, 2007 Amy rated it liked it

Shelves: fantasy, british-fantasy-society-award

I was lucky enough to get to see China Mieville give a reading and talk about his work at the San Francisco bookstore The Booksmith. The guy was completely bald, wore a small curved earring, looked like he worked out 5 days a week, and spoke like Christopher Eccleston (the dude from Shallow Grave, 28 Days Later, a year of Dr. Who, etc.). Has a master's in history and ran for Parliament - something like that. And the guy was like 30.

Aaanyway, this book is above all about a crazy wacked-out city - ...more

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May 25, 2010 Fey rated it it was amazing

Shelves: reviewed, steampunk, science-fiction, utopia-dystopia, sfx-book-club, 2011-must-read

Judging from other reviews, this is one of those marmite books, that you'll either love, or hate. Luckily for me I'm in the 'LOVED IT' group.

New Crobuzon is an immense city which is both filthily squallid and amazingly vibrant. Filled with a fantastic plethora of people and cultures. Artists and Scientist, Thieves and politicians (often the same thing), rich and poor, bug-people, cactus-plant-people, bird-people, generic humans, steampunk cyborgs (called re-made) and countless other wierd and aw Judging from other reviews, this is one of those marmite books, that you'll either love, or hate. Luckily for me I'm in the 'LOVED IT' group.

New Crobuzon is an immense city which is both filthily squallid and amazingly vibrant. Filled with a fantastic plethora of people and cultures. Artists and Scientist, Thieves and politicians (often the same thing), rich and poor, bug-people, cactus-plant-people, bird-people, generic humans, steampunk cyborgs (called re-made) and countless other wierd and awful things.

Issac Dan der Grimmnebulin is a sort of free-lance Scientist, who picks up an intriguing new client. A Garuda (bird-person) called Yagharek, who commissions Isaac to give him back the power of flight. Isaac throws himself into the scientific task, spurred on by three things; A love of impossible problems, the fascinating mysterious character of Yagharek himself, and a ton of money. (Yeh that would probably get me too).

Whilst investigating many different scientific options, Isaac comes into possession of a strange rainbow coloured caterpillar that refuses to eat anything but a psychotropic drug called 'dream-shit'. And with these two set-ups for the main plot line.. how could things ever NOT become interesting?

Big thanks to Nancy for recommending this book to me; I got completely hooked into this book. It took me a week to get through - it's fairly massive, and a bit tough to get into a first - but well worth the effort involved.

All the characters were brilliant and detailed, but my absolute favourite was Yagharek, the wingless Garuda. he's such a mystery in the beginning. And I found myself rushing through inbetween sections (as interesting as they were), hurrying to his next appearance and then reading voraciously for any hint and suggestion as to his background. Why and how did he lose his wings? What crime would be so great as to fit that punishment? Why do I have a crush on a fictional bird-person? These things kept me up at night until I closed the last page of the book.

I can't say the book didn't have it's flaws. The one thing that did bother me, was the the concept of the bug-people. (The other races I could actually accept). But the bug people.. the problem for me was that in this race, the females have a human female body, but their head is a bug. And the males are just a bug (no human parts). I find it impossible to imagine a species that could evolve this way, and I kept waiting for this to link in to some wierd science experiment in the manner of the re-made, which I thought would fit so well into the universe that it HAD to be the explanation. But either I missed it, or rendered it illegible whilst drooling on the pages reading about Yagharek, or it just wasn't there. A great pity.

A few words of warning for those who have not yet read this masterpiece;
The imagery is so vivid and the setting so much a contrast of filth and colour that you may feel the need to wear gloves while reading, or store it in the fridge.
There is a distinct lack of happy endings, please have a pack of kleenex to hand whilst reading.
If a book is akin to a desert, I would term this a chocolate fudge sundae with sour skittles on top. NOM NOM! Enjoy :) ...more

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