Hannah asked:

Ok, so I'm very early in the book, but so far I have come across the bartender who slit his mouth, and Sil in his bucket of filth. Generally I can handle a bit of queasyness, but with these two instances in such quick succession I'm not sure if I can handle too much. So, alreadyfinishedpeople, should I continue if queasyness isn't for me?

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5 likes · like
11 years ago
13 answers

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Deb Omnivorous Reader You mean there are people who actually managed to finish this....?

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slash213 For those looking for a "Mieville book to start on": The City & the City. It's amazing. It's a murder mystery, but there's virtually no violence in the book.

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Elodie There are a couple of scenes involving Derkhan that may gross you out. I think it's worth it for the end result, but if Sil in his filth bothered you... If you're bothered by blood, maybe don't keep going? There isn't that many scenes with it, but the ones that do have it are intense.

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Matsuiny2004 if you cant handle gross then wierd fiction and new wierd isn't the genr for you

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Suzanne Conboy-Hill I've just given up on it due to the descriptions of violence towards animals. Humans, in a sense, can look after themselves but even in fiction I find gratuitous animal cruelty unpalatable. I got about 30% in, whatever that is in pages. The City and the City and Un Lun Dun are as wonderfully weird as you'd expect but there's none of this kind of material.

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Sarah Christopherson There are a few more disturbing visceral moments, but most of them are toward the end. It's been a bit since I read it, but if you could handle the aftermath of the first escaped moth then you should be fine. If that level of queasy makes you too uncomfortable then this is probably not the right book for you.

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Hannah Ok, so I decided to keep my stomach contents and thus moved onto a new book. Yea for me! Thanks for the feedback though ... maybe in the future I'll give it another go and try and find its purported awesomeness :)

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Elentarri Thanks for the warning. I intended to give this book as a present to someone who doesn't mind movie gore but has a problem with too much book gore.

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Matt Alexander Um... No, probably not.
If you are not the sort of person who would take a detour down a dark alley, or an overgrown and little used path in the country, to see what demons or lost magic might lie there, then this is not the book for you.

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Michael Sintros It's a pretty visceral book. There is a fair amount of violence, reference to torture and body modification, disturbing anatomical descriptions, etc. I would *not* recommend this to anyone who's squeamish.

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Stutty Can't argue. There's some gross and the over pall in absolutely every description and name of the things in New Crobuzon are like heavy wet grey blankets. But man, this may be my favorite novel. The language is just stunning, the characters and stories, gut wrenching. Love it.

Hope you some day can find your way through it.

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