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3.97 AVERAGE
3.97 AVERAGE
I'm on the fence with this book. Certain parts were gripping and imaginative, others overblown prose- how many times can we be reminded of the filthiness of the city? I GET IT, move on. In the end it felt like several books had been mashed together.
Perdido Street Station - 4/5
A pinnacle of the New Weird genre, this massive novel shines in its construction of the city of New Crobuzon. The city is the focus of this story, far more so than the plots or people within it. The city shines like a beacon of weird world design, uncanny architecture, unexplainable buildings and unknownable beings are greatly explored without overly explaining their point or purpose to the reader. We don't need to why, just that it is.
The story is more straightforward and the characters, whilst good, aren't the main focus. The main reason I've removed a star is because of a certain decision with one of the characters that I didn't particularly like however I still enjoyed the book regardless.
The novel is also very well written, especially those parts in first person but also much of the description of the city as well.
Overall, if you don't enjoy HIGHLY descriptive books, then this novel is not for you. However, if you love loads of detail and New Weird or the idea of it, give this a shot, I doubt you'll regret it.
A pinnacle of the New Weird genre, this massive novel shines in its construction of the city of New Crobuzon. The city is the focus of this story, far more so than the plots or people within it. The city shines like a beacon of weird world design, uncanny architecture, unexplainable buildings and unknownable beings are greatly explored without overly explaining their point or purpose to the reader. We don't need to why, just that it is.
The story is more straightforward and the characters, whilst good, aren't the main focus. The main reason I've removed a star is because of a certain decision with one of the characters that I didn't particularly like
Spoiler
Lin (who was my favourite character of the lot) disappearing for a large chunk of the book before turning back up at the end, only to quickly lose her mind to the Moths. It limited it her and it cut out one of the more interesting plotlines, Lin's search for her identity. It's almost as if Mieville didn't know what to do with her and so just wrote her out for a huge chunk of the novel, disapointing.The novel is also very well written, especially those parts in first person but also much of the description of the city as well.
Overall, if you don't enjoy HIGHLY descriptive books, then this novel is not for you. However, if you love loads of detail and New Weird or the idea of it, give this a shot, I doubt you'll regret it.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
What an enthralling and wild ride this is. Grim dark grotesque city with a dash of literary influence. Bug people and humans, and an amalgamations of the two, living in a fairly literalized organism of a city. Tied together with a fairly simple plot that becomes intricate and cyclical, thematically. Even the romance angle worked for me.
It is 100% filed under authors who have done so much comprehensive worldbuilding and want to show it off, stylistically. Which will be only for some. Personally, I appreciated the hard world building techniques and how information was rolled out. Both evocative and informative, without being overwhelming. You can always tell when someone is flying by the seat of their pants with soft world building (Harry Potter), and sometimes it works, but for something this different, I really think it would have lost some of the magic.
The only thing I did not like that much was a part of the ending. While it had a open at the close satisfaction, it sure felt overly hard nosed and not really following the fiction as established. Like an editor said it needed to be more punchy at that particular spot, and so it got the gauntlet. Still rounded up to a 5 from a 4 and change. But it did curb my enthusiasm slightly. However, all the times I was completely mesmerized by how different and awesome the imaginative powers brought to bear about seemingly every single detail of the setting, as well as how far I read quite a massive book, really does point to it still being a 5 star read, I think.
It is 100% filed under authors who have done so much comprehensive worldbuilding and want to show it off, stylistically. Which will be only for some. Personally, I appreciated the hard world building techniques and how information was rolled out. Both evocative and informative, without being overwhelming. You can always tell when someone is flying by the seat of their pants with soft world building (Harry Potter), and sometimes it works, but for something this different, I really think it would have lost some of the magic.
The only thing I did not like that much was a part of the ending. While it had a open at the close satisfaction, it sure felt overly hard nosed and not really following the fiction as established. Like an editor said it needed to be more punchy at that particular spot, and so it got the gauntlet. Still rounded up to a 5 from a 4 and change. But it did curb my enthusiasm slightly. However, all the times I was completely mesmerized by how different and awesome the imaginative powers brought to bear about seemingly every single detail of the setting, as well as how far I read quite a massive book, really does point to it still being a 5 star read, I think.
Felt very conflicted about this book. While I can appreciate it as a work of fantasy, it was not an enjoyable read. The world-building was at once thorough and entirely lacking. We got a thorough sense of everyday life, but no feeling for why the world is the way it is. The writing itself is a little over-the-top and detailed, but it didn't detract too much for me and my tastes. The casual brutality of this world is amplified in the larger villain of the work, there is violence in the small-and large-scale. It gives a very bleak world-view, but creates a world of pathos and serves to highlight the bittersweet feeling.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
inspiring
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Reading about New Crobuzon is like looking at a Where's Wally? illustration from the Guardians of the Galaxy universe, set in the industrial revolution. Every throwaway description is a glimpse into some bizarre and intriguing rabbit hole of how a new species has sewn its way into this patchwork quilt of a city. As delightful as the abundance of creativity and worldbuilding on display here is, the masterstroke comes in Miéville grounding it all with a sometimes-wry, sometimes-depressing coat of xenophobia, corruption, and capitalism. With such familiar pillars of society as those, it feels inevitable rather than ridiculous that cross-species relationships are taboo, that the human and frogmen dockworkers can't unite for an effective strike, and that the mayor considers an eldritch spider and literal demon from hell among his agents.
In almost all aspects, this is a lethal story that dances with dark subject matter as often as it does with delightful invention. The tone is actually weakest in the few places near the end when it cannot quite seem to settle on a climax and strays into a few too many action-hero set pieces. I found myself holding back from attaching to characters as much as I ordinarily would have after a while but there is a thrill in the realisation that Miéville is miserly with his plot armour and deaths and destructions feel consequential rather than cheap, even when they are abrupt. The first half of the book lulls you into a world where danger is theoretical, almost a game, present only at the criminal outskirts of our core cast's lives. The second half is a brutal, break-neck reminder that an unjust system can declare you part of those criminal outskirts at its convenience.
Our besieged, beatnik-adjacent cast is as morally grey as their city. Lin's artistic vision lures her into a superiority complex, Derkhan plays rebel dress-up in a world that tortures the lower-class rebels who put it all on the line, Isaac's insatiable drive to invent has him pulling wings off of butterflies to advance his theories of flight, Lemuel is as competent as he is transactional, and Yagharek is easy to admire as the strong, silent type but that silence lies ugly over the crime that cost him his wings. Lin and Yagharek, by the way, are a human woman with a scarab for a head and a bird-man respectively. Miéville injects his "xenians" with as much awful, wonderful humanity as the characters who look like us. At one point, I found myself cheering for the brain-slug puppetting a corrupt politican. The denizens of New Crobuzon may struggle to properly unite against the hideous threat that Miéville pits against their city but alliances certainly form and dissolve in interesting ways.
There's nowhere else to fit this so I just have to say god dammitYagharek. "Choice-theft" makes you think rape immediately but he was so cool through the rest of the book I'd managed to convince myself it must be just stealing or some kind of justified murder. I felt for Isaac with his dilemma at the end. And having the aggrieved party be the one to come ask him to let the punishment stand??? No avoiding and abstracting the crime for us anymore, thanks.
Also shout out to my boy Lemuel who was my tied favourite character with Yag. What a fun anti-hero type. What a haunting, painful end. His adventurer employees were all great late-game additions too - I have to wonder if they were Miéville and friends' D&D party or something. RIP Shad & Tansell. Penche swimming off and segmenting our heroes - still actively in danger - into the 'memory' side of her brain rather than the 'my problem' side was also a really interesting sequence that you don't often see in these stories, at least not before an epilogue.
Finally, I'll note wistfully that the science of New Crobuzon degraded the further from magic it split. Esoteric spell-casting and ritual-making adorned with the language of academia? Thrilling. An engine fuelled by crisis? Intriguing! However, the crisis that fuelled it at a critical moment felt, to me, only loosely connected to the story's themes and mechanics. The ethics of its organic fuel were more interesting. In all other aspects, however, I applaud New Crobuzon as a masterful mix of magic and mechanics. It's a hard mix to pull off, even before stirring in two dozen fantasy species. Coming off of the City & the City, I'm beginning to suspect that the main character in any Miéville book is the setting.
Read this because there's nothing else like it. Or if you thought Terry Pratchet's Ankh-Morpork was too cozy.
In almost all aspects, this is a lethal story that dances with dark subject matter as often as it does with delightful invention. The tone is actually weakest in the few places near the end when it cannot quite seem to settle on a climax and strays into a few too many action-hero set pieces. I found myself holding back from attaching to characters as much as I ordinarily would have after a while but there is a thrill in the realisation that Miéville is miserly with his plot armour and deaths and destructions feel consequential rather than cheap, even when they are abrupt. The first half of the book lulls you into a world where danger is theoretical, almost a game, present only at the criminal outskirts of our core cast's lives. The second half is a brutal, break-neck reminder that an unjust system can declare you part of those criminal outskirts at its convenience.
Our besieged, beatnik-adjacent cast is as morally grey as their city. Lin's artistic vision lures her into a superiority complex, Derkhan plays rebel dress-up in a world that tortures the lower-class rebels who put it all on the line, Isaac's insatiable drive to invent has him pulling wings off of butterflies to advance his theories of flight, Lemuel is as competent as he is transactional, and Yagharek is easy to admire as the strong, silent type but that silence lies ugly over the crime that cost him his wings. Lin and Yagharek, by the way, are a human woman with a scarab for a head and a bird-man respectively. Miéville injects his "xenians" with as much awful, wonderful humanity as the characters who look like us. At one point, I found myself cheering for the brain-slug puppetting a corrupt politican. The denizens of New Crobuzon may struggle to properly unite against the hideous threat that Miéville pits against their city but alliances certainly form and dissolve in interesting ways.
There's nowhere else to fit this so I just have to say god dammit
Also shout out to my boy Lemuel who was my tied favourite character with Yag. What a fun anti-hero type. What a haunting, painful end. His adventurer employees were all great late-game additions too - I have to wonder if they were Miéville and friends' D&D party or something. RIP Shad & Tansell. Penche swimming off and segmenting our heroes - still actively in danger - into the 'memory' side of her brain rather than the 'my problem' side was also a really interesting sequence that you don't often see in these stories, at least not before an epilogue.
Finally, I'll note wistfully that the science of New Crobuzon degraded the further from magic it split. Esoteric spell-casting and ritual-making adorned with the language of academia? Thrilling. An engine fuelled by crisis? Intriguing! However, the crisis that fuelled it at a critical moment felt, to me, only loosely connected to the story's themes and mechanics. The ethics of its organic fuel were more interesting. In all other aspects, however, I applaud New Crobuzon as a masterful mix of magic and mechanics. It's a hard mix to pull off, even before stirring in two dozen fantasy species. Coming off of the City & the City, I'm beginning to suspect that the main character in any Miéville book is the setting.
Read this because there's nothing else like it. Or if you thought Terry Pratchet's Ankh-Morpork was too cozy.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Animal cruelty, Body horror, Racism, Rape, Suicidal thoughts, Torture
Moderate: Fatphobia
On the whole, the narrative depicts and explores, rather than condones, these topics.
Isaac's weight is described often but he is the focal character and is no morally worse than anyone else, and in a loving relationship. It is more often (though not exclusively) a practical concern than a judgmental one.
Often great detail and an immerse world are a good thing, it'll draw you into the story and characters far more than a world with the barest glimpse of it's edges. There are times, though, when there can be too much of the world. I feel this book is a prime example of that. Mieville has gone to such great lengths driving home just how repulsive and harsh this city is, you are reminded over and over and over again that it is not a nice place. The problem is, you are reminded of this up until the very end of the book, the VERY end. I just feel like this really hindered the book, the detail of the city itself overshadows the actual story and characters. Instead of reading about what kind of dumps there are and the cranes that move around trash, I'd rather have read more about the nature of The Council or the value of the Garuda way of life. Something more philosophical rather than mundane would have been fabulous.
Also, there were a few happenings that just did not make sense in this. One, why did regular jailers have keys to unlock the moths in the first place? For such a dangerous creature, you wouldn't let simpletons carry around keys - ESPECIALLY into the cell when the damn things can control you. Second, why didn't the Weaver just make a giant web and pop in and out with it to catch the moths? You'd think at some point a giant, super intelligent spider would think to use a web to catch a moth. Let's regress to basic nature for one moment, please. These weren't the only two instances, but they are two that would have had a huge impact on the story. These things should have been explained rather than just left out to move the story.
Also, also, fuck the word pugnacious.
Also, there were a few happenings that just did not make sense in this. One, why did regular jailers have keys to unlock the moths in the first place? For such a dangerous creature, you wouldn't let simpletons carry around keys - ESPECIALLY into the cell when the damn things can control you. Second, why didn't the Weaver just make a giant web and pop in and out with it to catch the moths? You'd think at some point a giant, super intelligent spider would think to use a web to catch a moth. Let's regress to basic nature for one moment, please. These weren't the only two instances, but they are two that would have had a huge impact on the story. These things should have been explained rather than just left out to move the story.
Also, also, fuck the word pugnacious.
dark
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Extraordinarily imaginative. Slow to start but builds to an epic crescendo. Amazing world building. Violent. Very interesting ethical dilemmas. Excellent character development and masterful unfolding of plot.
adventurous
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No