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3.97 AVERAGE
3.97 AVERAGE
What always strikes me about the “steampunk” genre is the wealth of ideas that populate them. Perhaps it is simply an unfamiliarity on my part with the conventions of steampunk (and, truthfully, the more I read, the more the innovation and creativity in one book resemble the last), but in the case of Perdido Street Station, I found it distracting and a little irritating. There were any number of diverse storylines, and while they all connected to the story arc in some way or another, I found myself asking “why do I care?” Sometimes the plot was advanced by these interludes, but others were chapters full of stagnating exposition. Innovation and complex storylines are wonderful, but I felt like every time I turned the page I faced the possibility of having to make room in my head for a new set of rules for the universe of New Crobuzon.
The story itself was slow to grab me, though I was interested enough to finish it once I really got started reading it. There were points in the book, particularly in describing the city where Miéville’s prose isn’t so elegant as to almost be poetry, it is poetry. I found myself marveling at the cadence and texture of the language. I wanted to read it out loud, savor the feel and taste of it, knowing for certain that if it was beautiful in my head, it would be damned near ecstasy spoken aloud. And yet… And yet, this same symphony of words, this rich, writhing mass of description sometimes bogged down the story as much as it enhanced it.
Perdido Street Station left me with a curious mix of feelings and impressions. I wanted to know what happened at the end, though I did not always want to do the reading to get there. I did not love the conclusions drawn, though I can respect them. I marveled at the prose, though I think that it hindered the storytelling. I will probably never read this book again, though I might pick up a Miéville book in the future.
The tech in the book is steampunk, and is straightforward and uncomplicated, with basic pistols, clockwork devices, steam powered computers that use cards to programme them, but he has raised it to another level with the addition of elyctricity from simple batteries and magic.
But it is with the characters and people that inhabit this city state that he has made this so very different. There are regular humans with the regular count of legs and arms, Khepri with insect heads, cactacae who are green people with spikes like cactuses, the garuda, part bird part human and the vodyanoi, amphibians with human form, and the Remade who are those who have extra limbs or machines or other parts added.
And in this richly imagined, vivid, alien and yet slightly familiar landscape the plot is draped. Isaac has agreed to help a garuda who no longer has his wings, to be able to fly again. Whilst researching methods of flight of birds and other creatures he acquires a grub with fantastic colouring. It nearly dies, but when he discovers that it likes the new narcotic on the street, it starts to grow rapidly and changes into a cocoon and one night is gone. But this is no regular insect, this is a slake moth, a huge humanoid insect that feeds on fear, and the excretions make the new narcotic. It finds its four other companions and frees them, and shear terror descends on New Crobuzon as the victim count grows. And the authorities scrabble to find these creatures, the criminal want them back for the drugs and Issac seeks to destroy them too.
Miéville has taken the genres of Steampunk, gothic horror and fantasy, popped them in a blender and turned the dial to 11 with this book. The way that he describes the city and the inhabitants is full of detail and intensity. There are parts that are chilling too. The only reason that I didn’t give this five was I though that the plot was not so strong, but it is a solid 4.5