A review by vermidian
Perdido Street Station by China Miéville

4.0

This was a gift from a dear friend of mine who introduced it as being one of their formative books for their personal writing style. Right off the bat, I could see how this book had shaped their writing style, which was truly fascinating to me. Mieville’s writing style is very different from most of the books that I’ve read, using copious amounts of words that would probably kill at Scrabble. To be honest, I thought some of it was overkill from time to time. The multiple uses of palimpsest and circumspect were notable enough to me that it did take me out of the story on occasion, but most of the descriptions used are lush and magnificent. I think it was just the repetition of these words that caught me off guard more than anything.

The story itself is very dark. The setting is very dark. Most of the characters are very dark in a variety of different ways. I don’t want to spoil things, so I’ll leave it at that. It was a great adventure, albeit not necessarily a happy ending. The world building is mind boggling and extensive. It definitely gave a feel of a real city as I read because without occasionally referring to the map at the front of the book, I would have had no concept of how far things really were from each other.

And on a final note, this review is 4 stars because god damn it Lin deserved better.