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storyorc 's review for:
Perdido Street Station
by China Miéville
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.