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koan2 's review for:
Perdido Street Station
by China Miéville
I read China Mieville's [b:The City & the City|4703581|The City & the City|China Miéville|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320475957s/4703581.jpg|4767909] a year or two ago, and I've been picking up Dial H, the comic he is writing for DC. “City” was amazing, so I was expecting a lot from Perdido Street Station, probably too much.
The book is wildly inventive. I don't read a lot of fantasy or sci-fi basically because I can't stand how repetitive it feels. Mieville is always coming up with something new and wild, and the city that he creates is definitely his own. Underneath all of the bombastic sci-fi strangeness is a pretty realistic depiction of institutional conflict, with Mieville's class-conscious writing shining through. The ingenuity that Mieville uses in fashioning his world is what moves the book along, and at times was the only thing keeping me going.
Once the gee-whiz feeling wears off, the story feels a little lifeless. It starts strong, and the city of New Crobuzon (locale of the titular station) feels dark and twisting, alive with its own energy and wonderfully real. The government is corrupt, the people are poor, justice is a rare sight and the bad guys win more often than not. It seems that the characters didn't get treated as well as the location though. The ending is a joke, and Mieville is left holding on to his empty characters, spent and used up, wondering loudly if he should just throw them away and be done with it.
The book suffers in other ways. Characters are inserted and taken out seemingly at random. The language is ostentatious while somehow being at the same time repetitive (how many times can you fit oneiric on one page?). The worst is this
See what I'm doing
Leaving spaces between things?
It happens once every couple of pages, not to change scenes or anything, but for dramatic effect. This sort of melodrama makes the second half feel like the transcript of an unceasingly long movie trailer.
Still, Mieville does something that most don't – he writes truly original science fiction.
The book is wildly inventive. I don't read a lot of fantasy or sci-fi basically because I can't stand how repetitive it feels. Mieville is always coming up with something new and wild, and the city that he creates is definitely his own. Underneath all of the bombastic sci-fi strangeness is a pretty realistic depiction of institutional conflict, with Mieville's class-conscious writing shining through. The ingenuity that Mieville uses in fashioning his world is what moves the book along, and at times was the only thing keeping me going.
Once the gee-whiz feeling wears off, the story feels a little lifeless. It starts strong, and the city of New Crobuzon (locale of the titular station) feels dark and twisting, alive with its own energy and wonderfully real. The government is corrupt, the people are poor, justice is a rare sight and the bad guys win more often than not. It seems that the characters didn't get treated as well as the location though. The ending is a joke, and Mieville is left holding on to his empty characters, spent and used up, wondering loudly if he should just throw them away and be done with it.
The book suffers in other ways. Characters are inserted and taken out seemingly at random. The language is ostentatious while somehow being at the same time repetitive (how many times can you fit oneiric on one page?). The worst is this
See what I'm doing
Leaving spaces between things?
It happens once every couple of pages, not to change scenes or anything, but for dramatic effect. This sort of melodrama makes the second half feel like the transcript of an unceasingly long movie trailer.
Still, Mieville does something that most don't – he writes truly original science fiction.