cjblandford 's review for:

Perdido Street Station by China Miéville

5.0

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny informative mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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This book hit a little harder during this second time around. I think the first time I was dazzled by the weirdness of it and relished those aspects. This time around I am in awe of the deep characters and the layers in the story. Some parts fly by, other parts drag a little bit, but the world is so alive - it seems in spite of its surroundings and circumstances - that I was always interested in what was on the page. I feel like this book is just brimming full of ideas that China thought were cool. Yeah, why not throw the mantis-clawed guy in at the end. How about AI? How about a race of beetle-headed creatures who are refugees? Oh, and what if there are whole groups of people who receive horrible body-modifications as a form of punishment? Yeah, throw that in there. But what if people chose to alter themselves in weird ways? Sure why not. Also, Hell is real. And there's a giant inter-dimensional spider. Hmm, what else? How about cherubs, but instead of angelic, they are quasi-human and shit everywhere? Yeah, I guess so. And that's not even getting into the main plots of this book, most of those things are incidental. So many ideas and concepts in here. I feel like nowadays, this book would be edited way down, and it would lose a large part of the magic of it. I love these sprawling books because they feel alive; its not just whittled down to the necessary components for a fast moving plot. And that's not to say that the plot doesn't move fast, because after a certain point it just flies by. I did not want to stop reading it, and that, to me, is a sign of a great book.