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narrativeleaves 's review for:
Perdido Street Station
by China Miéville
I’m a very emotional person, or at least that’s what all personality tests claim. That being said, I’m not a Yorick (I mean Sterne’s Yorick, not Shakespeare’s). I’m not easily impressed and I always like to weigh the pros and cons, and relate the smaller fragments to the big picture – which, I think, makes me very rational as well. My belief is that the reason I’m always diagnosed as emotional is because, besides being quite instinctive, my automatic response in general is to react emotionally in relation to my rational conclusions.
So, yes, I confess, reading this book kind of made me develop a crush on Mr. Miéville.
Now I’ll try and prove to you that I can be rational as well by stating why is it that Perdido is so amazing.
First thing to keep in mind is that this is a fantasy novel and it is mainly focussed on world building. What mesmerizes me is how the fantastic correlates with the real in order to construct a critique or a tale not only of fictional beings and characters, but also ourselves. New Crobuzon is a fictional city in which different sapient species coexist. The category of sapient species becomes a source of tensions that mirror those that often occur from race, gender or class differences, for instance.
Perdido also makes a good point concerning posthumanity (I mean AI) and ethics. The relation of the machine and waste makes for an interesting source for further thought. I liked the insistence in stating that being rubbish, magically turns something invisible. It certainly does – which doesn’t mean rubbish won’t come back to bite you somewhere suggestive.
The thing I was mostly drawn to was the prolonged statement of how science and art must unite to be beneficial for humanity (or sapient species, if we’re talking inside the world of the novel). I truly believe that science is worth a rotten mattress without art, without literature, without aesthetic and ethical thought. And I think Perdido is with me on this. And I love it for it. Inside joke/comment(?) for those who have read the book (no spoiler): our webs are tremendously ugly lately, I think. Because we aren’t paying attention. We are all stuck inside our tiny labs trying to come up with the secret of flight... But do we deserve to fly – at all?
Last but not least, Mr. Miéville writes some sexy prose. I can understand complaints about his vocabulary – as a non-native English speaker I found myself consulting the dictionary quite frequently the first few pages. But this only adds to the reading experience. New Crobuzon is such a weird place, it definitely requires some odd words to tell its story. So much oddity together seems to belong and fit each other neatly. And the writing is truly beautiful, flows nicely, sometimes makes you pause and stare at a wall awestruck, imagining. “It [Perdido Street Station] sat weighty and huge in the west, spotted with irregular clusters of light like an earthbound constellation”. Sigh.
I just noticed I didn’t refer to the plot at all. Maybe it’s better this way. Go into New Crobuzon with no expectations. Enjoy your stay. Don’t forget to bring your moth repellent.
So, yes, I confess, reading this book kind of made me develop a crush on Mr. Miéville.
Now I’ll try and prove to you that I can be rational as well by stating why is it that Perdido is so amazing.
First thing to keep in mind is that this is a fantasy novel and it is mainly focussed on world building. What mesmerizes me is how the fantastic correlates with the real in order to construct a critique or a tale not only of fictional beings and characters, but also ourselves. New Crobuzon is a fictional city in which different sapient species coexist. The category of sapient species becomes a source of tensions that mirror those that often occur from race, gender or class differences, for instance.
Perdido also makes a good point concerning posthumanity (I mean AI) and ethics. The relation of the machine and waste makes for an interesting source for further thought. I liked the insistence in stating that being rubbish, magically turns something invisible. It certainly does – which doesn’t mean rubbish won’t come back to bite you somewhere suggestive.
The thing I was mostly drawn to was the prolonged statement of how science and art must unite to be beneficial for humanity (or sapient species, if we’re talking inside the world of the novel). I truly believe that science is worth a rotten mattress without art, without literature, without aesthetic and ethical thought. And I think Perdido is with me on this. And I love it for it. Inside joke/comment(?) for those who have read the book (no spoiler): our webs are tremendously ugly lately, I think. Because we aren’t paying attention. We are all stuck inside our tiny labs trying to come up with the secret of flight... But do we deserve to fly – at all?
Last but not least, Mr. Miéville writes some sexy prose. I can understand complaints about his vocabulary – as a non-native English speaker I found myself consulting the dictionary quite frequently the first few pages. But this only adds to the reading experience. New Crobuzon is such a weird place, it definitely requires some odd words to tell its story. So much oddity together seems to belong and fit each other neatly. And the writing is truly beautiful, flows nicely, sometimes makes you pause and stare at a wall awestruck, imagining. “It [Perdido Street Station] sat weighty and huge in the west, spotted with irregular clusters of light like an earthbound constellation”. Sigh.
I just noticed I didn’t refer to the plot at all. Maybe it’s better this way. Go into New Crobuzon with no expectations. Enjoy your stay. Don’t forget to bring your moth repellent.