Take a photo of a barcode or cover
russellarbenfox 's review for:
Perdido Street Station
by China Miéville
I've had this book sitting on my shelf for probably about five years, from back when a friend of mine cleaned off his shelves (I think perhaps he'd bought himself a Kindle) and sent me dozens of fantasy and sci-fi novels. Why did it take me so long to get around to it, when I jumped on the George R. R. Martin and Patrick Rothfuss? Can't really say; though I'd heard just about nothing but praise for China Mieville, for whatever reason I simply wasn't interested, and months turned into years. But recently, an e-mail conversation made me realize that I ought to give it a shot--and so, while I was away at a church camp, it was among the books I grabbed, to see if it would grab me. And boy howdy, did it ever!
A strange and wonderful mix of fantasy, sci-fi, and horror, Mieville's great theme in this book is disruption, adaptation, and transformation, and he found a terrific language, constructed a compelling world, and came up with a damn fine plot to spell those themes out at length. Basically, you have a city, New Crobuzon, which is non-computerized and steam-driven but filled with marvelous and bizarre machinery, and which is inhabited by various strange alien races along with human beings, and between magic and extra-dimensional science and plain old wickedness, curiosity, and invention, those races mix together, get made and re-made, sometimes are grafted on to each other in hideous ways. Through it all, politics, sex, crime, religion, ecology, corruption, and scientific research push forward. This city is attacked by a monster (five monsters, actually) whose powers and functions are a marvel of horrific originality. Through a variety of means, our heroes--and, in the end, this really was a heroic book; the final beats of the story, as the tragically wounded Isaac and his lover Lin and their suffering friend Derkhan seek a new future elsewhere, while the noble, transformed sinner Yagharek accepts his new home, reminded me of nothing so much as the end of The Lord of the Rings, with the wounded Frodo departing for the West and Sam returning home--must deal with the chaos the monsters bring, ultimately defeating them, but at great cost.
It's not a perfect book, I suppose; Isaac's final invention to defeat the enemy is a weird and nigh-incomprehensible bit of narrative phlebotinum (I seriously doubt Mieville himself could explain in any kind of ordinary way just what exactly was happening and why). So yeah, things got a little crowded and confusing towards the end. But he pulled out a fantastic conclusion just the same, and along the way there were many wonderful moments of description and pure story-telling (Lim's reflections on her upbringing and Yagharek's frequent asides stand out in particular). I don't know; maybe I'm rating this book too highly because it's strikes me as the most successful use of the whole "steampunk" aesthetic that I've ever read, and I'm just delighted to have finally realized what a gem I have on my shelf. I can promise one thing: this won't be the last Mieville I read this summer.
A strange and wonderful mix of fantasy, sci-fi, and horror, Mieville's great theme in this book is disruption, adaptation, and transformation, and he found a terrific language, constructed a compelling world, and came up with a damn fine plot to spell those themes out at length. Basically, you have a city, New Crobuzon, which is non-computerized and steam-driven but filled with marvelous and bizarre machinery, and which is inhabited by various strange alien races along with human beings, and between magic and extra-dimensional science and plain old wickedness, curiosity, and invention, those races mix together, get made and re-made, sometimes are grafted on to each other in hideous ways. Through it all, politics, sex, crime, religion, ecology, corruption, and scientific research push forward. This city is attacked by a monster (five monsters, actually) whose powers and functions are a marvel of horrific originality. Through a variety of means, our heroes--and, in the end, this really was a heroic book; the final beats of the story, as the tragically wounded Isaac and his lover Lin and their suffering friend Derkhan seek a new future elsewhere, while the noble, transformed sinner Yagharek accepts his new home, reminded me of nothing so much as the end of The Lord of the Rings, with the wounded Frodo departing for the West and Sam returning home--must deal with the chaos the monsters bring, ultimately defeating them, but at great cost.
It's not a perfect book, I suppose; Isaac's final invention to defeat the enemy is a weird and nigh-incomprehensible bit of narrative phlebotinum (I seriously doubt Mieville himself could explain in any kind of ordinary way just what exactly was happening and why). So yeah, things got a little crowded and confusing towards the end. But he pulled out a fantastic conclusion just the same, and along the way there were many wonderful moments of description and pure story-telling (Lim's reflections on her upbringing and Yagharek's frequent asides stand out in particular). I don't know; maybe I'm rating this book too highly because it's strikes me as the most successful use of the whole "steampunk" aesthetic that I've ever read, and I'm just delighted to have finally realized what a gem I have on my shelf. I can promise one thing: this won't be the last Mieville I read this summer.