Perdido Street Station

Perdido Street Station is a great mix of setting, plot and character. I admit that for the first few chapters, I was a little weary. The main plot hadn't kicked in yet, and I was just getting introduced to the characters, so it felt like the book was spending a lot of time describing the setting. I think it's a weakness in my reading habits that setting doesn't capture my attention as much as plot and character development, so I found myself starting to skim over some of the longer descriptive passages. However, the city of New Crobuzon is so unique that whenever my attention started to waver, some imaginative element of the world would pull me back in.

Once the plot started to get going, it really absorbed me. Almost every scene introduced an interesting new element, which made the world seem like it was constantly expanding.

If I had one problem with the book, it's that there were maybe too many ideas. The fantasy setting was established early on, and it's a world where anything goes, and anything can happen. This was cool most of the time because there was always a sense that something unexpected would happen. However, there were subplots and tangents which seemed to me like they were just put there to introduce a crazy idea. The meeting with the Ambassador from Hell comes to mind; there's great imagery in that scene, but the character of the Ambassador, and the fact that our protagonists can freely communicate with Hell, never show up again.

This is a minor criticism, though, and overall, I enjoyed Perdido Street Station very much.

A fascinating tale in a fascinating world. Mieville spends time describing the city such that at times, it's good enough to be a tourist guide to the geography of the setting he created. The story is also wildly imaginative. It's an adventure, a tragedy, and many other things. Brilliant.

A brilliant book of well-rounded characters and a lavish dystopian world. All at once it manages to be urban fantasy, science fiction and fantasy.

When the protagonist takes on an unusal job from an even more unusual client, he unleashes a terrible evil upon the city that can siphon dreams from sentient beings, leaving them a shallow husk. Engaging the aide of friends and associates alike, and enraging both the city government and a powerful drug lord (for whom which his girlfriend has secretly gone to work), he must race against time to save them all.

Let's put aside a few things when considering China Mieville's Perdido Street Station. We won't worry about all the awards he's won for the book, or the fact that the book is coherently built and densely plotted enough that this could have been an entire trilogy, but he weaves it all together into one narrative. Let's even put aside the fact that “extradimensional moth that eats consciousness and shits nightmares” may be one of the most terrifying concepts I've ever encountered in a novel.

This is a man who knows how to WRITE. Even if we, as I said, put aside everything else about this book, it's worth reading just to watch Mieville stringing words together so that they flow like honey, but without feeling overly sweet. He's similar, in that regard, to someone like Anthony Burgess or Chuck Palahnuik - the message is almost secondary to how artistically they're expressing it.

Meiville has managed to create a fascinating city (I can't say world since anything outside is only vaguely referenced). His language may seem pretentious to some but I think I have to disagree. I get the impression that he is trying to continue the mood not only using what the words mean, but with the words themselves.

His characters, however, suck. I just can't seem to get myself to care about them one way or another. They seem very flat and unimaginative. Descriptions are neat, externally they are well developed. However, they all seem to be lacking actual character, some quality that actually makes me care about what might happen to them. I was never even able to get myself to even dislike the bad guys. By the end of the book there was only one scene (between 2) that caused me to care anything and sadly one of them was a minor and short lived character.

The author spent so much time trying to convey how the city and everyone in it were so corrupt that there's a scene near the end where you have two separate groups attacking the “hero” snort group while they are in the process of getting rid of the horrible creatures that everyone has been trying to get rid of. It's like “Oh no, they're trying to help us! SHOOT THEM, they're defying our power/domination/authority! We're all so incredibly stupid that we can even think to our own self interest!”

Oh, I do have to mention. In all of this, near the end of the book a character who we've only heard mentioned very briefly and just once, shows up (don't ask me how he knew what was going on) and actually showed some enlightened self interest and assisted the hero group. We never find out why he did it or even how he knew what was going on.

As for the story itself, I think the book could have been well improved with some serious editing. The first half was long, descriptive and tedious. The second half was trite and unimaginative. Oh, did I mention tedious?

I forced myself to finish this book since so many people seem to rave about it. I can't honestly say I hate it. The imagery was well done, if a bit over done. However I can't say I liked it either.

If we could, I'd give it 1.5 stars. I think 1 is a little low, but I wanted to separate it from other books in which I feel more neutral.

I don't recommend this book. There are too many better ones out there. If you do choose to read it, borrow or get it from the library. I wish I had.

Wonderful and unusual work for the genre with a political flavor and a nice gritty dark urban setting. It felt like a sci-fi book for RPG enthusiasts who had grown up to become anarchist street protesters.