If you've read Perdido Street Sation, do not hesitate. Miéville gone back to Bas-Lag and this visit even better than te previous one. He's one of the best contemporary SF/fantasy writer and I mean it! Submerge the fantastic, weird and vivid world of Bas-lag and the Armada and enjoy it! ( )

I did this for a book club of 8 people - only 2 of us made it through. It's a beautifully vivid description of an intriguing and deep world, viewed through the eyes of a woman who can take absolutely no action on her own. It isn't until the end of this monstrosity of a book that the woman wakes up and decides to participate in the world around her. In the meantime, the whole of the story happens *to* her. She barely makes a decision on her own, and defines a new meaning of passive.

Despite hating everything the book attempted to do as a plotline - his ability to describe is spectacular. It is one of the few worlds of the many many books in my head I can revisit randomly, and still see all of those intricate world details - I can see the living city of ships, hear the water, the sounds of the people ... feel the tension in the air. The image of the Twins is stark in my mind, and thief, the grundy ... I imagine the whale and I can feel the immensity of the creature, the hugeness of it ...

Thank you for painting a beautiful picture while pretending to be an author. :) ( )

After reading China Miéville's novel Perdido Street Station last June, The Scar was quickly added to my Must Read list. Like the former, The Scar takes place on Miéville's intriguing and bizarre world of Bas-Lag. It's a world of vast oceans, many strange races, and a smattering of magic (or "thaumaturgy" in Miéville's prose). The protagonist this time around is Bellis Coldwine, a woman on the run from the New Crobuzon authorities. She boards a ship leaving New Crobuzon which is heading for a new colony. The ship hasn't traveled too far before it is captured by pirates from the floating city of Armada. There are some fascinating characters living on Armada and Bellis becomes embroiled in the strange plans of Armada's hideously scarred rulers known only as The Lovers. Miéville kept me continually in awe of the weird happenings and travels of the Armadans. His world of Bas-Lag is dense with peculiar people, landscapes, and customs. He's quickly become my new favorite science fiction writer. I was pleased to discover that his next novel, Iron Council, will also be set in Bas-Lag and is due out in July 2004. His novels are just wildly entertaining. ( )

If Perdido Street Station left you with questions. Questions about the mythic origins stories, probability curves and leadership personality cults. Then hang on for another ride on the dark and twisted story that is China Miéville forte. If you thought the city of Bas-lag was something wait till you come aboard Armada. If you haven't read Perdido Street Station don't worry you really don't have to. Either of these two books stand alone and yet each compliments the other. That either book stands alone is true a gift for a fantasy audience often taunted with "Book One in the BLAH BLAH BLAH saga".

This book has a classic magic sword in the possibility/probability sword welded by Uther Doul a guy born in the land Vampires and Liches! The story is narrated by the mother of all brooding Gothic librarian/linguist heroines, Bellis Coldwine. And no story is complete without a convict outcaste mutant underdog like Tanner Sack. Rounding the caste of characters are con-man globe trotting spy Silas Fennac, who learns the perils of over using fish based stolen magic artifacts, Shekel the machine-women loving cabin boy, S&M power couple "The Lovers". Not to mention alternate reality cactus man and deep sea leviathan.

This is a grand and wonderful epic in a single book. ( )

The Scar follows the adventures of Bellis Coldwine, a linguist on the run who happens to pick the wrong ship on which to try to escape. The ship is a prison vessel and when it gets captured by pirates the mass of convicts in the hold are more than ready to swap a lifetime of penal servitude for freedom on the open sea while Bellis finds herself a prisoner of sorts, faced with the prospect of never being allowed to leave the pirate community.

But these pirates aren't aimless plunderers; they have a very definite objective...

This is a terrifically imaginative book. Miéville has created a world astounding in its depth, richness and quirkiness, from sentient aquatic life to the mosquito people where the males need to hide from the females and their immense probosces. But the greatest of all, and clearly the star of the book, is the pirate city of Armada, a square mile of vessels stolen over the centuries lashed together to make a giant raft.

We also get to meet a rich and well-defined group of characters; a long way from the two-dimensional caricatures common in fantasy literature, we get to know a number of the lead players, their characters and backgrounds, in great detail - sometimes too much detail for the squeamish! Few, if any, of these characters are particularly pleasant or sympathetic but you nonetheless get drawn into the narrative.

The book's not without its shortcomings though. The pacing felt a somewhat irregular with the main storyline taking around a hundred pages to actually get going (though this wasn't entirely wasted time as a couple of the characters are well developed at the start) and I found the end to be somewhat anticlimactic, though that's just personal preference. What did begin to grate by the end was Miéville's predilection for showing off verbally. There are some people with large vocabularies who are able to wear their learning lightly and just happen to use more obscure words. In Miéville's narrative they sometimes feel a bit contrived, deliberately placed there to show off.

Utimately, though, these are small niggles when compared to the scale of the work. For 800 pages you are immersed in this terrific world of imagination and it feels a little disappointing to have to emerge back into real life when you put the book down! ( )