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! ( )

One has to read his works in order to comprehend Mielville's brilliance. He managed to write a compelling story with a lead character that is cold, relatively uninteresting, unsympathetic and a little bit whiny. With The Scar, he solidifies his place in his genre (Sci-fi? Fantasy? Horror? All of the above? Who cares! As long as we enjoy them.), and proves that the accolades he received with Perdido Street Station was not a fluke. This guy is for real. (more) ( )

This is book two of the Perdido series by Mieville, and I picked this up a good while after reading PSS. I wasn't disappointed! I found this book to be at least the equal if not better of PSS. The concept is outlandish- a woman and her shipmates are captured and inducted into the populace of a great floating city that's cobbled together and made of many re-purposed boats. The rulers of the city are up to something dangerous, but what? Great fun. ( )

One of my all time favourite fantasy books - there is more invention and imagination inbetween the covers of this beauty than in half the derivative fantasy I have read. No obligatory trilogy, no default 500 pages of padded fetch quests - this is absolutely popping with fresh ideas, glimpses of a vast world that leaves you wanting more. ( )

I bought this book straight after reading Perdido Street Station, which is set in the same fictional universe(s). It has lived up to my expectations as a follow on from PSS, although it did take me longer to get into. The main character is not actually that likeable and I found her to be quite moany. However, the story develops and the attention is taken away by massive floating pirate cities, grindylows, alternative realities, along with the normal Mieville cast of oddities, and a bit of S&M, and the whining leading lady is only a cog in the wheel.

China Mieville has a fantastic way with words, an expansive vocabulary, and is not scared of dark, subversive, perverted,and occasionally nauseating stories. If you are a fan of fairy fanstasy I would steer clear! ( )

Journey to the center of the earth recast as if in dreams. Vivid, memorable writing, wonderfully imaginative with bizarre creatures and motives. The lead characters (of whatever species) become very real and tangible through the course of the story. The heroine does not start out as a sympathetic character, but her eventual engagement and punishment for becoming engaged grab one by the throat. I found this book quite brilliant and absolutely absorbing. ( )

Bellis Coldwine, a translator who has lived in the city of New Crobuzon her entire life, finds herself fleeing her beloved city for the colony of Nova Esperium. Unfortunately for Bellis, her ship is attacked by pirates along the way. The pirates kill the captain and first mate, and offer the passengers—and the hold full of slaves who were on their way to a life of servitude in the colony—a chance at a new life in the pirate city of Armada. Armada is like no other city ever created; over the centuries, ships have been lashed together into a great conglomeration, with bridges built between them and buildings built upon them, creating a vibrant and ever-evolving seagoing civilization whose population is ever supplemented by the press-ganged like Bellis.

Cold and bitter to begin with, Bellis now finds herself an unwilling inhabitant of Armada and her anger grows. Quickly, however, she finds herself caught up in the plot being hatched by Armada’s rulers, known only as the Lovers, to raise a giant beast from the deeps and harness its mighty strength. It seems that the Lovers have been targeting ships to acquire books and personnel with specialized knowledge, and Bellis discovers that she is the only one in the city who can read the dead language in which the most important text is written…and that raising the beast may only be the beginning of the Lovers’ sinister plans. Add into the mix a spy from New Crobuzon who needs Bellis’s help; a freed slave who will do another for his new city but finds nostalgia in his heart for his old; and Uther Doul, a deadly mercenary who chooses not to lead but to follow and who bears ancient artifacts from the long-dead and inhuman Ghosthead Empire; and mysterious aquatic entities stalking the city for their own purposes, and you have the formula for a complicated, vibrant story in which nothing and no one are what they seem and everything can change at a moment’s notice.

China Mieville is an up-and-coming name in the genre of urban fantasy. Whereas many writers in the genre set their stories in cities that are recognizably our own but which then morph and twist into new forms, Mieville’s work creates cities that are new and strange, becoming vibrant characters in their own right. Armada is a triumphant and magical creation, and the eccentricities of the characters and plot are mesmerizing. ( )

The second of the books set in the world of Bas-Lag, this met all the expectations that had been set by the magnificent 'Perdido Street Station'. In this book, although some of the primary protagonists come from NC, the action takes place entirely away from it, with the opening taking place on the edge of the city and the rest over the world of Bas-Lag on the floating city-state of Armada. Sweeping ideas well-realised and excellent characterisation, with leading characters that are not entirely sympathetic. One or two frustrating loose ends remain, as many mysteries are slowly revealed and it is unclear which of them will be key. We never discover what Uther Doul and the Brucolac were up to together, nor what Uther did after leaving High Cromlech, nor why The Lovers were as they are. But very satisfying, nonetheless. ( )

I originally read The Scar during my first year at university, about four and a half years ago. While it would be an exaggeration to say that the experience changed my life, it certainly had a rather profound impact on my reading habits. Just glancing at the books I've read this year I can pick out half a dozen titles I doubt I'd have read were it for not Miéville: Hal Duncan's Book of all Hours, Harrison's Viriconium and works by Steph Swainston, KJ Bishop, Catherynne Valente and Jeff VanderMeer. Oddly, then, it was only a few days ago that I reread it for the first time. Happily, it remains as impressive as ever.

The Scar is the third of Miéville's novels, and the second of his fantasy novels set in the world of Bas-Lag. In fact, it's arguably the most outrightly fantastic of the three Bas-Lag books; lacking some of the more horrific elements of the earlier Perdido Street Station and most of the political aspect of the later Iron Council. It also has, I feel, the strongest plot of the three, and some of the best characterisation to boot.

Following the events of Perdido Street Station Bellis Coldwine, scholar and linguist, fearing her safety in New Crobuzon, flees that city for the distant colony of Nova Esperium by signing up as a translator on the prison chip the Terpsichoria. Long before the ship reaches the colonies, however, the Terpsichoria is captured by raiders from the thousand-year-old floating pirate city of Armada. Bellis - along with her fellow passengers from the Terpsichoria, including Johannes Tearfly, a biologist specialising in exotic sealife, and Tanner Sack, one of the surgically and magically altered Remade prisoners - are forced to adapt to life in Armada, even as that city's own rulers - the scarred and power-hungry Lovers, the vampiric Brucolac and the enigmatic Uther Doul - embark on a quest of their own.

Bellis is a refreshingly unlikable character, at least in the early stages of the book. While Tanner and Johannes adapt quickly to life on Armada (Tanner in particular because the Remade, while outcasts in New Crobuzon and condemned to a life of servitude in the colonies, are considered free and equal citizens in Armada), Bellis refuses to consider herself anything other than a prisoner, shutting herself off from the rest of the city in much the same way she had earlier shut herself off from the rest of the Terpsichoria's crew. Indeed, Bellis keeps herself aloof from the other characters for much of the book, only slowly coming to terms with her new situation and warming to a few neighbors and co-workers (and even then thankfully without any miraculous transformation).

There's not much else I can say about this book without spoiling the experience: it's definitely something I'd recommend to any reader of fantasy (or indeed, fiction readers who tend to avoid fantasy because of the frequent cliches of the genre). People who had problems with Perdido street Station may find themselves pleasantly surprised by the tighter plot of this book, while those who have yet to read that book can begin here just as easily, as the connections to that work are minimal.

The Seattle Times review quote on the cover says "Gritty, dark fiction at its finest...a captivating romp through a richly imagined universe." Gritty, dark, and a richly imagined universe -- with those descriptions I wholeheartedly agree, but Mieville is never a "romp." Challenging and pleasingly unpredictable, the Scar loosely follows Perdido Street Station, but weaves a complicated, multi-perspective plot in less than half the space of its predecessor. Dark, complex characters who realistically portray the hidden, inner goodness, and darkness, of the human condition. If you like Mieville, you'll love it; if you are expecting light, fantasy fiction, this work is not for you. ( )

The main character this time is Bellis Coldwine who is fleeing New Crobuzon aboard The Terpsichoria for Nova Esperium. The milita in New Crobuzon have been slowly rounding up people who knew Isaac der Grimnebulin from the first book and Bellis was his lover five years ago before he met Lin and knows it is only a matter of time before they come for her. She is a translator and goes on the voyage to assist the captain diplomatically.

The voyage gets turned around at their first port however when they meet up with another man from New Crobuzon who has papers saying he can comendeer the ship. The passangers are confused at not being told the reason for their change in course back home until they are attached by pirates and taken to their floating island Armada. The Remade prisoners on board are given a chance at freedom and earning a wage for their work rendered to Armada. This pleases Tanner Sack who was remade with tentacles protruding from his stomach. He finds joy for the first time in the sea, the brine healing his tentacles which he thought were dead. He also furthers his friendship with Shekel (a young boy who was the cabin boy on The Terpsichoria).

Bellis wants to go home. She wasn't a prisoner like Tanner and misses her city despite it's many flaws. She starts to plot with Silas Fennac (the man who had the papers on the boat that changed their course) and he lets her know there is a major threat to New Crobuzon as the Grindelow are planning to attack and take over. The cities leaders are also planning on rising a monster from the deep called an Avanc and Bellis holds the key to the summoning but needs to work out if it will serve her plans to leave Armada.

I enjoyed this book, but not as much as Perdido Street Station. There were some great characters like The Lovers who rule part of Armada and cut each other during sex in a ritualistic bonding and binding to each other. There was also the Brucolac, Vampir and ab-dead and Uther Doul the henchman of The Lovers with his Possible Sword. Again Mieville manages to blend fantasy, horror and science fiction creating something unique to him. ( )

http://scooterchronicles.com/2007/10/... ( )

Take a peripheral character from Perdido Street Station. Throw her into a job that soon leads her into a fantastic floating city, that is on its own Moby Dick style quest.

War, crime, local politics, possibility swords, espionage and more combine in this epic.

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2007/02/scar-china-mieville.html ( )

Take a peripheral character from Perdido Street Station. Throw her into a job that soon leads her into a fantastic floating city, that is on its own Moby Dick style quest.

War, crime, local politics, possibility swords, espionage and more combine in this epic.

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2007/02/scar-china-mieville.html ( )

Take a peripheral character from Perdido Street Station. Throw her into a job that soon leads her into a fantastic floating city, that is on its own Moby Dick style quest.

War, crime, local politics, possibility swords, espionage and more combine in this epic.

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2007/02/scar-china-mieville.html ( )

China is actually getting better with time.
His second attempt is a little more subtle and subdued. he relaxes a bit and that's a good thing (Massive and huge and any derivative are still abundant though).
Again, he takes us on an unbelievable journey that is impossible and yet fascinating. Full of aliens that feel truly alien yet are strangely easy to relate to, and technology that is magical and fantastic yet so familiar.
China shows us that the journey is the biggest part of the trip aboard an absurd city that is built out of salvaged boats. ( )

Perdido Street Station made it pretty clear that China Miéville is going to be an important new voice in contemporary fantasy. In almost every way, The Scar is a better book.

For me, the real star of PSS was the city of New Crobuzon itself. While The Scar takes place on the same world, it definitely offers more of a story--a journey, both literally and symbolically. The novel gives us an entirely new cast of characters, which move through a variety of fantastic locations, each fascinating in its own way. The plotting felt much more assured to me, with the story inexorably moving through a progression of episodes leading towards an exciting conclusion.

My biggest disappointment with The Scar was that I never really connected with the protagonist, Bellis. This alone keeps me from rating the book a 10. Many of the other characters, whether good, bad or somewhere in between, were memorable in a variety of ways, especially the two enigmatic leading men of the story, Silas Fennec and Uther Doul. The story does drag a bit early in the book, picks up in the middle, and is hard to put down for the last 200 pages or so. ( )

A novel of the far future.

http://www.amazon.com/review/R2U... ( )

For sheer imagination and scale, I can think of no other fantasy or science fiction writer that can beat China Mieville. Its astonishing the amount of miscellenia he can cram into one book - cities of the dead, pirates, leviathans, underwater races, sea battles, airships, vampires, spies, espionage, deadly swamps, obsession and magic. I did feel that the book could have been streamlined a bit, but thats a minor issue in light of the lovely characterisation and the dense, tangled plot. Another winner. ( )

This book is awesome! I loved it! ( )