China Miéville

Like Charles Dickens on acid.

OK, this won't be for everyone, but I loved it. Yes, I toyed with the idea of quibbling, with weasel words about how I might have shaved off half a point, if the option had been available, because it can be a teeny-tiny bit over-inflated, at 700 pages. A tad self-indulgent, at times, as the plot vanished in a maelstrom of loving excursions into the crumbling neighbourhoods of New Crobuzon, and sidebars about its weird and wonderful citizens. A little gross, for show more the delicately-minded ...

But ... worth every page, and every difficult passage, and every time you have to flip back x-pages to remind yourself, who the heck is Jack Half-a-Prayer again? just for the privilege of spending time in the imagination of China Miéville.

Miéville's great talent is spinning narrative gold from the highest of high concept Big Ideas. Every single one of his novels has, at its heart, a Big Idea that make your eyes go crossed when you try to answer that question posed by loving friends and family, What's it about? Oh, please. How long do you have?

What I think I love best about Miéville is that he understands the power -- and the proper usage -- of metaphor. Once you hand yourself over to his epic imagination, trusting that you are in safe hands, his narrative wears those metaphors lightly -- it's easy to go for long pages forgetting that New Crobuzon is a twisty, turny fun-house mirror image of London (just look at the map at the beginning of the text, if you doubt me), and that the deeply disturbing and perverted politics of New Crobuzon is a pretty accurate metaphor for what's been going on for years in our millennial world. It's easy to go for long pages marvelling at the residents of New Crobuzon -- the frog-people, the eagle-people, the bug-headed people, the cactus-people -- without stumbling over the question of what they "represent." Until, like one of Miéville's slake-moths, the ideas and imagery worm their ways into your brain, and you are left turning the possibilities over ... and over ... and over ...

Miéville says it himself, putting the words in the mouth of his most interesting (and tragic) creation, Lin, the bug-headed Khepri:

I see clearly as you, clearer. For you it is undifferentiated. In one corner a slum collapsing, in another a new train with pistons shining, in another a gaudy painted lady below a drab and ancient airship ... You must process as one picture. What chaos! Tells you nothing, contradicts itself, changes its story. For me, each tiny part has integrity, each fractionally different from the next, until all variation is accounted for, incrementally, rationally. show less

This is the book I enjoyed the most from the New Crobuzon trilogy.

In addition to uninhibited flow of imagination so characteristic of Miéville we get quite a bit more social commentary than in the first two books of the series. The barely visible hand pulling the strings of the strange city finally gets the attention it must get. Oppression and corruption typically result in some sort of internal protest, unless you live in a certain tsar-dom.

The sort of protest this book describes is as show more weird as the world where it takes place. Prostitutes and rail workers strike and, to avoid the certainty of a bloody retribution from the powers that be, escape on a train. On the train that builds the railway, they escape together with the railway and become a myth, a legend, the Iron Council.

If you enjoy the strange adventures of the characters in Perdido Street Station and The Scar, the sudden twists and runaway subplots - you will find more of that in Iron Council. Yet the final book of the series offers you more than exciting quests of unusually gifted individuals, it is primarily about the struggle of the oppressed multitudes for social justice and dignity. show less

Perdido Street Station by China Mieville After a couple of chapters you can smell this book.

His evocation of the city is so overwhelming and powerful that you can feel that you know this place. It is seedy, run down and dangerous. It stinks, it is decrepit and corrupt and yet it is intriguing and also surprisingly inviting. The characters he draws fit so well in this place that everything that flows from there just seems natural even though they are different species.

The story going on show more here is one of fiction, parable and love. It is a formidable piece of work that either you will cope with or not, it will not be the fiction that fails. It may not be for everyone either. If he used different races instead of species it would have subtly changed the essence and made it maybe too recognisable, too near to home. One species killing another may be palatable but one race killing another not so. Empathy changes when we cross that barrier. And yet, at the same time, the main female character is so sexy and desirable even though she is not human.

At one point I wondered if this was science fiction or fantasy or dystopian, or maybe all of these but by then it didn't matter one iota. By that time I could already see the characters and knew them well. The advantage of stories constructed like this is that ideas can be introduced that would flounder in other forms of fiction and the total difference from our "normal" is a more effective mirror than realistic fiction.

I loved it and devoured it steadily.

At around 640 pages it is big enough to get your teeth into, go on treat yourself. show less

When I read a book like this I always ask myself "How have I never heard of this author before?" China Mieville is an explosive voice; funny, original, grim - basically right up my alley. The plot of this novel doesn't pull any punches. Billy is the curator of the giant squid exhibit at the Nation History Museum. When the giant, pickled main attraction impossibly disappears Billy finds himself sucked into a maelstrom of fantastical and terrifying crimes. Threatened by strangers and kidnapped show more by a bizarre squid cult, Billy learns that he might be the only one who can stop the fast approaching "ends" of the world.

This fascinating theological thriller will keep you guessing right up until the very end. show less