Miéville bashing, anyone?

I especially liked the quote: This may be the first time you have read on a website that China Miéville is something less than a God; I’ve certainly never seen it typed, which was reason enough to do it.

http://penny-arcade.com/2012/05/14

I keep thinking I might enjoy Miéville. I got as far as buying a used copy of Perdido Street Station and owning it for a few years before I sold it without reading a single page. *shrug*

#2 by @paradoxosalpha> I read the first chapter. Then I gave it to my brother saying, "I thought this was terrible. Here, you read it."

I read the first chapter of Perdido Street Station and gave up. Some would probably excuse the writing there as a stylistic choice, but I thought it dreadful beyond endurance.

#4 by @timspalding> I'm in good company, then!

Another quote from the newspost: His writing is incredibly smug. I can feel him leering at me through his typewriter, shoulders up, breathing hard.

I think you're all wrong. He has written some really good books, which includes Perdido Street Station. However, I also think he's overrated and has written a couple of very contrived books. Kraken and Un Lun Dun weren't very good, for instance.

But yeah, there's a Church of Miéville worshippers out there. More because of his geeky coolness than because of literary strength, I think. (Not that he isn't cool. And a very decent human being.)

Not sure which side any of you may feel I fall on, but here has been my experience: Perdido...loved it. At that time (2 years ago) when I read it, I had never heard of the guy nor anthing about him or his other works. Found it so compellingly different; so much so that I went and bought Scar. Boy, did I slog throught that one, completely giving up on it about 2/3s of the way through. But then, I thought, may it was the setting: I am not big on sea faring stories. So, I bought City and the City. Yikes! Enough money thrown after bad, or however that saying goes. Would I still love Perdido if I went back and read it again, now knowing I can't get through his other stuff? Can't honestly say. But I can honestly say I won't finish the other two I have and I won't buy another. So, yes, I guess I do fall on the con side of the line.

Liked Perdido..., have yet to read anything else, though I have The City in TbR Mount.

I thought City and the City was pretty good. Kraken was a bit of a stretch. Now, King Rat on the other hand was fantastic.

#9 by @Goran> Funny how the correlation when you put that in publication order. :D

I've read Perdido, The Scar and Embassytown. Liked all three, for their great world-building, originality, and the dark tone. I did find that all three suffered from plotting problems; Scar & Embassytown were too episodic; and Embassytown had a long sag in the middle. I'm not a "worshiper", and he's not one of those authors I run out & read all of because I can't wait. But somehow even when the plot is weak or the creations over-the-top, the vividness still grabs me.

For all the glee I find in bashing his writing, I'm actually glad there are people who really dig it. I think the world would be a weird and boring place if we all liked and disliked the same things.

I started this thread because I find I'm not alone with the level at which I dislike his writing. I find my reaction to it fairly amusing as well. Why do I have such a visceral dislike for it? I have yet to come up with a good answer.

>13 timspalding:

Mine is: He doesn't write well. But I admit many fine people who care about writing have a contrary opinion. That's what I found so weird about reading him.

We will be discussing Miéville's story "Details" over at The Weird Tradition (http://www.librarything.com/groups/theweirdtradition) next month. Whether or not there will be any bashing going on is anybody's guess.

What's that in?

>15 timspalding:

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?102055

There are those who think Miéville is god's gift to genre - his photo, for example, appears on just about every newspaper article about science fiction in the UK - but he's little more than an interesting, if mostly good, writer. Perdido Street Station was something fresh and new when it arrived. But within a couple of years, publishers were saying New Weird was dead - each of Miéville's books sold less than the one before, Steph Swainston's career was on a downward spiral, editors wouldn't even look at manuscripts labelled New Weird... The City and the City kicked Miéville's career back into high gear, and now it's all Weird rather than New Weird. His writing is generally good, and sometimes even better, but his books are not put together especially well and tend to get overwhelmed by the premise. I liked both The City and the City and Embassytown and thought they were quite good, but they weren't the best books I'd read in those years.

I love the breadth of his imagination - even for SF, Mieville reaches places few other authors get to. I don't like his characters, writing and ultimately his plotting. The writing I could live with. It is a difficult style to follow sometimes, but with a sufficiently good plot and characters can become totally immersive. However the overly complicated plots that lack final resolutions together with something just lacking in his characters have (to me at least) relegated Mieveille to the status of don't bother unless you've got nothign better to read. I might try Kraken at some point.

The Penny-Arcade character might want to punch China, but I bet he can't beat him up!

At this point, Mieville is the only writer I'll drop everything for, when his latest appears. The City and The City was the best speculative fiction novel I've read in at least ten years, maybe twenty. I've always found something to appreciate in everything he writes, even his beginning-author's book King Rat. I'm now halfway through an ARC of Railsea and liking it a lot.

He is more about the idea than the character, but that's pretty standard in SF and fantasy. His plenitude of ideas are almost a handicap as well as a strength - sometimes it seems he's shaking mounds of them out of his notebook and onto the page. Kraken had a bit of that feeling, for me. But the steady flow of delighted moments as I read, page after page, is worth the occasional excess.

He could have made a successful career from endless sequels to Perdido, but instead he keeps trying new modes. Tim, you should find the language in City to be much more spare than in Perdido, for example.

He's not for everyone, but the world at large could have made much worse picks for a prominent public face of fantasy.

He tried making a career out of sequels to Perdido Street Station and it nearly killed it. Trying something new is why he's so popular now.

I'll grant him that his characterisation is better than average for genre fiction, but his books to me seem to be based around one single idea. It's authors like Bruce Sterling who throw off ideas on every page.

Well, possibly. But he does take that idea and run with it into some fantastic places.

Personally, I thought that the conceit of The City and the City didn't quite pull me in. But Kraken's (no working touchstone) really did. It was way over the top, and all the more fun for it.

iansales >21 iansales:,

Interesting. Can you point me to sources for his sales for those books? I had thought that The Scar, at least, would have sold pretty well, still.

I heard it from my agent a few years ago, and he was repeating what he had been told by editors.

I stumbled across Mieville while trying to find steampunk literature (which his stuff really isn't), and hit on Looking for Jake in the library. I found it readable enough, though not exactly earth-shattering, but it wasn't so bad that I didn't try him again. I enjoyed Kraken (especially as I have worked in two natural history museums myself), even though it bordered on the preposterous, and I thought The City and the City was a truly excellent novel (on the mainstream end of speculative).

his books to me seem to be based around one single idea

It would be fair to say that there is only one "idea" in The City and the City, but it is such a curious one, with satirical overtones, that nothing more is needed but a plot that exploits it as fully as possible, which Mieville provides. Some authors are perhaps too profligate with their "ideas": Kevin Anderson drove me nuts by introducing a couple of great settings and then doing nothing with them. Maybe he's saving them for the nth sequel ... which I won't be reading.)

Eventually I tracked down Perdido Street Station and I did think it was very good: an interesting scenario with great atmosphere, mainly engaging characters, and a good balance of setting and plot. "Lack of resolution" can simply be a mark of realism: real life is full of trailing strings and failures to resolve. (It can also be a mark of lack of forethought and literary structure, though: see To Green Angel Tower.)

It's all down to personal preferences. I read Perdido Street Station and got on with it; I then read The Iron Council (major touchstone fail!) and loved it. I have other Miéville in the TBR pile. OTOH, Ian rates R.M. Meluch, but I tried a few of her books a while back based on another friend's recommendation and it just didn't work for me.

There are plenty of people out there who get through life without reading any sf, so ultimately, how important is any of this? Any creativity should be applauded, and the rest is just whether things strike a chord with a reader, viewer or listener. After all, I'm sure there's someone out there who thinks Runts of 61 Cygni C the most mind-expanding, wondrous thing they've ever read... (I nearly said "come across", but thought better of it...)

#26 by @RobertDay> Any creativity should be applauded

I will not be applauding the creativity of the Dune sequels. You'll need to applaud louder to make up for me.

An LT Talk touchstone for Kraken (a book that still interests me, after all of the back and forth) seems hopeless.

I'm currently rereading Meluch's Jerusalem Fire and not enjoying it as much I recall doing so originally. I'd remembered it as being better than Sovereign, which I reread a few years ago, but I might have to re-evaluate that...

Meluch's not been the first writer I've discovered I've not enjoyed as much after recently reading their books for SF Mistressworks. OTOH, because of SF Mistressworks I've found some good books that were completely unknown to me, and reread some I thought much better than I'd remembered - like The Female Man.

Perdido Street Station was horrendously over-written, I didn't think it was possible to have prose more purple than H. P. Lovecraft but he managed. The Scar was much better in stylistic terms and the neo-Kafka The City & The City better still. His prose style seems either to be evolving or changing according to which book he is writing. Since these are the only three of his books I've read I am unable to make the distinction.

Entered a bug for Kraken search and touchstone failure:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/137129

Iron Council works fine, as long as you remember there's no "The" in there. :D

#30 by @justifiedsinner> Interesting that you bring up Lovecraft. There's an example where I can see past the prose and enjoy the novels for the ideas. It puzzles me that I can't do the same for Mieville.

I read Perdido Street Station and liked it. It wasn't great, but I enjoyed it. However, it was a difficult book to read and took me a long time. But I liked it more than I did the book I read by Charles Stross, the title of which I've forgotten.

Well, I liked the last Charles Stross book I read (The Jennifer Morgue, as it happens) much better than that other book by an author whose name I've forgotten.

I've forgotten more books I didn't like than I care to remember.

I've read The City & the City, Kraken and Embassytown and enjoyed all three, although I thought the latter was the weakest of them. I started and abandoned Perdido Street Station. I'm curious now, having read the comments above, to go back and read more Mieville with a more careful eye on his prose and see how I react to it.

I find Mieville highly variable, and very, very overrated. I loved The Scar, liked The City and the City, and didn't mind King Rat too much. But I struggled through Perdido Street Station, absolutely loathed Iron Council and Embassytown, and couldn't finish Kraken. So I don't think I'll bother reading anything else by him. Two out of seven is just not a good enough return on effort. Plus I got very tired of his going on about the New Weird about ten or twelve years ago.

I interviewed China at a convention recently, and he said that trying a new subgenre for every book is the plan he's been trying to follow for some years now.

I read Perdido, though I skipped over some of the more disturbing parts involving the bordello that catered to extreme fetishes. Some of that was seriously f--ked up.

Basically I don't see what all the fuss is about. There were some original elements in Perdido, certainly, but also some gratuitous grossness. Why is that one guy having, er, physical, um, activity with a bug-headed alien (or mutant or gentic experiment gone wrong, or whatever she was). Eeewwww!!! What is the point? Is it to get attention by having people go "Eeewww, that's digusting?" I can't see what literary purpose was served.

Those of you who didn't continue after the first chapter: As I recall there was a short section (Ch 1 or prologue) that was all in italics and was quite overwritten. The overwriting must have been deliberate, because the writing becomes less "Hey, look at me! I'm writing!" in the next chapter. And he loses the italics.

No bashing from me. I really liked The City and the City and Embassytown, with Perdido Street Station coming in third. I didn't much like The Kraken or Un Lun Dun, and I haven't read Iron Council or King Rat.

His imagination is impressive, and I enjoy his development of his ideas and his storytelling. Embassytown for me was particularly mind-stretching and challenging, as the best sci-fi is.

I've always had a soft spot for science fiction that takes one extreme idea and explores it in the context of a real story. Too many ideas weakens the effect for me, as does simply being toured around, as in Imperial Earth. Hence, I quite liked The City and the City, as I quite liked, many many years ago Dark Universe and The Watch Below. I really should revisit both, though I fear for the worst.

iansales > 24,

Thanks. Mieville was such a big draw at Readercon in his GOH year; I guess I thought he must be popular everywhere. Hard to see how City, his next adult book, could have seemed safer, though.

RobertDay > 26,

Glad to see someone else who loved Iron Council; it apparently was the least popular of the Bas-Lag books.

paradoxosalpha > 33, iansales > 34

Um...what were we talking about?

anglemark > 37,

Interesting; I'm not sure I knew that, but it is pretty clear, now. Adam Roberts has a similar project.

Carnophile > 38,

I've heard that the bug sex at the start of Perdido was intended to scare off people not ready for Mieville. They're not in Kansas anymore.

ChrisRiesbeck > 40,

Yes, be careful about the Galouye and the White. I read Dark Universe fairly recently, and thought it rather routine by today's standards. Read Watch in the 1960s magazine serial - IIRC it commits Bad Thermodynamics.

I've heard that the bug sex at the start of Perdido was intended to scare off people not ready for Mieville.

Ah, the hubris.

Hubris - is that a particular kind of bug sex? :-)

#43 by @dukedom_enough> You seem to be quite interested in bug sex. I guess you're ready for more Mieville!

Ancient Egypt aside, weird human-animal figures seem unsurprising enough in fantasy graphic art, often with an erotic content, so why is it odd to explore such an idea in fiction, especially if you can use it as a hook for exploring xenophobic prejudice?

(Blimey, whatever next, gay sex in SF?)

30: Purple is my favourite colour!

37: Shifting subgenres is one way to stay fresh, and was notably done by the late lamented Russell Hoban.

"China Miéville's Hubristic Bug Sex" is gonna be the name of my next band. :D

All of this demonstrates the challenge of what librarians call "readers' advisory"; what is a "good book" or a "good read" is different for different people. We used to advise mostly in a context of genre: if someone likes SF, we'd recommend other SF writers. Librarians who were intuitively good at it would feel out other qualities readers wanted, but it was an art, not a science. In recent years readers' advisory has moved towards an effort to articulate those other qualities, and then recommend books by them, even cross-genre. They are things like: characterization, setting, pacing & plotting, emotional & esthetic tone, literary quality.

So the fact that all of us are SF (or SF & fantasy readers, in the case of Mieville), is less important than what we want in our reading. I love the vivid (lurid?) tone color & settings of his books, and the striking ideas & situations. I'm bothered by the jerky plotting and often by characters not simpatico to me. And I don't care too much about fine writing quality (as long as it's not too hashed up!), but that might completely put off other readers.

By the way, about the insectoid lover: I found it disturbing, too. He could be just trying to shock, as one person said -- or trying to explore the limits of xenophobic prejudice or outre relationships, as another person said -- or both; but isn't the fact that it's debatable interesting? I would say that a writer whose work allows so many interpretations, and arouses so much debate, must be of more-than-average interest. I read lots of average, cliched genre fiction because it's relaxing & I know all the routines, but I wouldn't say those writers are as "good" as Mieville although I may enjoy them more.

#47 by @rshart3> So the fact that all of us are SF [readers] is less important than what we want in our reading.

That may or may not be true on the whole, but I can tell you it couldn't be further from the truth for me, personally. What I want in my reading is inextricably tied up in the entire ethos of the SF genre.

#48

In the SF genre, or in a subset of the SF genre?

brightcopy > 44,

Absolutely. But I haven't figured out how to pick the right species, yet. With the right pick, I could be a drone, lying about all day fed by workers, occasionally fertilizing the queen. Wrong pick, my head gets bitten right off on the first date, and then what?

But forget all this, we need to be writing songs for artturnerjr's next band. How about:

"Your Folded Wingcase" - moody ballad about a female who just isn't interested in the singer.

>51 dukedom_enough:

Ha! How about:

"Check Out My Chitinous Exoskeleton, Baby"
"I Only Have Compound Eyes For You"
"Size Matters (Get A Load Of Those Antennae)"
"Insecticide Blues"

#50 by @dukedom_enough> Oddly enough, Penny Arcade has addressed this as well:



I hope one day you find your "giraffe."

41 > dukedom_enough "Yes, be careful about the Galouye and the White."

Which raises the question: is it better to have read and loved and not re-read, or to re-read and lose the love?

I wouldn't recommend or defend either of those books, because of how long it's been since I read them. But would it be better to keep the positive memory, or learn the bitter truth?

brightcopy > 53,

But not a Mieville giraffe, because they're scary:

ChrisRiesbeck > 54,

Good question. They're both competently written, so you probably can't do too badly.

*clicks the back button and slowly walks away*

:-)

I like Mieville's later, more accessible works, less than his earlier ones. "The Scar" was his best, in my view.

dukedom_enough > 56

So I went back and re-read Dark Universe and The Watch Below.

Dark Universe was very much as I remembered it. Great on the central idea, but a weak plot very typical for the time period.

The Watch Below was a surprise. The idea of doing a generation ship story in a sunken ship seems more far-out than something on a distant planet because it's set here and then (WWII). Sure, White had to cobble together a lot of fortuitous circumstances in the initial setup, but he didn't set up a permanent perpetual motion machine. It felt real enough to me. Particularly amazing was how unrelenting White was in the telling of the tale. His characters never give up but the situation is really dismal for a really long time. Also surprising, on the negative side, was how thin the parallel alien generation ship story was, given his Sector General work. But if you just skip all the alien stuff, it was one heck of a book.

As I remember The Watch Below, the castaways survived by growing crops, by means of light from light bulbs, which were powered by a generator, which got its energy from the muscle-power of the castaways themselves, whose bodily energy came from the crops. Depending on how you think that works, it violates at least one and maybe both of the first two laws of thermodynamics.

Maybe he corrected that in the book version - I read this in the magazine serial. Or maybe I've gotten it wrong after so long.

Anyway, glad to hear you enjoyed it. I will try to get around to it again someday.

The key thing was tons of non-spoiling food for some stretch of a reason. Originally the plants were only to provide fresh air. Eventually there were enough to supplement the food, but the food was still needed, and running out by the end of the book. Whether the numbers work out properly, I don't know, but there was a source of energy (the food) that was gradually depleted over time and avoided violated basic laws.

I'm glad to hear that The Watch Below held up. I recall enjoying it a lot many years ago. I found it in a box of some of my old paperbacks a few months ago and have been thinking about a re-read now cause I barely remember the story.

I think I'm not immersed enough in nerd culture to be overwhelmed by Meiville's genius.

I read The Scar and thought the plot sucked and the characters I cared even a little about didn't get enough attention, but it did have some very evocative concepts. He certainly did the refugee-city-built-of-scraps better than I've ever seen it done, certainly better than Neil Stephenson's Snow Crash, and maybe tied with brian francis slattery on that one particular point. The "weird and gross sexual stuff" that some posters reference wasn't offensive so much because it was so gross and off putting as it was narrow minded. Like The Scar doesn't have any bug head sex (>38 Carnophile:), but it did have The Lovers who like cut each other up and it was some kind of romantic sex love thing, which would have actually been pretty cool if it had been portrayed at all sympathetically. That sort of thing could be read as kinky and then deserves respect as a valid way to play the love game, or it could be read as a component of all romantic relationships (see Genesis P-Orridge and Lady Jaye on the topic of "love: it makes you want to consume and become the other person, but often in a productive way"). But nope, Meiville clearly portrays them as psychotic freaks with a death wish and, oh yea, the girl is genocidally power hungry, what a bitch.

It's so funny that you should say that mag, because I had the opposite experience. I started reading Perdido Street Station, got about half way through and just sort of lost interest. I thought it was well written and fairly interesting, but after a while I just lost interest in what the characters were doing. My little sister told me to give the Scar a try and I did. I found it a much more enjoyable read. Definitely not an easy or quick read, but interesting enough to hold my attention. I just read the first four fifths of Embassytown and I'm having an experience similar to the one I had with Perdido Street Station. It's well written, the concepts are interesting, but I've just lost interest in what the characters are doing. I'm not sure if I'm going to finish it.

I don't think Miéville had nerd appeal. He has somehow become the establishment's go-to guy for genre, on both sides of the Atlantic. He has to be commended for turning his career around in such a dramatic fashion. Before The City & the City, he may have been a critics' darling, but the New Weird was in a downward spiral and he was its chief spokesman. Not, it's like it never even existed and instead the Next New Thing: the Weird. Er, which came after New Weird. No, I don't know how that works, either...

Noird.

My main problem with China Mieville was the overwriting. A lot of words could easily have been cut out of Perdido Street Station without hurting it, which would have made for a tighter book and a faster read.

As a librarian (before I retired mere months ago), I did readers advisory based on what people liked to read. I'd ask what books or authors in a genre they had read and liked, and if they were SF readers, unless they told me they liked other densely written, dark subject SF books, I would not have recommended Mieville. And he wouldn't have been the author of first choice for the people who wanted to try SF and asked me where to start. He's not for newbies, or the faint of heart.

I do need to read some more of him to see if he's an author I do like, or if he's a one-book author for me.

I tried to read King Rat but couldn't finish it. I felt like he'd written it with a thesaurus in hand, constantly using elaborate words when a simple one would have done.

#68 You should try The City and the City. He seems to have ratcheted back the purple prose as he has developed and that novel is really pretty good.

I enjoyed the story in The City and the City, just wished he didn't use made up words on every page.

I'm currently reading Embassytown and that has even more neologisms, however I suspect that that and the nature of language in general is rather the point of the story.

Not all of the words are neologisms - "immer" and "manchmal,", for example, are German.

I read Miéville's short story "Details" for an LT discussion group, and I liked it. I found it subtle and not at all overwritten. (Perhaps he exercised restraint in reaction to the story's Lovecraftian roots?)

I think his prose style is getting better as he matures as a writer. He has experimented a lot as a writer, unusually he has been successful (in terms of sales) with those experiments.

There's been a lot of uncritical stuff written about Miéville.

Yes, it's surprising that Perdido Street Station was a successful as it was. It was dreadfully overwritten.

Timing, I suspect. Like Rowling. Her books are boringly ordinary, but at the time the first one appeared they didn't seem it. When Perdido Street Station was published, New Weird felt like something new, so any book which qualified was going to get bigged up.

There's been a lot of uncritical stuff written about Miéville.

Mind expanding on that? I'm curious if "uncritical" means "not by professional critics" and the implications therein.

"Uncritical" as in "fanboy/girl squee".

Totally disagree with the "overwriting" criticisms. Every word contributes to the atmosphere of the novels. He is creating new worlds and ordinary language is insufficient to set the stage. The writing gets the reader to suspend disbelief and accept what the author is saying, first in the language, and then building to setting, characters and plot.

In most senses of the word, "overwriting" means amateurish or unconscious. I think that what could be called "overwriting" is highly intentional on Mieville's part. In Embassytown he further delves into language, and describing different worlds, ideas and cultures through the use of alien language.

If it is not your cup of tea so be it, but the writing could hardly be called less than polished and well crafted.

His prose style is getting dumbed down and more accessible to a wider audience, but I wouldn't call that getting better.

#81 by @vwinsloe> If it is not your cup of tea so be it, but the writing could hardly be called less than polished and well crafted.

It's odd how you recognize one thing is subjective, but not the other. I call it not well crafted. That's because I read the first chapter and say "Wow, this is complete garbage written by someone who cared far more about trying to impress people than telling them a story." I don't consider that very "well crafted" at all.

But as you said, different strokes. I think you just only want to apply that when it suites you. ;)

Also, I love the thinly veiled insinuation of "if you're not part of the audience that gets it, you must be dumb" in the "dumbed down" comment.

#82. I am speaking from a reference point of having been a first reader for a small publisher for a while. I read lots of "complete garbage written by someone who cared far more about trying to impress people than telling them a story," to quote you. Such books were crude and amateurish in every respect. In contrast, I found every single word of Mieville's earlier works to be purposeful. By saying that his most recent books were dumbed down, I did not mean to be insulting to readers who do not care for his writing, but only to attempt to explain in what way they were more accessible, and, perhaps, I did not do that well. What I meant was that it takes far less work to read his more recent books, but I also found there to be commensurably less reward.

if "Embassytown" is far less work, I'm in big trouble. It was one of my toughest reads in years.

#84-- well, by comparison to Perdido Street Station, The Scar and Iron Council.

#83 by @vwinsloe> Will all due respect, I don't really care about your employment history. It really does not have anything to do with the nature of the subjectivity of whether Mieville's writing possesses an absolute "well crafted" quality. I'm not trying to insult you, but I admit that I'm being rather blunt. I'm not denying he put a lot of effort into crafting it. I'm not saying there is no purpose to his words. I'm saying that to me (and I freely admit this is completely subjective) it came out as terribly pretentious and overworked.

A five star chef can still create a dish in which they went too heavy on the foie gras, caviar and truffle sauce. Just because they worked really hard on it and did things that an amateur chef didn't doesn't mean their dish is "well crafted."

#86, it appears we disagree on our fundamental definitions then. But, in my view, just because you don't like something doesn't mean it's crap.

#87 by @vwinsloe> It is crap - TO ME. It's an inherently subjective statement.

I liked "The City and The City" quite a bit, although I was bothered at the time by the writer's apparent love affair with the word Frack (That's my Caprican translation for the F word). For someone who seems to love language so much I was surprised, and I found it again a bit too much in "The Scar", which I actually bailed on.

That wasn't the problem with Embassytown. Here's what I wrote last year about Embassytown:

Mieville plays hard and does not make reading easy. This memoir from the future starts off rambling with references to all kinds of stuff the reader will have to slowly assimilate to try and make sense of what the narrator is trying to recall and relay to us, the readers. In a way it is very true to life of how people narrate old memories to others, and ramble all over hell and back with bits of things from here and there that may mean something to them but don't mean anything, or much, to you the listener. That is how this story feels. These little bits here of course do come back later to mean something.

This narrative memoir, however, begins in the future on a planet, in a city, on the edge of the then known space, where humans interact with some very alien aliens. Mieville has the reader completely off balance and virtually struggling at times to try and figure what is going on. He makes up words constantly. The stuff tossed at us is incredibly imaginative. A lot of stuff is thrown to keep you off balance, page after page of it. The woman tells us she left the city at 7 years of age and returned at 11. On her 4th marriage. whaaaat?

The first quarter of the book is like that. Then the author eases up a bit and then after nearly 100 pages (that feels like 200 pages) the hard work getting there begins to pay off and the story starts to kick in. The problem for me after all that was the payoff. Mieville has created an ultra-complex and interesting world, but the reward for all that hard work of reading wasn't much to me. After the hard initial investment I read on because i was interested enough to see where it would go. But I wasn't really caught up in it all. For the most part I was never really invested in the characters either. There were also more than a few sections of the novel that I just found boring. This book has garnered a lot of praise but I won't be recommending this one to others.

My definition of overwritten is "to write in an artificial or excessively elaborate, wordy style". I am well aware that the words were purposely chosen to amp up the atmosphere but like Lovecraft it was too much, went on too long and is ultimately unnecessary. It is as if an actor in a highly dramatic role choose to spend most of his time shouting his part instead of using tonal variation to same effect in a more subtle way. It is the mark on an immature artist but not one without talent. I am glad to see his has moved away from this in his later works. Far from dumbing his work down he has chosen to express himself more subtly and with more variety.

Miéville has been on my "to check out" list for a while. This discussion prompted me to buy a couple of his books, and I am now halfway through Looking for Jake And Other Stories. So far the stories leave me feeling meh: they have an interesting idea at the centre, but to me they feel as if they never quite get off the ground. The exception so far is "Go Between", which I found memorable only because I once wrote a sorta story based on a similar idea; like the others it leaves me wanting. I keep expecting a change of pace that never shows up.

Style-wise, I don't think he's overwriting the prose. What does bug me is that everything is given the same level of attention: details, important events, plot points, thematic links... Nothing really stands out, prose-wise, from the level of background descriptions. I understand that the monotonous drone is part of the low-key gothic horror thing he's got going, but maybe that's why the stories feel lacking to me.

HES SO PRETENTIOUS JS WRITE NORMALLY BRO

the concept is so cool but hes gotta add these stupid words like SHUT UPPP💔💔💔💔

I've been reading the city and the city and its taken me weeks. the book is very unengaging, and the writing is very boring. China is supposed to be a leftist, and leftists hate police, but the book is literally from a detective's perspective. it doesn't make sense

>92 woods55e: I AGREE #SHUTUPMIEVILLE

Funny that this thread came up again! I've read Perdido Street Station, I didn't hate it, but I didn't like it either and it made me want to read zero of his books.

>95 Karlstar: Do you dislike the new weird genre? Or just China Meiville?

Since my last participation in this thread, I read The City & the City and liked it. (Also saw the tv adaptation and liked it too.)

I read The Last Days of New Paris, which seemed like a short book anchored in a wonderful idea, and thought it was pretty meh.

I like "new weird" by and large. I'd consider myself a fan of Jeff VanderMeer and Jeffrey Ford both.

>93 johnsanegg: Perhaps the world isn't how you've been led to believe it is.

>98 RobertDay: This sounds a little Noam Chomsky and manufactured consent or necessary illusions! :)

Just saying that I think there is something to that.

Ages ago, maybe when it was fairly new, I tried The Scar but DNF. I found the main character neither likeable nor interesting, and the world-building wasn't enough to maintain my interest on its own. Haven't tried any other of his works.

I remember my sister being incredulous that I didn't like it. We usually have fairly similar literary tastes, but differed wildly on that point. I think she's read at least most of Miéville's work.

I enjoyed The City and The City. There was do much in it about parallel societies and how they impact people’s perceptions of others and the existence of others.

I tried to read The City and the City, but found the writing style off-putting & DNF'd it.

I quite liked The City and The City and The Scar, was less impressed with Perdido Street Station but it was far from the worst I've read in the past decade.

FWIW, I've never read anything else by Miéville, but I enjoyed The City and the City.

>104 haydninvienna: Same here. I should read more, because I thought The City and the City was great.

>105 PatrickMurtha: what did you like about it? i reallyyy struggled and had to force myself because it is the text being studied in my lit class. So boring!! ive never been so fatigued as when i heard the words "ostentaciously" and "grosstopically" EVERY SENTENCE.

>102 ChrisG1: I WISH I HAD THIS LUXURY!! i was forced to finish this novel and it made me detest the british just a little more than is historically justified. The writing style is soooo offputting, its jarring, inimmersive, and i feel like china just wants to BE tyador and a cool guy who has multiple side women and used to smoke and investigates cases. YAWNNNN.

>101 pgmcc: BUT HE JOINS BREACH IN THE END?? the division which creates, enforces and emphasises these cultural divisions is legit being championed by the end of the book. Where is this system being challenged ?? maybe china mieville secretly lovesss division (joking. maybe.) Yes the impact of perception, the differences in walking and language and architecture was interesting but it wasnt even done well enough to applaud. I do NOT think is is anywhere near kafka and orwell who people claim he is similiar to in reviews.

>108 anyonmousmouse: He is forced to join Breach (emphasis on forced), which is in itself part of the metaphor.

I loved C&C, liked Kraken well enough, and couldn't get through Perdido Street Station. That's a me thing, though, I dislike Gotham-style settings.

I've not read any Miéville but he feels like an author I should sample. As a fan of Moby Dick I'm most tempted by Railsea.

>108 anyonmousmouse:
I grew up in a divided environment and there was very little intermingling of the two communities. It was as if one community existed in a different dimension. It was not as extreme as in The City and The City, but there were parallels. It was, however, much more violent.

The City and The city was a good allegory for aparthied taken ad absurdum; parallel communities who are so conditioned to ignore the other community that they do not see them. Also like how aristocracy treats servants.

My personal experiences would have helped appreciate what The City and The City was trying to demonstrate.

I agree with you that it was not up to the standard of Kafka or orwell, but it was done.

Also, you have to take account of everybody having different tastes and preferences. There are plenty of highly acclaimed books that I have read and got angry that I would not have the ability to reclaim the hours of my life that I had wasted in reading them.

What books do you like? I see you are a new member according to your profile, so welcom. It would be good to see what books you catalogue as they will give an idea of the areas you are interested in.

I find Mieville interesting when I read him...but I don't feel interested in putting forth that much effort for the most part.

>112 Shrike58: You hit the nail on the head for me. I can absolutely understand the appeal, and I appreciate what he does, but having read and generally enjoyed a few of his books, I don't expect to go back.

>112 Shrike58: & >113 igorken:

I read and enjoyed The City & The City, and I have Perdido Street Station which I might get around to reading, but I do not feel and compunction to read it.

>110 Cecrow:
Railsea is a fun book so go for it. It is also YA if that makes a difference.

I gave up on Miéville after Embassytown which I found to be a boring slog. I did like the Bas-lag books, and The City and The City.

Dear China Mieville,

I wish Dhatt and Tyador kissed and lived in bliss for the rest of The City and The City.
How dare you not fulfil my dreams

From,
Breach

>104 haydninvienna: The City and the City is a Kafkaesque detective procedural and is quite different to all his other novels which are somewhere on the fantasy - sf - horror genre-wheel. Tonally it is perhaps closed to Embassytown as that gets into the semiotics of language.

He has a new one out later this year The Rouse of indeterminate genre, although I'm getting shades of Michael Marshall Smith in his "Michael Marshall" persona.
https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/china-mieville/the-rouse/9781509847396

>117 anyonmousmouse: I agree completely. Dhatt literally left his girlfriend to go see Tyador. and he has a nickname for him?? He calls Tyador Tyad. LIKE WHAT.. china better make a sequel of the novel where the two of them get together

and in the tv adaptation, they made Dhatt a woman and gave Tyador a wife?? First China doesn't write them to be together, and then the tv show doesn't even make Dhatt a man?? Why can't they just be together and live their lives together