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Perdido Street Station
The action takes place entirely in a city, New Crobuzon, and it's a large city.
There are loads of things here that are taken from outside the standard fantasy mould. Lots of the inhabitants of New Crobuzon are not human. This isn't revolutionary in itself, but they are far from the normal Tolkien-influenced critters. There are khepri, a weird species that doesn't even look the same for both sexes. The males are rather small and look like beetles while the females are as large as humans and look like a mixture of humans (lower half) and beetles (upper half). They can't talk, but communicate with scents and sign language. There are garuda, which are a kind of bird men. There are walking cacti. There are vodyanoi who live in water and can shape it to sculptures.
One day, Isaac Grimnebulin get a visit from Yagharek, a garuda who has had his wings taken off for some offense that he doesn't want to talk about. He wants Isaac to help him fly again. Isaac takes on the job in a very thorough way and starts investigating various other animals that can fly to find out how it's best done.
This is different from most fantasy. Normally, magic is the only science there is (and often that isn't treated like a science either). In New Crobuzon this isn't the case at all. There is magic, but it isn't the only thing. There are also photography (of sorts), printing presses for underground newspapers, intelligent cleaning robots, air ships and mechanical computers, all together. As if all this wasn't enough to make you think of science fiction, towards the end there's even an example of prime Star Trek technobabble, but in a fantasy mode.
In spite of its bulk, Perdido Street Station is a pretty fast read. The plot as such isn't too complex, but it drives the story forward nicely. What I think really stands out are the descriptions: China Miéville is very good at conjuring moods and environments and getting the reader to realize exactly how something looks, even in an entirely alien environment. China Miéville claims Mervyn Peake as one of his favorite authors, and the similarities to Gormenghast in feel are sometimes striking.
Perdido Street Station feels quite a bit like cyberpunk in a fantasy setting. Most of the common signs are there: a somewhat run-down city environment, technology development in a guerilla manner, drugs, computers, body modification (through surgery and magic instead of gene technology, but still) and quite a bit of attitude. I'm looking forward to see if this book will leave as much of a footprint in the fantasy genre as Neuromancer did in the science fiction genre.
You can purchase Perdido Street Station at bn.com. You can read your own book reviews in this space by submitting your reviews after reading the book review guidelines.
The RPG Shadowrun is set in a Cyberpunk world were magic has returned, along with elves, trolls, dragons, orks, dwarves etc, and there are lots of novels written for that universe.
Fantastic book. One of the better things about it is that it has a great cover. Most fantasy (and don't let that term spook you, this book is very urban, and has been acclaimed by both the horror and steampunk crowds) have covers that look like they were done by the Harlequin romance cover artists. It's nice to be able to read a fantasy book in public without shame.
A good interview with the author is here.
-adso
I read this a while back, and agree with pretty much everything the reviewer wrote. I'm not sure he covered quite how disturbing some of the ideas in the book are. The mix of magic and technology is quite well done. The machine they use to go to Hell (literally) and the technician's narrative sticks in my mind.
--
E_NOSIG
I'm sorry, but this review doesn't really cut it. I've just finished reading the book, and there's a lot more involved than this thin (and inaccurate) plot synopsis indicates.
Perdido Street Station presents an intricately detailed world. The world may shock and repulse you (as it did me). It will certainly make you scratch your head. You may even wonder what the author was smoking to come up with creatures like the khepri and the Construct Council.
I would not want to inhabit this author's dreams.
In some ways, New Crobuzon and it's inhabitants remind me of "The Difference Engine", rolled together with a bit of "Brazil" and "Dark City". It is worth a read and well deserving of the Hugo nomination it just received. Even if you say nothing else about it, you will have to admit that it is not run-of-the-mill SF.
"Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped." --Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)
I appreciate being given a review of a book I'll probably read, but hadn't heard of before. Maybe it didn't belong on the front page, but I, for one, am glad it wasn;t rejected.
Do not confuse duty with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different.Duty is a debt you owe to yourself.
A new book by China Miéville called The Scar is coming out June 25. It can be pre-ordered from Amazon.
/ qid=1022258634/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/103-1216150-55022 13#product-details
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345444388
From the editorial review:
The Scar begins with Miéville's frantic heroine, Bellis Coldwine, fleeing her beloved New Crobuzon in the peripheral wake of events relayed in Perdidio Street Station. But her voyage to the colony of Nova Esperium is cut short when she is shanghaied and stranded on Armada, a legendary floating pirate city.
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
Randall Garret's Lord Darcy stories and novels were doing this years ago. A parallel Earth (with a couple of historical differences) where "magic" is the technology of the day and is used more as background (the stories tend toward Sherlock Holmes-type mysteries).
Technically fantasy but written to the rules of hard SF such that the stories used to be published in Analog back under John W Campbell, when that magazine had such a reputation for hard SF it was often referred to as "the one with rivets".
-- Alastair
What did it for me was the ending. He's far too preachy. Not to spoil it, but after Yagharek has played an instrumental role in saving the city and Issac is ready to give him wings, another garuda shows up and explains what his crime was in the first place. All very well and good, but doesn't saving a city of over a million inhabatants count for something? Surely saving a million lives outwieghs (spoiler!) the rape he committed years ago. Mielville seems to chicken out (no pun intended) at the end and refuse to allow that any rapist could ever be redeemed.
From a literary view, that's my beef with the book. In a post-Christian literary environment, rejecting redemption is like a throwback to Greek drama. His archaic moral, therefore, jives with the steampunk (a better phrase might be "gas-lamp fantasy"), technology-forward fantasy world he's created. A vivid read, but a let-down ending.
Plus, the monsters were rather unoriginal, I thought.
I never have frustrations, the reason is, to wit:
If at first I don't succeed, I quit!