Perdido Street Station (Bas-Lag)

I am in utter awe with regard to the creativity oozing from this novel.While perhaps not for everyone, and not perfect, this is a first rate work of fantasy. And I mean that in the broadest sense because the book is set in a unique milieu that is part Dickens, part steampunk, part fantasy, part Blade Runner, part Lovecraft and a whole lot more. As one agent said of my first novel's early drafts: Perdido Street Station suffers from an extreme case of too-much-ness. It has too many words, too many characters, too many points of view, too much description, too many subplots, too many races, too many kinds of magic, too many villains, too many heroes, too many really really big words, or old words (I had to use the dictionary every couple of pages). Still, it works, even rises to greatness.Amazing things about this book:1. The prose: which is highly descriptive, deft, and subtle, building elaborate piles of intricacy out of slashes of words.2. The main characters: Isaac, Yag, and Lin all have some real depth.3. The world: is just so creepy, slimy, and cool -- although not for the faint of heart. This book is dark. It makes The Darkening Dream seem like vanilla icing.4. The monsters and the weird: nice and creepy. This is a book where human on bug sex is the sweet part!5. The clarity: for all its length and bewildering array of everything, the book is easy to follow and read (provided you have a dictionary handy).6. Imagination: No shortage of amazingly cool ideas, images, races, monsters, technologies, places, etc. in this puppy.Things that aren't as strong:1. Pacing: the masses of description, which while evocative, effective, and downright creepy, are constant and unrelenting. The city itself is a character and this slows things down a bit. It doesn't drag, but it isn't lightning fast either.2. The tangents: there are more than a few here, and not all of them worth it.3. The minor points of view: A number of characters pop in, have their couple POV pages in the sun, and then vanish (usually into the deadpool). This isn't always maximally effective.4. The baroque plot: The story is easy enough to follow, but it does take A WHILE to get going and is not always full of classic drama created from thwarted desire. In fact, the first third or so is distinctly short on that, but is fast paced mostly because the world is so fascinating.5. Actions of the government and other non-protagonist forces: There are some big chunks in here where the government is trying to do stuff, and only indirectly involves the regular characters. This stuff is less effective because of the emotional disconnect.6. Deus ex machina: oh-too-coincidental happenings and escapes occur a number of times.Overall, in the same way that Vegas transcends cheese by way of pure magnitude, Perdido climbs to greatness on the strength of its positives, rising above any petty flaws. If you appreciate flights of imagination, good writing, and the weird, it's required reading. No question. Not for the square, the staid, the boring, or the grounded who do not at least dream of flying.

I finished this about a week again and I still can’t seem to decide if I love it or hate it. I think it is kind of a little of both. The writing is wonderful and the world is fantastic. That easily made me like so many things about this book. BUT this isn’t an “and they all lived Happily Ever After” kind of book and so at the end I was left with this sad empty feeling that I didn’t like.ツ On the Plus Side ツThe world is fascinating and super complex. There are so many different kinds of creatures, peoples and interesting characters. This is a world where there is alchemy, magic and various other mysteries. It is a world where things like this can happen from the magical waste in the rivers.***Young mudlarks searching the river quag for scrap had been known to step into some discoloured patch of mud and start speaking long-dead languages, or find locusts in their hair, or fade slowly to translucency and disappear.***The author took some very big risks with the love interest Lin and the relationship between her and the main character Isaac Grimnebulin.***He kissed her warm red skin. She turned in his arms. She angled up on one elbow and, as he watched, the dark ruby of her carapace opened slowly while her headlegs splayed. The two halves of her headshell quivered slightly, held as wide as they would go. From beneath their shade she spread her beautiful, useless little beetle wings.***I really couldn’t picture it in my head I mean she is a creature with a woman’s body and a beetle head. It was interesting and different and so odd.There are eagle headed creatures, huge spider men things that live in multiple realms at the same time and weave things to their liking, moths that drink your dreams and much much more. It was amazing and very detailed I could definitely picture most of the stuff in this so well because of the beautiful writing. Things like:***New Crobuzon was a city unconvinced by gravity.******Wyrmen clawed their way above the city leaving trails of defecation and profanity.******Crematoria vented into the airborne ashes of wills burnt by jealous executors, which mixed with coaldust burnt to keep dying lovers warm. Thousands of sordid smoke-ghosts wrapped New Crobuzon in a stench that suffocated like guilt.***More than once I got lost within the words of the story. It was beautiful yet grotesque, captivating yet horrifying all at the same time. This story lived in a strange and wonderful dichotomy that was just strange.The characters within the story are not nice and noble people. They are people driven to the brink and tested. They made choices that seemed necessary and at the same time were also horrible. Some of the consequences are horrible and I was really sad that a few of them had to be paid like that along the way.☠ The Bad of It ☠It isn’t even necessarily bad. This is not a happy story. There are no roses and sunshine at the end it is choices made and consequences paid. I was sad for many of the characters at the end of this. It is hard to get to know some of them in one context in the story to find out what their crime was before we met them and then figure out how you feel about them now. Can you forgive them their past transgressions or do you now hate them forever. I still don’t know or have an answer to that question.There is part of this that it seems like the story loses a bit of its direction and flounders for a second. It is just crazy because it shifts right in the middle from being about whatever I assumed it was about at the beginning into what it ended up being about in the end. It is just a strange transition.☽ Overall: ☾If you are looking for a happy story where everything works out in the end, the bad guys totally get what is coming to them and the heroes make out better off then they started out, then this is not the story for you.BUT, if you are looking for something interesting, different, gritty and strange well this should totally fit that bill well. The writing is superb in so many ways and this definitely is a unique world. I don’t read a lot of Sci Fi but I’m definitely going to finish out this series.

I havent read it yet, but the cover is so beautiful

This was an exceptional book, I'm still not sure what to make of it. Set entirely in a city called New Crobuzon this is a secondary world, weird urban fantasy. It has a kind of late 19th, early 20th century technology vibe to it with steam powered machines and automations but magic (thaumaturgy) is present but is treated as just another science and doesn't really play too much of a part in the story. The city itself is really the main character here. It is described so vividly you can taste it, and I really don't want to taste New Crobuzon. I've never read a book that both fascinated and repulsed me so much through its descriptions, honestly my stomach heaved a few times. It's the re-made that caused this most of the time. They are people, both human and non-human, that have been physically altered through magic with mechanical or biological changes. Mostly for some crime or another but in New Crobuzon that is easy to happen. They are changed in punishment factories and some of those changes are throughly horrific. I won't go into too much detail, I'll leave that dubious pleasure to you, but I think what was so disturbing was that it was all treated so casually, people feel sorry for them but think hey, what can I do about it?New Crobuzon is home to a vast number of creatures. The main ones we get to know are humans, khepri (body of a human woman, head of a scarab beetle), weird Cactus people, garuda (bird-like creatures) and a whole host more. Isaac is a scientist, working on his own research into 'crisis theory', when he gets a commission from Yagharek (a garuda who's wings have been chopped off for an unnamed crime, and this research inadvertently causes a major crisis for the city itself. We also have Lin, a khepri artist who is Isaac's girlfriend, as well as a few other characters. They are all richly drawn and feel real. They are certainly not heroes, just ordinary beings in a very weird city trying to deal with something they feel responsible for. One of the only negative things I have to say about this book is Lin's storyline. It disappears about half way through and only resumes toward the end, and I'm not entirely sure of her purpose in the story, especially as her own agent.The book starts slow, almost slice of life for good portion on the beginning but this is great, you actually need this to get a handle on the setting. The last part does have the trappings of a monster hunt but oh in such a great way. I still haven't mentioned the self aware automation, the inter-dimensional spider, the ambassador from hell, or the giant sloth like creatures that feed on dreams and consciousness have I? Well it's all in here along with a host of other weird and strange things. This is a work of mad imagination and I have never read anything like it before and I've read a lot of books. Thoroughly recommend if you want something that's totally different.

It took me several tries to get into the book. Whilst it was worth it I do wish the ending was less miserable.

Tiene lugar en un mundo rico en detalles, los personajes bien definidos y sus relaciones bien hiladas. Si que es verdad que en algún tramo se hace un poco largo, pero en un libro de estas dimensiones es difícil que el ritmo no se resienta en algún momento. Algunos pasajes son memorables. Y un final de los que se te queda clavado.

One of my favorite books of all time. Mieville's description of the city is amazing and gripping, he somehow manages to rattle off detail after detail while still being riveting. The story is stunning, very emotional, thought provoking and entertaining all at the same time. Characters are great, felt a lot of empathy for them, found them endearing. Plot moves at a steady place. When it gets slower it is with purpose, when it gets faster it is with purpose. I never feel bored or as if the action is for action's sake. I've read the book 4 times and have bought the book for friends to read.