Jayaprakash Satyamurthy
Knivesout no more
Perdido Street Station
by China Mieville
Publisher: Del Rey; (February 27, 2001)
I enjoyed China Mieville's Perdido Street Station a lot, so perhaps I had better begin with its weak points.
First off, it is an extremely dark, grim book. There are scenes here of terrible violence, gruesome horror and there is no real happy ending or fair reward in the traditional sense, even though the 'hero' does basically triumph. Actually this is not a minus so much as to indicate that this may not be a book to suit everyone's tastes; which is fair enough.
The more serious flaw is also the flipside of a strength - Mieville writes like a man drunk with words and there are times when his ornate prose weighs down a story that is straining at its reins, kicking at the dirt and crying out for a breakneck dash. The narrative flow falters now and then, especially once the halfway mark is passed and the game is well afoot. But it never really falls apart.
If, like me, you like dense, evocative prose, you'll be willing to forgive Mieville most of his excesses, particularly in view of the power of his twisted, boundless imagination. More than reminding me of any other writer, Mieville's vision brought to mind the nightmarish canvasses of Salvador Dali or Hieronymus Bosch.
One vision in particular that kept occuring to me (even though it does not directly reflect anything in the story) was William Blake's Ghost of Flea.
Which in a way is very befitting of the setting. The world in PSS is poised uneasily between the remains of a mediaeval past and the onrushing smokestacks and steam engines of an industrial age, much lik Blake's England was.
Arcane arts and grimy technology rub shoulders in the filthy, twisting streets of New Crobuzon, as do a bewildering variety of strange races, from the froglike vodyanoi and the scarab-headed kephri to the Remade, criminals who have been organically and mechanically re-engineered into gruesome new forms.
There are two figures who capture the way the whole work is poised at the cusp between what we usually call SF and fantasy - the Weaver, a whimsical spider-like godlike creature, and the Construct Council, a vast Articificial Intelligence. Fittingly, it is only a collaboration between the two that saves the day in the end. Equally typically, given the dark nature of the book, the third element of that combination is a pathetic, unwilling human sacrifice.
The central characters of PSS - the burly rogue scientist, Isaac dan der Grimnebulin, his kephri lover Lin, the activist/journalist Derkhan Blueday and the garuda or bird-man Yagharek, are all well-defined and believable. I agonised and exulted in sympathy with them and was sorry to leave their company in the end.
But the central character of PSS may well be the ghastly, fantastic city of New Crobuzon itself. I'm rather fond of imaginary cities, and I know I will be walking though these chaotic, winding streets in many dreams and nightmares to come...
A few last points.
Genre? Mieville calls himself a writer of 'weird tales'.
If we had a rating system would I give it full points? No, I would give it a half point less than the full score, but still reccomend it very highly.
Lastly, get the UK edition if you can - the US edition has a seriously dissapointing cover that does NO justice to the book.
by China Mieville
Publisher: Del Rey; (February 27, 2001)
I enjoyed China Mieville's Perdido Street Station a lot, so perhaps I had better begin with its weak points.
First off, it is an extremely dark, grim book. There are scenes here of terrible violence, gruesome horror and there is no real happy ending or fair reward in the traditional sense, even though the 'hero' does basically triumph. Actually this is not a minus so much as to indicate that this may not be a book to suit everyone's tastes; which is fair enough.
The more serious flaw is also the flipside of a strength - Mieville writes like a man drunk with words and there are times when his ornate prose weighs down a story that is straining at its reins, kicking at the dirt and crying out for a breakneck dash. The narrative flow falters now and then, especially once the halfway mark is passed and the game is well afoot. But it never really falls apart.
If, like me, you like dense, evocative prose, you'll be willing to forgive Mieville most of his excesses, particularly in view of the power of his twisted, boundless imagination. More than reminding me of any other writer, Mieville's vision brought to mind the nightmarish canvasses of Salvador Dali or Hieronymus Bosch.
One vision in particular that kept occuring to me (even though it does not directly reflect anything in the story) was William Blake's Ghost of Flea.
Which in a way is very befitting of the setting. The world in PSS is poised uneasily between the remains of a mediaeval past and the onrushing smokestacks and steam engines of an industrial age, much lik Blake's England was.
Arcane arts and grimy technology rub shoulders in the filthy, twisting streets of New Crobuzon, as do a bewildering variety of strange races, from the froglike vodyanoi and the scarab-headed kephri to the Remade, criminals who have been organically and mechanically re-engineered into gruesome new forms.
There are two figures who capture the way the whole work is poised at the cusp between what we usually call SF and fantasy - the Weaver, a whimsical spider-like godlike creature, and the Construct Council, a vast Articificial Intelligence. Fittingly, it is only a collaboration between the two that saves the day in the end. Equally typically, given the dark nature of the book, the third element of that combination is a pathetic, unwilling human sacrifice.
The central characters of PSS - the burly rogue scientist, Isaac dan der Grimnebulin, his kephri lover Lin, the activist/journalist Derkhan Blueday and the garuda or bird-man Yagharek, are all well-defined and believable. I agonised and exulted in sympathy with them and was sorry to leave their company in the end.
But the central character of PSS may well be the ghastly, fantastic city of New Crobuzon itself. I'm rather fond of imaginary cities, and I know I will be walking though these chaotic, winding streets in many dreams and nightmares to come...
A few last points.
Genre? Mieville calls himself a writer of 'weird tales'.
If we had a rating system would I give it full points? No, I would give it a half point less than the full score, but still reccomend it very highly.
Lastly, get the UK edition if you can - the US edition has a seriously dissapointing cover that does NO justice to the book.
