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Product Description
Product Description
Brilliantly imaginative urban fantasy on a colossal scale from an award-winning author
Book Description
The metropolis of New Crobuzon sprawls at the centre of its own bewildering world. Humans and mutants and arcane races throng the gloom beneath its chimneys, where the rivers are sluggish with unnatural effluent, and factories and foundries pound into the night. For more than a thousand years, the parliament and its brutal militia have ruled over a vast array of workers and artists, spies, magicians, junkies and whores. Now a stranger has come, with a pocketful of gold and an impossible demand, and inadvertently something unthinkable is released. Soon the city is gripped by an alien terror - and the fate of millions depends on a clutch of outcasts on the run from lawmakers and crime-lords alike. The urban nightscape becomes a hunting ground as battles rage in the shadows of bizarre buildings. And a reckoning is due at the city's heart, in the vast edifice of Perdido Street Station. It is too late to escape. 'A work of exhaustive inventiveness . . . superlative fantasy' Time Out 'A well-written, authentically engrossing adventure story, exuberantly full of hocus-pocus . . . Miéville does not disappoint' Daily Telegraph
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
That said, the dark, almost medieval atmosphere is conjured up most effectively and the idea of a world like our own, but gone strangely awry, is undoubtedly compelling. The inhabitants of the City have an understanding of "chymistry" and physics akin to that of a modern day alchemist and ally this with "thaumaturgical", i.e. limited magical or supernatural power, to achieve their idiosyncratic technology. This peculiarly employed and strangely dated technology, and the cumbersome ways of achieving many of the things we take for granted, are intriguing. Mieville has also come up with some inspired life forms to populate his city: the Kephri and Weaver are particularly evocative. The man sized Garuda are also an interesting development of a classic myth and restoring flight to one who has lost his wings is a central theme in the book. However,how do you get past the old schoolboy problem of angels: where are the muscles to power their wings and how can all that weight ever be lifted?. That may be a bit pernickety, the real flaw is that the ideas in the book are over stretched. Far, far too much space is devoted to constant reference to places: it is intrusive and completely unnecessary. The map at the beginning is a bit of a giveaway and re-affirms my suspicion of any science fiction book that needs such a detailed geographic map to guide the reader. Places and scenery should be generated by, and flow naturally from, the passage of the characters through the narrative, as they do in a "Snowcrash" for example. The topography should be secondary, rather than dominant, yet one feels that for Mieville the map and the names and the rail lines are an end in themselves! Many readers are going to find themselves skipping over repetitive and superfluous descriptive passages. The book would be a far better one if less rein were given to this grandiose world designing and the plot was allowed to flow a little better. Perhaps Perdido is intended to be the setting for a series of novels; if so, maybe the plot and the characters should be allowed more space on the stage and less time and room be devoted to the backdrops.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Ooof! An 867-page proof that more is less. Miéville has a prodigious imagination and he has built his, nasty, cloacal world in exhaustive detail - and the reader is spared absolutely none of it. The Times says he writes with 'admirable confidence', a confidence that might just be misplaced. The problem is that even as it collapses under its own weight, this novel lacks so much. Miéville has no restraint, no ear, no feel for rhythm or form, no sense of humour, no point of view, no interest in people. His human characters, whatever their gender, age, station, all speak with the same voice - the voice, for some reason, of a London van driver: oafish, coarse, inarticulate and larded with repetitive, pointless cursing. The effect is at first comic, then numbing and tiresome. (His "The City And The City" has the same lazy defect.) Only the non-human characters are interesting, but it is a patient reader who will not start skimming the pages after about halfway. Inside this fat book is a thin one trying to get out - a much better book: lively, strikingly original and about 567 pages shorter.
28 of 30 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In this excellent second novel, Mieville delivers on the potential hinted at in his first work 'King Rat'. Whilst 'Perdido Street Station' is very strong on characterisation and plot, its major achievement is the creation of a unique metropolis, which never fails to surprise and engage the reader.
Mieville is a true polymath, with an ingenious imagination and a formidable vocabulary. He seems able to write with authority on most subjects and weaves technical language and metaphors in to his work with ease. However, one of the greatest joys of this novel is its accessibility; the author uses his obvious intelligence to entertain rather than to impress. The result is an engaging, exciting and highly enjoyable read.
However, a valid criticism of this book is that it is overwritten. This becomes a serious nuisance towards the end of the book, when the highly descriptive prose slows down the plot instead of allowing the pace to pick up as the finale approaches. This loss of momentum caused me to lose interest at what should have been a critical point in the book.
Although this is a great novel, it is certainly not the best that this author can produce. The follow-up, set in the same world, is a far more accomplished novel and if you like 'Perdido Street Station' you will love 'The Scar'.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Great book - too weighty
This book looks daunting, just at the sheer size and weight of it, but China has a wonderful way of enticing you into his world. Read more
Published 23 days ago by Tegan
There is much to love, and much to dislike
Perdido Street Station is classified as weird fiction, and weird it most certainly is. A delightfully bizarre, lavish, sprawling tapestry of weirdness in fact; I loved that aspect... Read more
Published 1 month ago by M. A. Stuart
Didn't meet my love in this dirty old town
As has been said this is a big tome but length alone isn't a criteria for criticism. War and Peace and Les Miserables for example are lengthy and not a problem. Read more
Published 2 months ago by paperbackliker
fantastic visceral steampunk
A glorious, visceral steampunk vision that I enjoyed thoroughly. Was a fan of Un Lun Dun and this was as good if not better.
Published 2 months ago by Sam Foster
Just the right size : immense!
I really loved this swirling gothic fantasy, which demands that you sink into its complexity. But then I loved Mervyn Peake, Tolkein and Dickens for the same reasons. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Matthew Whyndham
Overblown, under-edited
This was my fourth China Miéville, and I guess it's an early one. I was always taught that the best books use as few adjectives as possible; Miéville clearly didn't... Read more
Published 3 months ago by NickR
But should be 5!
This book, sadly, confused me. Admittedly this is my first dalliance into steampunk for a long time, but it was as if this book was written by two people. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Harvey's Mum
Quantity over quality at times
This book was overly long. I appreciate that describing a whole new world takes time (and I do sort of admire the author's dedication to detail), but I would have liked to have... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Sid
I should have known......
I should have known how bad this book would be just by looking at it - a science fiction/fantasy book over 800 pages long should have set alarm bells ringing. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Richardp
Fantastic read
This was the first Mieville I read following a recommendation. It was incredibly good. He has an astonishing imagination and it was difficult to put the book down. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Richard
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