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Reviewed by: Kim
Rating: 9/10
Genre: Science Fiction/Fantasy
623 pages/2000
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Perdido Street Station
by
China Miéville
This story is set in a universe similar to ours, yet vastly different. The action takes place in a city-state known as New Crobuzon and the main character is a scientist named Isaac. Isaac lives a fairly normal life—content with his girlfriend and his research—until a stranger from far away commissions Isaac’s scientific mind to solve his problem. Through the course of this new research, Isaac unwittingly releases a monster into New Crobuzon and then the adventure begins.
This book is dark and dirty, and while this is usually a turn-off for me, I enjoyed this book anyway. The language is impressive with a vocabulary bigger than my own and a feeling that no subject is untouchable. The story is long and convoluted and filled with lots of detail. Sometimes something would happen in the story or something would be stated that would make me think, “No way, that couldn’t happen.” But whenever this happened, the author would later divulge more details so everything would make sense again. The world in which this is set is developed with great imagination. The characters are all characters that I could care about, either positively or negatively. The ending of the story is not one that I expected at all. I also liked the way the author didn’t tie up all the loose ends, but instead left me wondering what was going to happen.
My only real complaint about the book is, as I said before, that it is very dark and dirty. It’s filled with filth and scuzziness. Every type of slime imaginable is featured in this book. But somehow the author is able to make it feel like the dirtiness belongs. The foulness of the characters’ language and the griminess of the setting makes the story more believable and more real. So it turns out that my complaint isn’t a complaint after all.
China Miéville has written three other novels, two of which are also set in New Crobuzon although the characters and stories are completely different. I’ve yet to read them, but now I’ve added them to my list of books to read. These two books are The Scar and Iron Council.
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