Perdido St Station

[tinyjo]

After my unexpectedly long reading session on Monday night got me most of the way through, I finally finished off Perdido St Station yesterday evening. In the end, I did enjoy it, although it was never as gripping as King Rat (his first book). Like King Rat though, there's a sense of chaos bubbling under in the city all the time, a feeling, even when things are relatively normal (which they are for a while) that it could all slip out of control at any moment. It took a long time for me to get into the book, mainly because I didn't really warm to the characters very quickly although I'm not entirely sure why. I liked the variety of species, although it did start to feel a bit "monster of the chapter" at one point as they started pulling things out of the bag to try to combat the threat. Also, in the way of some of the best books, it left a lot of it's world, even the city, unexplored which made it feel much more like a real place, where no-one knows what's going on everywhere.

I really appreciated the fact that although they managed, in the end, to deal with the slake moths it wasn't without huge costs and they had to do terrible things to do it. The temptation for the heroes to win all the time in the end is one that's resisted surprisingly little - I can't think of many books where one of the main characters has something as horrible as what happened to Lin. I thought the guilty desperation with which they used Andrej was really well done as well

The other point was that there were lots of storylines which weren't really followed up. The Eye-Spy killer, identified in a throw away remark (a lovely moment) is, after that, never mentioned again and the hints of political insurrection are left that really, just hints. Even Jack Half-a-Prayer is merely a shadowy figure, his motivations, plots and plans never explained although in that particular case it was rather too convenient. "Oh no, we're going to die". "Oh no we're not, someone we don't even know is going to randomly save us". He got away with it once with the Weaver, but to try it twice was a bit much. Apart from that though it made the whole situation feel more realistic. Although Isaac and co are at the centre of a crisis in the city, all the other crisis’s are not connected and touch them only to varying degrees.

The other thing I think the book did best was to have characters which were genuine enigmas. The Weaver particularly was great, particularly to start with - anything that makes plans with you becomes a little less mysterious somehow. The Construct Council was lovely as well. It's an idea which has been used a lot but I think Mieville's style really made it work. Relying on your characters thinking fundamentally differently from people is an interesting concept which very few people pull off. I think Mieville has.

It's a book with some great ideas, which it deals with really well. If you've only read the non-spoiler bit, don't be left with the impression that I didn't like the it, because I did, a lot in the end. It's not one I'll be re-reading every year (like The Sparrow, which everyone should read) but I'll definitely be going back to it.

Now I have to psyche myself up to try Peter F Hamilton before he comes to ousfg. Any recommendations?

Comments

[barberio.livejournal.com]

I agree with your review, a very fine book. My current reading matter is 'The Illuminati! Trilogy', and I am managing a page a day. Considering my normal reading speed is able to consume whole paperbacks in a few hours, this is telling of the prose.