Book Review: Perdido Street Station

When reviewing a China Mieville novel I often find it's pretty hard to find an easy place to begin...

Should I begin with the city, New Crobuzan, and it's bizarre collection of neighbourhoods, rail stations, victorian-era technology, mangic, and a large number of aliens?

Maybe with the novel's protagonists; the scientist, the artist, and the exile?

Or perhaps with the villains of the piece, an ancient race of creatures that quickly found their way around my understanding of the term "vampire" and left me literally shuddering as I read how they feed...

Although only his second novel, this was my fifth novel by Mieville, after The City and the City, King Rat, Kraken, and Embassytown.

As with the others I can best describe the novel as immersive; while reading it I found myself staggered by the amount of world-building that had to go into it and the characters all felt like living, breathing people, with their own hopes, desires and fears.

This novel is actually the first of three set in Bas-Lag, the world in which New Crobuzan exists, and it definitely has me looking forward to reading it's two follow ups, The Scar and Inron Council.

Simply put, books like this are why I read fantasy fiction.

Book Review: Embassytown

A little preamble; this is my fourth China Miéville book (King Rat, The City and the City, and Kraken), and with Embassytown, and a big part of what I love about each of these is how he plays with genre and concepts in his faction.

In Embassytown much of what we look at is alien and language. Considering how tricky human languages are here on Earth (for example, did you know that there is no term in French for cool (as in temperature?) - just take a second and think of how much that alters the average francophones world view in terms of temperature), imagine how tricky it would be for a language with absolutely no shared points of interest.

The novel follows a woman named Avice Benner Cho, a child raised on the world of Arieka in the city of Embassytown who grows up to become an "immer", someone able to travel through an area of space around the world called the immer. The world itself is shared with an alien species called the Ariekei (also referred to as The Hosts), who have a concept of language that take a while get your head around.

The novel follows some key events in the city throughout the life of Avice and focuses largely on how different cultures work to understand each other without many shared reference points - for example the aliens don't really view most humans as sentient.

Although this wasn't my first experience with SF focused on questions of language, it was definitely the most immersive one I've ever come across.

Genre Character of the Week: Billy Harrow

Earlier this week I read the China Miéville novel Kraken. Last year I really enjoyed his The City and The City, and I read his first novel King Rat maybe five or six years ago. Anyway – the important thing is this is his third book I’ve read, and I came to the book looking forward to what he had to offer. In addition to a great read, the book introduced me to this week’s genre character, Billy Harrow.

Billy works as a curator in the Darwin Centre at the British Museum of Natural History, mostly involved in the preservation of undersea specimans (the centerpiece of the collection is a giant squid that Billy helped to preserve), and although his life seems pretty quiet at the beginning of the novel, he actually seems quite okay with that, not being the type who longs for something greater, he just seems like a quiet, serious young man who happens to be quite good at his job.

As the main character in a fantasy novel, however, Billy is not destined to be left alone by the universe and he quickly gets swept up in something that felt like a slightly more realistic Neverwhere mixed with more than a dash of The Matrix (only the first one however – my hatred of the later two films could fill a post on its own).

As discovering the strange new world Billy finds his own world has become is a big part of what I loved about the novel, I don’t want to go further into the plot, but let me state simply, the story was fun, intriguing and introduced me to some things both wondrous and terrifying (and often both).

Well worth the read.

Things I’ve noticed: Sometimes Books come to you

Yesterday morning I was sitting on a bench in Southgate mall reading my oversized fantasy novel and drinking my small coffee (Starbucks – Pike Place Blend – Short – Non-fat) when this guy sits down beside me, drinking coffee out of a travel mug (I know, I know – I’ve tried a few times, but I hate carrying extra stuff on me when I travel) and reading his own oversized fantasy novel.

We do that thing that readers do on benches – sizing each other up and wondering if we should see what the other guy is reading and then he takes the plunge, leans forward slightly and says:

“China Miéville, eh? – I really liked King Rat, and Perdido Street Station”

To which I replied:

“Yup, It’s his newest, Kraken” (Which I will do a review of on Monday) and then I check out what he’s reading. It’s a book calledThe Heroes by Joe Abercrombie. He goes on to describe it as an adult fantasy book without being an adult fantasy book (which so many categorized as “Urban Fantasy” really are – and yes Sookie Stackhouse I’m looking at you – and am still reading anyway!)

He suggests that if I want to start reading the author I should start with his first novel, The Blade Itself, which he read about a year ago and really liked.

So you know what, bench guy? I’ll give it a shot – right now I’m reading the historical fiction of Canadian Jack Whyte, but once I’m done I’ll be sure to give your book a shot.

Man, it’s pretty cool when books come to you.

Book Review: The City and The City

Almost a month ago I read the novel The City & The City by China Miéville but because it was a book club selection I felt I should wait until now (we finished our monthly meeting about an hour ago) to talk about the book.

First off, I'll admit bias - I really liked this book - it might be because I'm a fan of The Night Watch Series of books, or recently read a couple Kafka novels, and had read the author's first novel and loved it, but I came to this book hoping for something pretty cool and I got exactly what I was expecting.

Next, I'll admit that my BFF hated this book... he HATED it, and as usually we have pretty similar tastes in genre fiction, it surprised me how much he hated something that I liked a lot, but I do respect his opinion so I'm putting it out there.

In my mind this book works better the less you know about it. So I can't say a lot - it's a murder mystery, an intriguing look at the power of ideology and it has some of the coolest chase scenes I've ever come across.

In the end I suggest you give the book a try - if you're not a fan afterwards, okay. From my point of view however, it is a pretty awesome murder mystery set in one of the most interesting locations I've ever come across in fiction.