communi_kate | the only thing I'll ever ask of you: you've got to promise not to stop when I say when

book review: Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville.

I read Perdido Street Station years ago but found my copy during a recent book clear-out and decided it was time for a re-read. This book was the first of Mr Mieville's bestsellers (there was King Rat, but I don't think it was such a smash hit as the New Crobuzon books) It's a fat book, like so many fantasy novels, but every square inch of paper is crammed full of wonderfully bizarre details and ideas. New Crobuzon is a reeking, breathing metropolis, as impressive as it is heartless and as beautiful as it is thoroughly depressing. gordillo over on deviantart nails the city here.

Mieville's characters are all well-rounded, if typically nonheroic (the most sympathetic character is Lin, a khepri artist with a scarab beetle for a head). The storyline reaches a whole new level of depressing. I'm not sure I'd have the heart to put any of my characters through the amount of shit that Mieville puts his through, but this IS Mieville, after all. He's the Dragon Age of writers. It's like that random Chantry sidequest in Dragon Age: Origins, when you have the chance to help a harmless and sincere dwarf build a church in the cave city of Orzammar. If you decide to help, you get a little coda saying that you unleashed a merciless crusade. The most insignificant of actions have heartbreaking consequences.

The harsh thing is that there's a really easy way out that Mieville could have used to tie everything up at the end, and give most if not all of his characters a relatively happy ending, but instead it all goes to hell and those who don't die only wish they had. The Man always wins, people. ALWAYS. And when he's done he'll graft baby arms to your face, just so you remember what you did.

In summary, if you're in the mood for the bitterest of bittersweet baroque steampunk fantasy stories, read Perdido Street Station. If you're looking for a conventional fantasy tale with a happy ending where the heroes go on adventures yet return relatively unscathed, then go reread the Hobbit.