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Cecily's Reviews > Perdido Street Station
Perdido Street Station (New Crobuzon, #1)
by
by
I've read three other Mievilles before this, and they were 2*, 4*, and 5*.
I'm so pleased this was another 5*. What a wonderful, rich, steampunky, fantastical phantasmagoria this is.
PLOT
It opens with one of several short, first-person impressions: a newcomer arriving by boat at night. He’s wealthy but anguished, and the boatman fears him.
The story then opens in New Crobuzon: an ancient city (some houses nearly 1000 years old) inhabited by many exotic sentient species. We meet Lin, a khepri (insect) artist, and her boyfriend, Isaac, a maverick human scientist. Not everyone approves of inter-species relationships, and Isaac seems to relish the semi-secrecy: "’My monster. I am a pervert� thought Isaac, ‘and so is she’�. But there is always ambivalence; when she turns up unexpectedly, he “felt anger and affection jostle�.
Both take on dodgy commissions. Isaac is asked to help Yagharek fly. He’s a bird-like garuda who had his wings removed for “choice-theft�. Meanwhile, Lin agrees to make a sculpture of Mr Motley, an underworld figure who is multiply Remade (hybrid of various species).
Then a beautiful, totally original, but terrifying new sort of creature is loose in the city and strange allegiances are made to try to find a solution.
There is a huge cast, and a complex plot, but it’s never confusing, and there is real and profound development of all the main characters. The first part is fairly leisurely, introducing the characters and their world; the later sections are fast and furious.
TRANSITION, DIFFERENCE, CLEVAGE, BOUNDARIES
“I believe this to be the fundamental dynamic. Transition. The point where one thing becomes another.� Mr Motley is ostensibly talking about art, daring Lin to cross her own boundaries to experience something new, even if it ends up so individualized that she can't convey it to an audience, but it applies to everything in this story.
When Isaac tries to find a way to power Yag’s flight, he considers watercraft, unified field theory, Torque energy and crisis energy, all of which are about things on the cusp of transition.
Many of the characters have transitions in their own bodies: some are Remade, some metamorphose, others have physiognomies with unusual boundaries. For instance, cactus people have “a moment when the skin� of the sentient creature, becomes mindless plant.�
SPECIESISM and FEMINISM
Although there is a degree of segregation by species and general prejudice against some of them, any analogy with racism, let alone Apartheid, is incidental, though the freak-show makes for uncomfortable reading.
Isaac has mixed feelings at his first sexual encounter with Lin, “for just a moment after coming, Isaac had been overcome with revulsion� When he had woken he had felt fearful and horrified, but at the fact of having transgressed rather than at the transgression itself� and “after the atavistic disgust and fear had gone, leaving only a nervous, very deep affection�.
Mieville’s feminist credentials are evident. There are plenty of strong female characters (including a mercenary) and when women are treated badly, it’s clearly condemned. There is also a significant passage where one character faces the reality of prostitution, after which he foreswears it.
The slake-moths are hermaphrodite, but it’s the STRONGEST one who has the right to be mother (the others are “accepting defeat and masculinity�). Such gender fluidity also fits with the transition theme.
FOOD
The first chapter opens with Lin getting food, and by buying meat, she gives away the fact that Isaac is there. Amongst multicultural types, like Lin's friends, the main feature of mixed-species relationships seems to be the relatively trivial aspect of food, but food, in the broadest sense, is a recurring theme:
� Dietary differences are a visceral issue for Isaac: "As he watched her [eat], Isaac felt the familiar trilling of emotion: disgust immediately stamped out, pride at the stamping out, guilty desire."
� Lin’s gland-art has an inherently digestive dimension - even more so when she adds colourberries to her spit.
� For no obvious reason, the slaughterhouse process of slitting throats and letting blood drain away is described. It’s oddly akin to halal or kosher - except that these are pigs!
� Isaac tests his crisis engine on cheese.
� The whole population becomes a food source for something that has no natural predators: “The very air was thick with dreams, and the flying things lapped eagerly at the succulent juices.�
� The Weaver can “subsist on the appreciation of beauty�.
� The Construct Council says “my sustenance is information�.
� And drugs are consumed and do consume...
COMMUNALITY and CONSCIOUSNESS
This book doesn’t promote communal living, let alone communism, but there are varied examples of group living and thought.
Lin works alone, but most khepri art is a communal effort, as is their society generally (including sex). Garuda society is also communal and egalitarian, which is why choice-theft is so bad.
There are two, very different, sorts of hive mind: one organic and one not: "We too became I", which is equivalent to “we two (or more) became one�.
This raises lots of questions about the nature of consciousness, both for various types of hive minds, but also for non-organic intelligence.
The Construct Council is like cross between the internet and a supercomputer “born of random power and virus and chance�, it became a “self-creating god� My computational power is unprecedented� my sustenance is information� I do not dream... I am a calculating machine that has calculated how to think." And perhaps, most chillingly, "I compute, so I am." However, it is not entirely mechanical: “The control that the Council wielded over his human followers disturbed her� she could not understand what release or service this heretical church offered its congregation".
INSECT SEX
The (brief) descriptions of Isaac and Lin’s sex life are startling, but it’s the descriptions of Lin’s childhood experiences that are troubling.
She was raised in the Insect Aspect belief system, with females being inherently fallen and thus adoring of and servile to the males (sadly familiar in relation to OT-based Christianity), but the communal incestual sex abuse, at the behest of her broodma was awful. "Lin remembered coming home to a house that swarmed with male khepri... She remembered being commanded to wash her innumerable brothers' glistening carapaces... to let them scuttle over her and explore her body as their dumb curiosity directed them." “Headsex for procreation was an unpleasant chore carried out for demographic duty�. In contrast, most recreational sex is between females, “communal� but rather ritualised�. "Her friend introduced her to pleasuresex... Her body had been a source of shame and disgust... Until then she had been subjected only to headsex at her mother's behest, sitting still and uncomfortable while a male scrabbled and coupled excitedly with her headscarab, in mercifully unsuccessful attempts at procreation."
Lin now lives where that's not the norm, but she is still trying to come to terms with her past.
VISIONS
There is a plague of nightmares, as well as hallucinations, drug trips, synaesthesia, and multi-dimensional beings. How do we know what is real and true?
“Dreams were becoming a pestilence� They even inveigled their way into the minds of the waking� All over the city the night was fissured by cries of nocturnal misery.�
Hypnotic beauty can be terrifying, “Wings � of unstable dimensions and shapes, beating as they do in various planes�
There are even different types of vision/sight. Lin tries to explain what it's like to see the world with compound eyes: "For you... in one corner a slum is collapsing, in another a new train with pistons shining, in another a gaudy painted lady... You must process as one picture. What chaos! Tells you nothing, contradicts itself, changes its story. For me each tiny part has integrity, each fractionally different from the next, until all variation is accounted for, incrementally, rationally." Additionally, Lin can taste words and colours � useful for an artists without vocal chords.
A drug called dreamshit (yes, really) is central to the story, but I doubt it will tempt experimentation: “cacophonous emotional onslaught� two or three or more moments of life were occurring at once� [he] had not come unstuck in others� lives, but in others� minds. He was a voyeur� These were memories. These were dreams…[He] was spattered by a psychic sluice. He felt fouled� A juddering bombardment of infinitely varied moments� he was drowning in the sloshing stuff of dreams and hopes, recollections and reflections he had never had.�
SCIENCE
At times, the scientific explanations were a little long: I suspect both scientists and non-scientist would like a little less, albeit for different reasons.
“Crisis is the energy underpinning the whole of physics. Torque’s not about physics� “it’s an entirely pathological force� that can cause mutations (transitions). A “crisis field glows by virtue of being syphoned off� perpetual fucking motion�. This too-good-to-be-true aspect reminds me somewhat of the Infinite Improbability Drive in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Machines programmed by punchcards though, are something I can almost remember.
The more magical thaumaturgy isn’t, thankfully, explained.
LANGUAGE
Mieville loves seasoning his works with archaic words (especially those relating to the abstract and mysterious) and the odd new coinage. He also overuses a few pet words (“palimpsest� and “puissance� occur several times in everything of his I’ve read), which might annoyingly self-indulgent, but when I read so much that is breathtakingly brilliant, it's easy to overlook the odd lapse.
In his acknowledgements, only two authors are named: Harrison (who I have yet to read) and Peake. There is certainly much of Gormenghast in characters� names (Rudgutter, Vermishank, Maybet Slender, Magesta Barbile, Eliza Stem-Fulcher) and especially the descriptions of shadows and landscape (even though these are urban and more Dickensian). In particular, he manages to make what should be repugnant, have a sort of beauty: "Crematoria vented into the airborne ashes of wills burnt by jealous executors, which mixed with coaldust burnt to keep dying lovers warm. Thousands of sordid smoke-ghosts wrapped New Crobuzon in a stench that suffocated like guilt." Mieville's take on academia has aspects of the Cambridge colleges he knows, but also of the scholarly city of Sanctaphrax in Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell's wonderful Edge Chronicles (for ~ ages 7-11).
I can only assume that the lack of screen versions of any of his works is because Mieville isn't keen, or is too exacting. The descriptions are so filmic, and the plots marketable, that I can imagine directors longing to do it.
The Weaver’s style of communication provides opportunity for wonderful wordplay, and the descriptions of the slake-moths and the nightmares they invoke give Mieville full rein.
YAGHAREK and CHOICES
They shy, mysterious, disgraced Yagharek is at the heart of this book � more so than Isaac and Lin.
One of his first-person passages almost has Grimm fairy-tale elements: "I fought the barbarian prince who wanted to make a helmet out of my garuda skull and I won... Holding my intestines with one hand, I clawed his throat out with the other. I won his gold and his followers, whom I freed. I paid myself to health, bought passage on a merchant ship."
His own kind removed his wings as a punishment for the worst sort of choice-theft (stealing from the future as well as the present), but he longs to fly again: “I was once a creature of the air, and it remembers me� it tickles me with the currents and vectors from my past� I know that something is wrong in the sky� But I am earthbound.� When he climbs high, he relishes the exhilaration, remembering his love of flight, and feeling slight memories of it.
I was in shock when I discovered the nature of Yag's choice-theft. I’d thought of him as, to some extent, a victim (as had Isaac). Suddenly, the whole book is very obviously about choice. Should Isaac condone the crime by continuing his attempts to help Yag fly after he learns the truth? People can change, and they can atone for past actions by what they do afterwards. But for (view spoiler)? I want to believe in Yag, but I know that if I read a news report of a sentence being commuted because they'd been brave. selfless and transformative of society and themselves, I'd be uncomfortable, given the nature of the crime.
I think the most interesting aspect is how Yag gains dignity by apparently shedding it. He first arrives, hiding his true self, his face and his lack of wings. Gradually, he discards his fake wooden wings, then his cloak, and finally and painfully (view spoiler). He seems to gain gravitas and confidence from each act. His final choice is to be remade in a totally different way from all the other Remades in this world ((view spoiler)).
The other most significant choice relates to Andrej: in what circumstances can a non-consenting individual be sacrificed for the greater good? Surely he is a victim of choice-theft. (The question is all the more pertinent, given Isaac’s distaste for the Construct Council’s utilitarianism in similar matters and his own rejection of buying women for sex.)
THE WEAVER
My first thought on encountering The Weaver was Shelob, especially the description of entering the room: "As they passed into the room, all felt a moment of dislocation, a wispy unease that prickled across their skin with a quasi-physical momentum... invisible filaments of spun aether and emotion, were draped in intricate patterns... and were rippling and sticking to the intruders."
Its speech is described as "dream-poetics" (related to dreamshit?) and despite being in all caps, has a hypnotic other-worldliness to it: all the words are familiar (no puissant palimpsests), and yet the meaning is tantalisingly elusive. Talking to it “was like a dialog with the sleeping or the mad. It was difficult, exhausting. But it could be done.�
“AND THEE AND ME CONCURRED THE FAT FUNNEL-SPACE THE CLOT AT CITYWEB CENTRE SEES US CONFLAB.
“I TIRE AND GROW OLD AND COLD GRIMY LITTLING� THIS SIPHONING OF PHANTASMS FROM MY SOLE SOUL LEAVES ME MELANCHOLIC SEE PATTERNS INHERE EVEN IN THESE THE VORACIOUS ONES PERHAPS I JUDGE QUICK AND SLIK TASTES FALTER AND ALTER AND I AM UNSURE�
I also like the disconnect of a dangerously amoral being, motivated purely by beauty: in this world, beauty certainly doesn't equate to goodness.
Intriguingly, it’s the spider rather than the computer than controls the worldweb: "every possible thing ever is woven into that limitless, sprawling web. It is without beginning or end. It is complex to a degree that humbles the mind... The web is not without flaw... the worldweb flexed under the weight of time."
SAD IRONIES, MINOR ANNOYANCES AND OTHER SPOILERS
These are mainly for my future reference:
(view spoiler)
QUOTES
� First impressions of the city: “Over the engine’s oily rumble and the caresses of the river� Timbers whisper and the wind strokes thatch� Sewers riddling the earth like secular sepulchres� The rotting buildings lean against each other, exhausted� Fat predatory shadows prowl the sky.�
� “The water had unpredictable qualities� Some have been known to “step into some discoloured patch of mud and start speaking long-dead languages, or find locusts in their hair, or fade slowly to translucency and disappear.�
� “Light seemed to give up the struggle halfway through the thick, solid windows.�
� “The cross-bred architecture of that outlandish quarter confused her: a syncresis of industrialism and the gaudy domestic ostentation of the slightly rich.�
� “New Crobuzon was a city unconvinced by gravity. Aerostats oozed from clout to cloud above it like slugs on cabbages.�
� “The nodes and cells of brick and wood and palsied concrete had gone rogue, spreading like malignant tumours.�
� “In the outlines of stillborn streets shacks of concrete and corrugated iron blistered overnight. Inhabitation spread like mould.�
� “A sickly smile grew and died on his mouth like fungus.�
� “Its mutating form bubbled and welled up into strange dimensional rifts� It was alive, and then there was a time between forms when it was neither alive nor dead, but saturated with power.� After emerging from its chrysalis, “It discovered itself. It learnt its shape. It learnt it had needs.�
� “Sunset bled into the canals� They ran thick and gory with light� The sky above the city was smeared with cloud.�
� “It was policing by decentralised fear.�
� “Patterns that rolled with hypnogogic haste� pulsing in weird dimensions.�
� “The summer stretched out the daylight as if on a rack. Each moment was drawn out until its anatomy collapsed. Time broke down. The day progressed in an endless sequence of dead moments.�
� “A new landscape of ruin and refuse and industrial filth was created in a speeded-up parody of the geological process.�
� “scampered at obscure angles to reality.�
� “Behind a beautiful palimpsest of coloured gossamer, a vast, timeless, infinite mass of absence.�
� “The summer stretched out the daylight as if on a rack. Each moment was drawn out until its anatomy collapsed. Time broke down. The day progressed in an endless sequence of dead moments.�
� “The psychic plane was thick with the glutinous effluvia of incomprehensible minds.�
� “Shadows fell on them like predators as the light went out.�
I'm so pleased this was another 5*. What a wonderful, rich, steampunky, fantastical phantasmagoria this is.
PLOT
It opens with one of several short, first-person impressions: a newcomer arriving by boat at night. He’s wealthy but anguished, and the boatman fears him.
The story then opens in New Crobuzon: an ancient city (some houses nearly 1000 years old) inhabited by many exotic sentient species. We meet Lin, a khepri (insect) artist, and her boyfriend, Isaac, a maverick human scientist. Not everyone approves of inter-species relationships, and Isaac seems to relish the semi-secrecy: "’My monster. I am a pervert� thought Isaac, ‘and so is she’�. But there is always ambivalence; when she turns up unexpectedly, he “felt anger and affection jostle�.
Both take on dodgy commissions. Isaac is asked to help Yagharek fly. He’s a bird-like garuda who had his wings removed for “choice-theft�. Meanwhile, Lin agrees to make a sculpture of Mr Motley, an underworld figure who is multiply Remade (hybrid of various species).
Then a beautiful, totally original, but terrifying new sort of creature is loose in the city and strange allegiances are made to try to find a solution.
There is a huge cast, and a complex plot, but it’s never confusing, and there is real and profound development of all the main characters. The first part is fairly leisurely, introducing the characters and their world; the later sections are fast and furious.
TRANSITION, DIFFERENCE, CLEVAGE, BOUNDARIES
“I believe this to be the fundamental dynamic. Transition. The point where one thing becomes another.� Mr Motley is ostensibly talking about art, daring Lin to cross her own boundaries to experience something new, even if it ends up so individualized that she can't convey it to an audience, but it applies to everything in this story.
When Isaac tries to find a way to power Yag’s flight, he considers watercraft, unified field theory, Torque energy and crisis energy, all of which are about things on the cusp of transition.
Many of the characters have transitions in their own bodies: some are Remade, some metamorphose, others have physiognomies with unusual boundaries. For instance, cactus people have “a moment when the skin� of the sentient creature, becomes mindless plant.�
SPECIESISM and FEMINISM
Although there is a degree of segregation by species and general prejudice against some of them, any analogy with racism, let alone Apartheid, is incidental, though the freak-show makes for uncomfortable reading.
Isaac has mixed feelings at his first sexual encounter with Lin, “for just a moment after coming, Isaac had been overcome with revulsion� When he had woken he had felt fearful and horrified, but at the fact of having transgressed rather than at the transgression itself� and “after the atavistic disgust and fear had gone, leaving only a nervous, very deep affection�.
Mieville’s feminist credentials are evident. There are plenty of strong female characters (including a mercenary) and when women are treated badly, it’s clearly condemned. There is also a significant passage where one character faces the reality of prostitution, after which he foreswears it.
The slake-moths are hermaphrodite, but it’s the STRONGEST one who has the right to be mother (the others are “accepting defeat and masculinity�). Such gender fluidity also fits with the transition theme.
FOOD
The first chapter opens with Lin getting food, and by buying meat, she gives away the fact that Isaac is there. Amongst multicultural types, like Lin's friends, the main feature of mixed-species relationships seems to be the relatively trivial aspect of food, but food, in the broadest sense, is a recurring theme:
� Dietary differences are a visceral issue for Isaac: "As he watched her [eat], Isaac felt the familiar trilling of emotion: disgust immediately stamped out, pride at the stamping out, guilty desire."
� Lin’s gland-art has an inherently digestive dimension - even more so when she adds colourberries to her spit.
� For no obvious reason, the slaughterhouse process of slitting throats and letting blood drain away is described. It’s oddly akin to halal or kosher - except that these are pigs!
� Isaac tests his crisis engine on cheese.
� The whole population becomes a food source for something that has no natural predators: “The very air was thick with dreams, and the flying things lapped eagerly at the succulent juices.�
� The Weaver can “subsist on the appreciation of beauty�.
� The Construct Council says “my sustenance is information�.
� And drugs are consumed and do consume...
COMMUNALITY and CONSCIOUSNESS
This book doesn’t promote communal living, let alone communism, but there are varied examples of group living and thought.
Lin works alone, but most khepri art is a communal effort, as is their society generally (including sex). Garuda society is also communal and egalitarian, which is why choice-theft is so bad.
There are two, very different, sorts of hive mind: one organic and one not: "We too became I", which is equivalent to “we two (or more) became one�.
This raises lots of questions about the nature of consciousness, both for various types of hive minds, but also for non-organic intelligence.
The Construct Council is like cross between the internet and a supercomputer “born of random power and virus and chance�, it became a “self-creating god� My computational power is unprecedented� my sustenance is information� I do not dream... I am a calculating machine that has calculated how to think." And perhaps, most chillingly, "I compute, so I am." However, it is not entirely mechanical: “The control that the Council wielded over his human followers disturbed her� she could not understand what release or service this heretical church offered its congregation".
INSECT SEX
The (brief) descriptions of Isaac and Lin’s sex life are startling, but it’s the descriptions of Lin’s childhood experiences that are troubling.
She was raised in the Insect Aspect belief system, with females being inherently fallen and thus adoring of and servile to the males (sadly familiar in relation to OT-based Christianity), but the communal incestual sex abuse, at the behest of her broodma was awful. "Lin remembered coming home to a house that swarmed with male khepri... She remembered being commanded to wash her innumerable brothers' glistening carapaces... to let them scuttle over her and explore her body as their dumb curiosity directed them." “Headsex for procreation was an unpleasant chore carried out for demographic duty�. In contrast, most recreational sex is between females, “communal� but rather ritualised�. "Her friend introduced her to pleasuresex... Her body had been a source of shame and disgust... Until then she had been subjected only to headsex at her mother's behest, sitting still and uncomfortable while a male scrabbled and coupled excitedly with her headscarab, in mercifully unsuccessful attempts at procreation."
Lin now lives where that's not the norm, but she is still trying to come to terms with her past.
VISIONS
There is a plague of nightmares, as well as hallucinations, drug trips, synaesthesia, and multi-dimensional beings. How do we know what is real and true?
“Dreams were becoming a pestilence� They even inveigled their way into the minds of the waking� All over the city the night was fissured by cries of nocturnal misery.�
Hypnotic beauty can be terrifying, “Wings � of unstable dimensions and shapes, beating as they do in various planes�
There are even different types of vision/sight. Lin tries to explain what it's like to see the world with compound eyes: "For you... in one corner a slum is collapsing, in another a new train with pistons shining, in another a gaudy painted lady... You must process as one picture. What chaos! Tells you nothing, contradicts itself, changes its story. For me each tiny part has integrity, each fractionally different from the next, until all variation is accounted for, incrementally, rationally." Additionally, Lin can taste words and colours � useful for an artists without vocal chords.
A drug called dreamshit (yes, really) is central to the story, but I doubt it will tempt experimentation: “cacophonous emotional onslaught� two or three or more moments of life were occurring at once� [he] had not come unstuck in others� lives, but in others� minds. He was a voyeur� These were memories. These were dreams…[He] was spattered by a psychic sluice. He felt fouled� A juddering bombardment of infinitely varied moments� he was drowning in the sloshing stuff of dreams and hopes, recollections and reflections he had never had.�
SCIENCE
At times, the scientific explanations were a little long: I suspect both scientists and non-scientist would like a little less, albeit for different reasons.
“Crisis is the energy underpinning the whole of physics. Torque’s not about physics� “it’s an entirely pathological force� that can cause mutations (transitions). A “crisis field glows by virtue of being syphoned off� perpetual fucking motion�. This too-good-to-be-true aspect reminds me somewhat of the Infinite Improbability Drive in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Machines programmed by punchcards though, are something I can almost remember.
The more magical thaumaturgy isn’t, thankfully, explained.
LANGUAGE
Mieville loves seasoning his works with archaic words (especially those relating to the abstract and mysterious) and the odd new coinage. He also overuses a few pet words (“palimpsest� and “puissance� occur several times in everything of his I’ve read), which might annoyingly self-indulgent, but when I read so much that is breathtakingly brilliant, it's easy to overlook the odd lapse.
In his acknowledgements, only two authors are named: Harrison (who I have yet to read) and Peake. There is certainly much of Gormenghast in characters� names (Rudgutter, Vermishank, Maybet Slender, Magesta Barbile, Eliza Stem-Fulcher) and especially the descriptions of shadows and landscape (even though these are urban and more Dickensian). In particular, he manages to make what should be repugnant, have a sort of beauty: "Crematoria vented into the airborne ashes of wills burnt by jealous executors, which mixed with coaldust burnt to keep dying lovers warm. Thousands of sordid smoke-ghosts wrapped New Crobuzon in a stench that suffocated like guilt." Mieville's take on academia has aspects of the Cambridge colleges he knows, but also of the scholarly city of Sanctaphrax in Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell's wonderful Edge Chronicles (for ~ ages 7-11).
I can only assume that the lack of screen versions of any of his works is because Mieville isn't keen, or is too exacting. The descriptions are so filmic, and the plots marketable, that I can imagine directors longing to do it.
The Weaver’s style of communication provides opportunity for wonderful wordplay, and the descriptions of the slake-moths and the nightmares they invoke give Mieville full rein.
YAGHAREK and CHOICES
They shy, mysterious, disgraced Yagharek is at the heart of this book � more so than Isaac and Lin.
One of his first-person passages almost has Grimm fairy-tale elements: "I fought the barbarian prince who wanted to make a helmet out of my garuda skull and I won... Holding my intestines with one hand, I clawed his throat out with the other. I won his gold and his followers, whom I freed. I paid myself to health, bought passage on a merchant ship."
His own kind removed his wings as a punishment for the worst sort of choice-theft (stealing from the future as well as the present), but he longs to fly again: “I was once a creature of the air, and it remembers me� it tickles me with the currents and vectors from my past� I know that something is wrong in the sky� But I am earthbound.� When he climbs high, he relishes the exhilaration, remembering his love of flight, and feeling slight memories of it.
I was in shock when I discovered the nature of Yag's choice-theft. I’d thought of him as, to some extent, a victim (as had Isaac). Suddenly, the whole book is very obviously about choice. Should Isaac condone the crime by continuing his attempts to help Yag fly after he learns the truth? People can change, and they can atone for past actions by what they do afterwards. But for (view spoiler)? I want to believe in Yag, but I know that if I read a news report of a sentence being commuted because they'd been brave. selfless and transformative of society and themselves, I'd be uncomfortable, given the nature of the crime.
I think the most interesting aspect is how Yag gains dignity by apparently shedding it. He first arrives, hiding his true self, his face and his lack of wings. Gradually, he discards his fake wooden wings, then his cloak, and finally and painfully (view spoiler). He seems to gain gravitas and confidence from each act. His final choice is to be remade in a totally different way from all the other Remades in this world ((view spoiler)).
The other most significant choice relates to Andrej: in what circumstances can a non-consenting individual be sacrificed for the greater good? Surely he is a victim of choice-theft. (The question is all the more pertinent, given Isaac’s distaste for the Construct Council’s utilitarianism in similar matters and his own rejection of buying women for sex.)
THE WEAVER
My first thought on encountering The Weaver was Shelob, especially the description of entering the room: "As they passed into the room, all felt a moment of dislocation, a wispy unease that prickled across their skin with a quasi-physical momentum... invisible filaments of spun aether and emotion, were draped in intricate patterns... and were rippling and sticking to the intruders."
Its speech is described as "dream-poetics" (related to dreamshit?) and despite being in all caps, has a hypnotic other-worldliness to it: all the words are familiar (no puissant palimpsests), and yet the meaning is tantalisingly elusive. Talking to it “was like a dialog with the sleeping or the mad. It was difficult, exhausting. But it could be done.�
“AND THEE AND ME CONCURRED THE FAT FUNNEL-SPACE THE CLOT AT CITYWEB CENTRE SEES US CONFLAB.
“I TIRE AND GROW OLD AND COLD GRIMY LITTLING� THIS SIPHONING OF PHANTASMS FROM MY SOLE SOUL LEAVES ME MELANCHOLIC SEE PATTERNS INHERE EVEN IN THESE THE VORACIOUS ONES PERHAPS I JUDGE QUICK AND SLIK TASTES FALTER AND ALTER AND I AM UNSURE�
I also like the disconnect of a dangerously amoral being, motivated purely by beauty: in this world, beauty certainly doesn't equate to goodness.
Intriguingly, it’s the spider rather than the computer than controls the worldweb: "every possible thing ever is woven into that limitless, sprawling web. It is without beginning or end. It is complex to a degree that humbles the mind... The web is not without flaw... the worldweb flexed under the weight of time."
SAD IRONIES, MINOR ANNOYANCES AND OTHER SPOILERS
These are mainly for my future reference:
(view spoiler)
QUOTES
� First impressions of the city: “Over the engine’s oily rumble and the caresses of the river� Timbers whisper and the wind strokes thatch� Sewers riddling the earth like secular sepulchres� The rotting buildings lean against each other, exhausted� Fat predatory shadows prowl the sky.�
� “The water had unpredictable qualities� Some have been known to “step into some discoloured patch of mud and start speaking long-dead languages, or find locusts in their hair, or fade slowly to translucency and disappear.�
� “Light seemed to give up the struggle halfway through the thick, solid windows.�
� “The cross-bred architecture of that outlandish quarter confused her: a syncresis of industrialism and the gaudy domestic ostentation of the slightly rich.�
� “New Crobuzon was a city unconvinced by gravity. Aerostats oozed from clout to cloud above it like slugs on cabbages.�
� “The nodes and cells of brick and wood and palsied concrete had gone rogue, spreading like malignant tumours.�
� “In the outlines of stillborn streets shacks of concrete and corrugated iron blistered overnight. Inhabitation spread like mould.�
� “A sickly smile grew and died on his mouth like fungus.�
� “Its mutating form bubbled and welled up into strange dimensional rifts� It was alive, and then there was a time between forms when it was neither alive nor dead, but saturated with power.� After emerging from its chrysalis, “It discovered itself. It learnt its shape. It learnt it had needs.�
� “Sunset bled into the canals� They ran thick and gory with light� The sky above the city was smeared with cloud.�
� “It was policing by decentralised fear.�
� “Patterns that rolled with hypnogogic haste� pulsing in weird dimensions.�
� “The summer stretched out the daylight as if on a rack. Each moment was drawn out until its anatomy collapsed. Time broke down. The day progressed in an endless sequence of dead moments.�
� “A new landscape of ruin and refuse and industrial filth was created in a speeded-up parody of the geological process.�
� “scampered at obscure angles to reality.�
� “Behind a beautiful palimpsest of coloured gossamer, a vast, timeless, infinite mass of absence.�
� “The summer stretched out the daylight as if on a rack. Each moment was drawn out until its anatomy collapsed. Time broke down. The day progressed in an endless sequence of dead moments.�
� “The psychic plane was thick with the glutinous effluvia of incomprehensible minds.�
� “Shadows fell on them like predators as the light went out.�
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Perdido Street Station.
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Quotes Cecily Liked
“I turn away from him and step into the vastness of New Crobuzon, this towering edifice of architecture and history, this complexitude of money and slum, this profane steam-powered god. I turn and walk into the city my home, not bird or garuda, not miserable crossbreed.
I turn and walk into my home, the city, a man.”
― Perdido Street Station
I turn and walk into my home, the city, a man.”
― Perdido Street Station
“The summer stretched out the daylight as if on a rack. Each moment was drawn out until its anatomy collapsed. Time broke down. The day progressed in an endless sequence of dead moments.”
― Perdido Street Station
― Perdido Street Station
Reading Progress
June 2, 2009
– Shelved
June 2, 2014
–
Started Reading
June 2, 2014
– Shelved as:
scifi-future-speculative-fict
June 2, 2014
–
5.49%
"Nearly 3 years after Janice mentioned a challenge read, and a year and a half after the Mievellians group read PSS (PSS discussions), I've finally started - and the first 39 pages are good!"
page
39
June 11, 2014
–
Finished Reading
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Jul 30, 2011 11:13PM
Check out our August challenge, Cecily. :)
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Right, thanks. That's not a Mieveille though, which is what confused me. I won't actually be reading the August book; I'm not a big fan of YA books, and having done one last month, I'm not in a hurry for another.
I'm confused now. I just went to the listopia "Best Steampunk Books", clicked on the link to Perdido Street which brought me here. It shows that you have it marked "to-read". What book did you think I was referring to?
I figured out the confusion. You're talking about the monthly read and I'm talking about Challenge #3 which is to read a book from the steam punk genre.
Ah, you meant the August challenge rather than the August read (not surprising, since you wrote "challenge")! I confess I haven't really looked at the challenges; they don't really fit with how I choose what to read.I don't know how Listopia fits in, though.
PS I have read a Mieville (The Scar), but I was disappointed with it. Then I met him and heard him speak so eloquently about one of my favourite books (Gormenghast trilogy) that I thought I ought to give him another chance.
I listed 3 listopias on Steampunk to give people ideas on what they might like to read. I thought that since you had recently posted asking if someone wanted to read mieveille with you, and that this book would fit in with the challenge for August, that it was a happy coincidence.
Sorry if I sounded ungrateful. I was really just asking for a recommendation to add to my TBR (Perdito was actually added before I got The Scar and I don't even have a copy of any other Mieville yet). I do like reading in parallel with other people, but the points aspect of the the challenges isn't something that I get excited about.
Nearly three years after the last comment, and I've finally read - and loved - this book. :D
A good one to start with Miéville would you say?By the way, Great review.
Much as I loved this, I'm not sure it's the best to start with. It is very long, which is great if you're confident you'll enjoy it, but might be daunting if you're more unsure. On the other hand, it has all my favourite features of his works (though this is only my fourth, so I'm no expert).My personal favourite so far is still Embassytown, but being so very much about language, it wouldn't be to everyone's taste. The City and The City might be a good alternative. I've written detailed reviews of both:
Embassytown
The City and The City
What a wonderful review of a book I adored. I felt I was seeing it anew while I read your insights. Thank you!
Thanks, Richard. I adored it too (can you tell?), but found it trickier than it sometimes is to put that across in a way that avoids significant spoilers, but still serves as a memory jog for me in years to come.
Brilliant review, brought everything rushing back to me! Thanks for that.I suggest a visit to this page , these beautiful drawings provided great relief for my PSS hangover!
Wonderful review, Cecily. Excellent analysis! Similar to what Richard said above, reading it was making me re-experience the book, seeing it again in my mind.I loved the part about Yagharek and him gaining dignity by shedding the layers he constructed. Very insightful. His choice-theft is still the part I'm struggling with - the seriousness of the crime versus his right to be forgiven.
Cecily, I love what you've done here. All of your reviews provide yet more proof that there is no one single way to write a review, that there is no ideal length, that the length of a review is different from the brevity and clarity with which any particular issue is discussed, and that the enthusiasm and insight of the reviewer is an equally great gift to a reader.
Thanks for the link, Frozenwaffle (and your kind words). The drawings are skilful but I confess they didn't match my impressions - especially Isaac.Nataliya wrote: " His choice-theft is still the part I'm struggling with - the seriousness of the crime versus his right to be forgiven."
So am I. The pain is still fresh for me. :(
Thanks, Ian. I often wish I could be briefer, and I admire the focus of those who are, but most of all, I enjoy the variety of approaches here. Your own review is one of the wonderful ones.
If there's one thing that Mieville does, it's evoke wonder!
Indeed. By the gallon.
Wonderful review, Cecily! I really enjoyed reading it and all the many astute observations you had made. It brought a lot of the book back for me too, in a pleasant way. Also, I am so glad to see that you too, enjoyed all the ironies and the ending with regard to Jagharek. :)))
Thanks, Trav, though I owe part of it to you: for the old discussions in the Mievellians group and the fact you followed up on some of my necroposts.
:))I read all your necroposts, btw, and was planning to still reply to some of them, but you went quite quickly!
Yes, I was quicker than usual. One of the reasons I chose to read it now was that I had plenty of time, so I knew I'd be able to tackle a long and meaty book, without losing the plot.Reading your discussions really added to my enjoyment and helped focus my own thoughts. I certainly didn't expect replies to all my necroposts, but I appreciated knowing you were, in some sense, there.
Cecily wrote: "Much as I loved this, I'm not sure it's the best to start with. It is very long, which is great if you're confident you'll enjoy it, but might be daunting if you're more unsure. On the other hand, ..."Good and detailed reviews of both the books, Cecily. I think I'll give it a go with Embassytown. See how it goes.
I applaud your masterful illumination of this baroque world. Mieville played my emotions like a harpsichordist and dis-ease and even fear of what I might encounter made me unable to finish. Art is supposed to rock your world, so you give me courage to gird my loins (or take Pepto-Bismol) and try again someday. One thing I bounced off was the slake-moths, so I was dead in the water. I could ride awhile with Ringwraiths and Dementors, other soul suckers in fantasy lit. Maybe it was because slake-moths had no evil intentions, but were just psychevores who were just feeding like animals do. The pervasiveness of insectoid forms abounds here, and the spider image of sucking out life juices and leaving a husk does stick horrifically in the mind. Maybe there is some depth to a metaphor here I miss (i.e. the Internet drawing all the smarts of mankind into dust?)
Speaking for myself, the internet has educated me more than years of college, or work or anything else on the planet has, I must admit. Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ is but a small example of places on the internet where I have learned a lot.I find being able to follow the thoughts of people like Cecily and others on experiences such as the reading of this book, immeasurably enriching.
Michael wrote: "One thing I bounced off was the slake-moths, so I was dead in the water. I could ride awhile with Ringwraiths and Dementors, other soul suckers in fantasy lit. Maybe it was because slake-moths had no evil intentions, but were just psychevores who were just feeding like animals do."That's a really good point that hadn't occurred to me. Horrific as they were, I was captivated by the beauty of their hypnogogic wings. (I find it hard to read if I wear a mirror helmet.)
Traveller wrote: "Speaking for myself, the internet has educated me more than years of college, or work or anything else on the planet has, I must admit. Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ is but a small example of places on the internet where I have learned a lot."Very true.
Great review, especially your section on the Weaver, I LOVE the way you craft your reviews into sections, I may be influenced to copy-cat this style some
Thanks. The longer I've been on GR, the lengthier my reviews have tended to become; hence the need for sections!
Wow! What a fantastic, comprehensive review! This sounds pretty bizarre and totally out of my usual comfort zone, which makes it even more attractive. The fact that you loved it, Cecily, is enough for me--I'm adding it!
Cindy wrote: "Wow! What a fantastic, comprehensive review! This sounds pretty bizarre and totally out of my usual comfort zone, which makes it even more attractive..."Cindy, thank you so much. It is strange, as is everything by Mieville. It's also l-o-n-g, so I wouldn't necessarily suggest it for a first taste of Mieville. But if you invest a little time, it repays that many times over, imo.
I originally gave this four, but it is so full of everything real and unreal. May revise my rating.
Great review. I've read a lot of Mieville, Love him, in fact. But this one got a little.. I dunno... purple? Too much sticky, gooey, oleaginous bugginess in the language. Too bad, since the plot was awesome, and I thought the language distracted from the story. But we do agree on the awesome ideas presented. Mieville's Marxists/ Hegalian thesis/ antithesis. And the web of interconnection that binds us. What's more, there's the social and class awareness Mieville brings to fantasy.
Excellent review. As usual. You may have convinced me to move another Mieville up in my "to-read" stack.
Paul wrote: "I originally gave this four, but it is so full of everything real and unreal. May revise my rating."It can be tricky rating a book that is a tremendous achievement in many respects, but where you're still aware of its flaws. I often find that writing the review clarifies my feelings somewhat. Or just waiting a week or two, and seeing how much it lingers in my mind (or not).
Leo wrote: "...But this one got a little.. I dunno... purple? Too much sticky, gooey, oleaginous bugginess in the language. Too bad, since the plot was awesome...."I almost wonder if Mieville doesn't want to make it easy for us to love him and his works.
Leo wrote: "Excellent review. As usual. You may have convinced me to move another Mieville up in my "to-read" stack."
You're very kind. Thank you. I suspect you've already read more Mieville than I have (which reminds me, I must finish his short story collection sometime soon).
Cecily wrote: I almost wonder if Mieville doesn't want to make it easy for us to love him and his works. ..."Perhaps. But I don't get the sense Mieville's like a Thomas Pynchon, who wants to make it hard to understand his works. If anything, his plotting and easy-to-identify-with characters and -easy-to-follow-(if complex) ideas tell me otherwise.
It just seems that he gets carried away with details in his world-building. Instead of trusting his readers to build teh world, he over-writes.
Funny thing, when he holds back, I find him more effective. Which is why I loved the YA "Railsea." Here, he's writing for a younger audience, so uses less details to avoid making things too complex. Or "City & the City," where he is creating a world similar to contemporary Europe. Since it's familiar, no need to over-write. Instead, he suggests.
My own opinion. Either way, Mieville's wonderful. He's one of the few writers who has successfully struck out in new directions to free us from yet another wannabe "Lord of the Rings" epic fantasy,
Leo wrote: "I don't get the sense Mieville's like a Thomas Pynchon, who wants to make it hard to understand his works."I've not read Pynchon, so will take your word for that.
Leo wrote: "It just seems that he gets carried away with details in his world-building."
I think that's true.
Leo wrote: "He's one of the few writers who has successfully struck out in new directions to free us from yet another wannabe "Lord of the Rings" epic fantasy"
Indeed, which is just as well, given his views on Tolkien:
"Tolkien is the wen on the arse of fantasy literature."
Context: /quotes/2796...
Cecily wrote: "Leo wrote: "I don't get the sense Mieville's like a Thomas Pynchon, who wants to make it hard to understand his works."I've not read Pynchon, so will take your word for that."
I've tried. I don't think Miéville's anything like Pynchon.
I admire Miéville, but he's totally wrong about Tolkien (actually, I think that quote is not his worst: I think that's just a comment about how much of English-language fantasy has been blatantly trying to copy Tolkien—but he doesn't think much of Tolkien's writing, either).
But I don't agree with either Miéville or Leo that "he's one of the few...". In the 70s, and into the 80s, all English-language fantasy (allowing for a little hyperbole) was based on Tolkien. Since then, and discounting the myriads of poor writers who have ripped off other authors, there hasn't been a lot of Tolkieniana.
Derek wrote: "...I admire Miéville, but he's totally wrong about Tolkien (actually, I think that quote is not his worst: I think that's just a comment about how much of English-language fantasy has been blatantly trying to copy Tolkien—but he doesn't think much of Tolkien's writing, either)...."Fair point, but it's a dangerously memorable quote, so was easy to find.
Hmm. I'm going to have to read The Iron Dragon's Daughter, since Miéville explicitly gives a shout out to him in the article where he says that. I've read a few of his, and I wouldn't consider him a fraction of the author Tolkien is.But he says Tolkien "wrote that the function of fantasy was 'consolation', thereby making it an article of policy that a fantasy writer should mollycoddle the reader." I don't think he does. In the first place that's from On Fairy-stories, so it is specifically with reference to fairy-tales, but it's one of FOUR things that Tolkien thinks are the purpose of fairy tales. I don't believe Tolkien ever thought that all fantasy had to be fairy stories.
Though I have to admit not having read On Fairy-stories. Traveller and I were talking about doing it as a buddy read, but haven't got around to it...
Derek wrote: "Though I have to admit not having read On Fairy-stories. Traveller and I were talking about doing it as a buddy read, but haven't got around to it..."Nor have I. I'll cheat and wait for reviews from you and Trav to appear in my updates!
We disagree on the rating, but I love your review;-) Amazing in-depth analysis!!!
Olivier wrote: "We disagree on the rating, but I love your review;-) Amazing in-depth analysis!!!"Wow, we disagree a lot on the rating, which makes your appreciation all the more welcome. Thanks so much, Olivier, and I wish you happier reading than you had with this.
Cecily wrote: "Olivier wrote: "We disagree on the rating, but I love your review;-) Amazing in-depth analysis!!!"Wow, we disagree a lot on the rating, which makes your appreciation all the more welcome. Thanks ..."
It's funny/weird that I didn't exactly adore Perdido, especially considering my fan-boy infatuation with Mieville's Railsea... how strange is the human mind;-)
Olivier wrote: "It's funny/weird that I didn't exactly adore Perdido, especially considering my fan-boy infatuation with Mieville's Railsea... how strange is the human mind;-) "I just looked at your shelves. You really are all over the place with Mieville: two 2*, a 3* and a 5*. The human mind is indeed strange; you and Mieville surely agree on that (as do I).
Derek wrote: But I don't agree with either Miéville or Leo that "he's one of the few...". In the 70s, and into the 80s, all English-language fantasy (allowing for a little hyperbole) was based on Tolkien. Since then, and discounting the myriads of poor writers who have ripped off other authors, there hasn't been a lot of Tolkieniana. You know, I gotta agree. I think I've overstated the case.
But being a child of the 80's, the fantasy I read growing up was either wannabe Tolkien's (Edding's Belgariad for instance) or wannabe anti-Tolkien's (Murdoch's Elric Cycle for instance). And then there's Terry Pratchett, who started Discword as a spoof on Epic Fantasy's LOTR tropes. But he evolved a lot (I love the later books, especially the Watch and Tiffany Aching sub-series.
I can say that I find Mieville the most interesting of the newer writers of fantasy who create an entirely new world. His "magic" is logical and unique -- based on Hegelian "thesis/ antithesis ==> synthesis." And that he captures class struggle in a way that only Pratchett approaches.
