China Mieville - Perdido Street Station - Review

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Rating: * * * (3 out of 5)

Short Review:

Perdido Street Station has a brilliant steampunk/fantasy setting, but the plot was unworthy of it. Any crappy setting could have had a plot of people chasing big scary monsters around a city, so it all came off as feeling kind of flat - unrealised potential and all that.

Long (but still rather short) Review:

This book does get a lot of praise, and it really isn't undeserved, but I couldn't get the kick out of it that others seem to have. Now, even though I generally don't like genre mixing, this particular one did work very well. The author has a bunch of original (I think ... though I'm sure there's some mention of 'vodyanoi' in 2E D&D. Probably very different though, seeing that in D&D they were kinda like umberhulks) fantasy races which mesch quite well with all else in the setting - not just stand-ins for personifying something which humans are perfectly capable of like D&D-styled elves, dwarves, halflings ect, and the concept of the Remade is brilliant. Instead of your average punishment system, criminals here get sculpted into strange shapes, adding a great deal of grittiness to the world.

The characters were good and interesting. No real complaints there. Now, to get to the reason why this is rated three instead of five:
The plot was not intertwined with the characters or setting! It had no relevance to either of them, and as such I really couldn't care about it. The setting was so much more interesting than the rather mediocre plot of going monster hunting in the city that I felt annoyed not to be reading about things that were interlaced into the setting and showed it off to its full capacity. It just couldn't make me care that the monsters were going around sucking people's minds out - I wanna read about crisis engines and Remade dammit! Not just have them shunted off to the side of the main action when they're far more interesting things to explore.

So basically - the setting is a brilliant concept, the plot is mediocre and distracts from the setting's brilliance. I would say that it's worth reading because it has many good ideas and certain parts of it are very very good, but overall I didn't find it an amazing book. Many others did, however.

 

I've read only one China Mieville novel Scar(?). Is this a sequel, seems to be the same setting.

 

They take place in the same world but are stand alone as far as I know.

I kinda agree with your review Aikanaro, great setting and good characters but uninteresting and unengaging plot. Still a recommended read though.

 

What is "steampunk"?

 

It's an Industrial Revolution styled setting with accelerated technology - usually very gritty. There's a whole heap of 'punk' genres - cyberpunk being the most common.