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Perdido Street Station

By China Mieville

(95)

| Mass Market Paperback | 9780345459404

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Book Description

Beneath the towering bleached ribs of a dead, ancient beast lies New Crobuzon, a squalid city where humans, Re-mades, and arcane races live in perpetual fear of Parliament and its brutal militia. The air and rivers are thick with factory pollutants and the strange effluents of alchemy, and the ghettContinue

Beneath the towering bleached ribs of a dead, ancient beast lies New Crobuzon, a squalid city where humans, Re-mades, and arcane races live in perpetual fear of Parliament and its brutal militia. The air and rivers are thick with factory pollutants and the strange effluents of alchemy, and the ghettos contain a vast mix of workers, artists, spies, junkies, and whores. In New Crobuzon, the unsavory deal is stranger to none—not even to Isaac, a brilliant scientist with a penchant for Crisis Theory.

Isaac has spent a lifetime quietly carrying out his unique research. But when a half-bird, half-human creature known as the Garuda comes to him from afar, Isaac is faced with challenges he has never before fathomed. Though the Garuda's request is scientifically daunting, Isaac is sparked by his own curiosity and an uncanny reverence for this curious stranger.

While Isaac's experiments for the Garuda turn into an obsession, one of his lab specimens demands attention: a brilliantly colored caterpillar that feeds on nothing but a hallucinatory drug and grows larger—and more consuming—by the day. What finally emerges from the silken cocoon will permeate every fiber of New Crobuzon—and not even the Ambassador of Hell will challenge the malignant terror it invokes . . .

A magnificent fantasy rife with scientific splendor, magical intrigue, and wonderfully realized characters, told in a storytelling style in which Charles Dickens meets Neal Stephenson, Perdido Street Station offers an eerie, voluptuously crafted world that will plumb the depths of every reader's imagination.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Critics

  • Perdido Street Station

    Review-a-Day Saturday, April 14th, 2007 Voice your opinion about this review by posting a comment on the Powells.com blog Perdido Street Station by China Mieville Put On Your Thinking Cap A review by David Hannon China Mieville has a B.A. in social a ... (read full critics)

    powells published on Mon, 6 Sep 2010

12 Reviews

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  • 2 people find this helpful

    I'm really ambivalent about this intriguing effort of Mieville. The story line is a trifle slow, but the writing and characterization is richly textured and beautiful.

    It's more - a work of art. Mieville engages you, makes you really interact with his novel, challenges you as a reader, and l ... (continue)

    I'm really ambivalent about this intriguing effort of Mieville. The story line is a trifle slow, but the writing and characterization is richly textured and beautiful.

    It's more - a work of art. Mieville engages you, makes you really interact with his novel, challenges you as a reader, and leads you down a dark and uncertain path. Definitely worth the read, but don't be surprised if you can't decide whether you actually like this book or not.

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    guaddess said on Aug 3, 2007 | Add your feedback

  • 1 person find this helpful

    Really Weird Stuff

    I'll try to write this review in English, even though it's not my native language. Perdido Street Station is the best fantasy novel I have read in a very long time, if not ever. And it is made of really, really weird stuff. Forget elves, dwarfs and all the standard Tolkien cliches, there is none of ... (continue)

    I'll try to write this review in English, even though it's not my native language. Perdido Street Station is the best fantasy novel I have read in a very long time, if not ever. And it is made of really, really weird stuff. Forget elves, dwarfs and all the standard Tolkien cliches, there is none of those here. Instead you will find a bleak, distopian, odd world which seems the result of a very disturbing feverish dream. And if you share my taste for really imaginative products of speculative fiction you'll love it. This novel is a study on transitions, on hybrid zones, on how the very disparate can make a perfect whole, ultimately on the beauty of the mongrel. As Derkhan, the true witness of the story says, "There is some mighty godsdamned weird stuff going on here".

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    Vatara said on Sep 22, 2010 | Add your feedback

  • Ordunque, ce l'ho fatta. E' stata dura, lo ammetto, ma sono riuscita a finirlo.
    Comincio con il dire, che ho deciso di comprare il libro, dopo aver letto la copertina. Peccato che la copertina era sbagliata e si riferisse al terzo volume della trilogia.
    Melville di fantasia ne ha da vendere e mass ... (continue)

    Ordunque, ce l'ho fatta. E' stata dura, lo ammetto, ma sono riuscita a finirlo.
    Comincio con il dire, che ho deciso di comprare il libro, dopo aver letto la copertina. Peccato che la copertina era sbagliata e si riferisse al terzo volume della trilogia.
    Melville di fantasia ne ha da vendere e massimo rispetto per la sua capacità di creare mondi e nuove razze. Ma, come dire, non è che dopo settecento pagine abbia ben chiaro come sia fatta New Crobuzon o come è fatto un vodyanoi.
    Perdido Street Station unisce più generi diversi; la cosa è molto intrigante, ma secondo me, questo tentativo presenta ancora molte lacune.
    Mi ha dato la sensazione di leggere un libro steampunk, con qualche collegamento alla magia. In Perdido, la magia perde la sua valenza magica e soprannaturale, per diventare una sorta di tecnica con basi scientifiche. L'impressione è quella.
    Le descrizioni sono veramente tante, troppe secondo me.
    Un libro che ci mette tantissimo a decollare, anche se ho apprezzato molto i personaggi (tutti ben caratterizzati) e alcune riflessioni sociali.
    Che non ho apprezzato per nulla, è stato l'intervento di Mezza Preghiera. Più deus ex machina di così...
    L'unica cosa che mi ha fatto andare avanti a leggere il libro, spossata dalle lunghe descrizioni e dei punti morti è stato Yagharek e i suoi monologhi. Per me il personaggio migliore di tutto il libro.

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    ananke said on Feb 7, 2012 about the Others edition | Add your feedback

  • Probabilmente questo autore non è nelle mie corde. Troppo verboso eccessivamente prolisso nei discorsi filosofico-scientifici. No, forse non fa per me.

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    MagicamenteMe said on Jan 23, 2012 | Add your feedback


  • Non riesco a levarmi dalla testa l'idea che Mieville sarebbe un bravissimo scrittore di manuali di giochi di ruolo, un ottimo creatore d'ambientazioni fantastiche.
    Come scrittore di romanzi lo trovo invece leggermente mediocre: fin troppi personaggi accatastati alla rinfusa, dialoghi ricchi di pes ... (continue)


    Non riesco a levarmi dalla testa l'idea che Mieville sarebbe un bravissimo scrittore di manuali di giochi di ruolo, un ottimo creatore d'ambientazioni fantastiche.
    Come scrittore di romanzi lo trovo invece leggermente mediocre: fin troppi personaggi accatastati alla rinfusa, dialoghi ricchi di pesantissimi infodump, stile barocco e sofferente.
    Perdido in definitiva è come una lady del 700 agghindata in modo sontuoso, ricca e sensuale, ma disperatamente bisognosa di una cura dimagrante.

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    Coscienza Zeno said on Jan 5, 2012 about the Others edition | Add your feedback

  • Perdido Street Station

    This book blew my mind. For someone who has spent much of their life reading bog standard fantasy, this was a real eye-opener. The book shows a vast imagination in linking typical fantasy and horror tropes with a modern urban sensibility. On one level, you just think wow, what has Mieville create ... (continue)

    This book blew my mind. For someone who has spent much of their life reading bog standard fantasy, this was a real eye-opener. The book shows a vast imagination in linking typical fantasy and horror tropes with a modern urban sensibility. On one level, you just think wow, what has Mieville created (and it seems so obvious that why hasn't someone else come up with it before), and on an other level you read into the political subtexts and the criticisms of capitalist government, organised crime, their linkage and so on.
    Anyone who has any interest in speculative fiction, in fact anyone who has any interest in any kind of fiction at at all should read this book.

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    Andy said on Dec 13, 2009 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

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