Perdido Street Station

[Estelthea]

Still reading Perdido Street Station and I now have a lovely signed set of all his other books (and a big crush!) after meeting him in person and listening to him talk about various things. Personally I really enjoy his very descriptive style and the way he uses language and, even though I'm not yet half way through the story, I'd say he was my favourite living author - bugs and all!

I'll come up with a little review later of the talk, when I can remember what they were talking about.

[rune]

Originally Posted by Estelthea

Still reading Perdido Street Station and I now have a lovely signed set of all his other books (and a big crush!) after meeting him in person and listening to him talk about various things. Personally I really enjoy his very descriptive style and the way he uses language and, even though I'm not yet half way through the story, I'd say he was my favourite living author - bugs and all!

I'll come up with a little review later of the talk, when I can remember what they were talking about.

I'm envious I would like to meet my favourite authors I can imagine Mieville is an interesting guy to meet. I've often wondered though, is China Mieville his real name?

[Estelthea]

I just happen to live in the right place and work for the right people, we have literary festivals every year and some large book shops where writers like to stop by to do book signings.

He's a very interesting guy, he looks a bit scary but comes over as very charming and friendly and he really knows his stuff - he even coped well with the odd crazy question from the audience! Which must be hard to do. I don't know abotut he name but I was talking with my sister about him and looking through the dedication lists in his books and none of the people really sound real :-)

[rune]

There are never any book signing events were I live. Probably because it takes to long to get to my town once you leave the motorway
We dont even have a decent bookshop in my town, I tend to order on line.

It's nice to hear though that he was pleasant. Not all authors are approachable, which is a shame really as I'm sure a lot of fans would love to ask questions about their works.

Did he give away any ideas of what he'll be writing next?

[Estelthea]

He was talking about SF generally (accompanied by brian Aldiss and Rob Grant) rather than his own books. He has apparantly written an introduction for a H G Wells story because they are reissuing some of his books with comments from modern writers. Now I can't remember the title exactly, I've not read much Wells other than The Time Machine and I'm at work and can't look it up in my lovely SF encyclopedia, but it was something like The First Men on the Moon. He read an extract and as well as being very nice to look at he also has a lovely reading voice! Has he read his books on CD/tape, if not he should do?

He also talked about Frankenstein and had a little debate with Brian Aldiss about wheather it was about social issues (the monster turns bad because he was rejected) or scientific ones (the monster is unnatural and therefore bad). It was quite nice to have a bit of an argument going and I generally agreed with what CM said - thankfully I took a module in SF at university and some of the same things came up so I nodded and smiled in all the right places!

[HiddenTiger]

This book is the only China Mieville book I read and although I found it 'dark' I did find it compelling. My problem was that I found my self having to back track a few pages because I lost the plot speculating, I kept wondering where the bug people and Gaurudas came from (was it genetic experiments?), what creature did the giant Ribcage come from (a living space ship?) what was the source of the magic? All those side issues which the characters took for granted.

I was tempted to buy Iron Council... is it worth spending the money on?

[Dianora]

Originally Posted by Estelthea

(having a few problems imagining Lin with a bug for a head but I guess that makes it easy to see why the khepri are looked down on)

lol! I had the same feelings... in the beginning I was like, um... is this dude makin' it with a BUG? too funny... I am just starting chapter 4, I have a ways to go, but I have heard from a few people it is a great read.

[pham]

Originally Posted by rune

I've just finished this book and in shell shock

I'm ever so pleased I didnt read this book of China Mieville's first, I think the cramming of information he's put into it would have put me off his work.

The story around Issac and Lin and the closest associates Yag and Derkhan is interesting and to be honest it was their stories that kept me going. I can't fault the vividness of the story, once again blown away by the visual world. But for me there was just too much information

What did everyone else think?

Loved every minute, every word of it. Thanks for the reminder, I must read some more Mieville, this is the only one I have read so far.

[Dianora]

okee dokee...

I'm at the metamorphoses part of the book and it is getting more and more twisted. yowza. He's one of those guys that I'm like 'who THINKS about stuff like this?'

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by Dianora

okee dokee...

I'm at the metamorphoses part of the book and it is getting more and more twisted. yowza. He's one of those guys that I'm like 'who THINKS about stuff like this?'

More of us than you'd like to realize. *reeaally evil grin*

[Dianora]

um. finished this last night.

woooaaaaaaaaah freaky. my stomach was in a big knot... sad, intriguing, gut-wrenching, amazingly written... great book, but definitely NOT for everyone.

p.s... China Mieville is extremely hot. yowza.

[Green]

POSSIBLE SPOILERS

I bought this book on the strength of reputation, and have to say I'm a little disappointed so far. I'm not quite half way through (the flying things have just managed to escape - very Aliens-esque), but tbh it's a bit of a chore.

The writing's good, the world is detailed and interesting (btw, what's the deal with people not liking detail? Do they just want to read about a shallow world, lacking substance? Yawn), but tbh the plot isn't catching enough for me.

I think it's probably only just started now that the flying doo-dahs have escaped their prison, but it's taken too long to get where it is. Isaac's experiments with crisis energy and his breakthroughs are interesting enough, but nothing else is. I also don't like the dialogue, it's too much like informal cockney tosh for my liking.

I will stick with it, though. I think it'll probably get better from here on.

[Dianora]

I found the first 1/3 of the book to be very difficult to read and tiresome in places. It does get better after that, and the detail is great... but I was just disturbed by the whole thing in general. Mind-sucking slake moths are just not good bedtime stories, lol.

I'm amazed by his imagination, the characters he manages to create and the detail he puts into each one of them. Still, I have heard that The Scar is a better read. I will eventually read it, but not for a little while yet. It just got a little *too* gruesome for me in parts... and when it was all over, my stomach was still in knots.

[j. d. worthington]

Promised Gollum and Ravenus I'd post my thoughts on this one. It's going to be difficult to sum them up, but I'll try.

First, I don't really think Mieville is quite my sort of thing -- at the moment. I can see where, at other points in my life, I would have been completely taken with his work; now, it leaves me just a leeetle bit ... cold, distanced, in some way. I think that's because, despite the loads of detail, when it comes to giving descriptions of particular beings/characters, he seems (to me) somewhere between giving the most shadowy image of and giving good, specific detail that allows a full visualization; so that I often have trouble getting a really firm image, even of major characters, at times. Perhaps this is a fault of my own, but I prefer one or the other approach; either give light brush strokes and let my imagination fill in the rest, or give an almost clinical description (spaced out over enough text to avoid interfering with storytelling) that I can "feel" the characters as a physical reality. Here they seem stuck between iconographic and individual, and that, I think, is why I don't get quite so involved with them. That said, I may go back to this at some time, and feel completely differently; it's happened before.

As for the detail in his work overall -- I think the best description I've been able to come up with, in telling a friend about this, is that it's like walking through a landscape done jointly by Hieronymus Bosch and Salvador Dali while watching the latter part of 2001: A Space Odyssey after taking a massive dose of LSD. This is not a bad thing, but it can lead to sensory overload, and that "museum feeling" I sometimes get when I'm at a really powerful art exhibit for too long at a stretch; I leave, and the ground's heaving like a ship in a high sea, and it takes a few hours for things to settle down. Nice, intoxicating, but rather dizzying.

My only other complaint about Mieville is the occasionally slipshod phrasing (rare, but I spotted a few that jarred with the overall meticulous use of language); this may be just the occasional glitch, and something that he'll improve with in time, or it may be due to the rate at which he writes and copy editors not catching such things later. Either way, it's a minor quibble; I'd just like to see it improved because, to be frank, even though it's not quite my sort of thing, Mieville is an incrediblly talented writer with a vivid imagination, fascinating concepts, and a delightful blending of serious themes and various types of humor from the almost slapstick to the grimmest gallows variety. A very, very talented young man. I will read the rest of his work, because I'm impressed; but it may take me a bit to get around to them.

I'm not sure I'd go so far as to claim this is one of the 3 or 4 best books to be published in these fields in the last 15 years (that's taking in a lot of territory!), but I will say it's certainly high on the list; probably well within the best 10.

[C. Craig R. McNeil]

Originally Posted by Dianora

I found the first 1/3 of the book to be very difficult to read and tiresome in places. It does get better after that, and the detail is great... but I was just disturbed by the whole thing in general. Mind-sucking slake moths are just not good bedtime stories, lol.

I'm amazed by his imagination, the characters he manages to create and the detail he puts into each one of them. Still, I have heard that The Scar is a better read. I will eventually read it, but not for a little while yet. It just got a little *too* gruesome for me in parts... and when it was all over, my stomach was still in knots.

Damn! Took the words straight out of my mouth! I thought this was a stunning and very inspiring book. It's been a while since I've read something so imaginative.