perdido street station.
perdido street station by china mieville.

i kind of hate it. at least, i kind of hate the end. it isn't that it is a bad end. just that it is the wrong end. it is really effective at getting the emotional tone & mood across. but uh...i don't want it. all throughout this book, i was up & down. i never disliked it, so maybe down is the wrong word for it. the world of the story is very much a kitchen-sink style creation. all kinds of good ideas are thrown in, but it isn't so much ecologically viable. as the story went on, that diminished somewhat; the militia has flavor, the cactacae dome, the khepri gods (awesome broodma & the tough sisters are great), whatnot. later bits continue to be sort of randomly thrown in: the hellkin, for instance. part of the problem i had with the latter part is that i really liked...well, one of the characters i really liked, probably the best character in the book, is given short shrift.

feminist spoilers!
i'm talking about lin, of course. lin, who is really the only viable, three dimensional character, & the only one with a backstory (except possible the garuda). the interesting, engaging character. who is dangled in the second half of the story as bait, turns to sudden damsel in distress. & then, you know, when the completely reasonable objections of mister pigeon come up, you just know that she's going to be found out to be still alive. then, you know, she's crippled, to effect issac's character more. issac the kind of fundamentally boring. i was like, man, what a wash-out. it ain't really offensive, just sort of a let-down. & by motley? least scary gangster ever? sorry, but in a world of remade & xenians, motley isn't spooky. caveat as to issac? he is kind of interesting when he is physical. when he goes from a brain in a big guy to a big guy beating up a junky or whatever. caveat on lin: i did like the myth/faerietale aspect of the "don't look behind you!"
spoilers end here, chums!

anyhow, i'd read something else by him. i wouldn't jump right into it, though. the emotional tone isn't to my taste, really. that relentless bad juju. i want to say it is very european. maybe that is more telling as to my opinions of euro-lit. whatever, though: i like fabulists. i'm probably being way to hard on this book. i just finished on the train, & the momentum of the end is still on me. i can tell i did actually like it though: i scribbled plenty of notes, & am ordering in the other two books that share the world. but really, man, the stuff i talked about in the spoilers was a downer. still, there is a lot to be said for it, once i overcame my recalcitrance. oh, & of course i heart the weaver. man, it has knives for hands, & loves only scissors? best spider demigod ever. i do wish it had been a little more under-the-table. like the way the eyespy killer was dealt with. not everything needs to be spelled out.



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