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. Beneath the towering bleached ribs of a dead, ancient beast lies New Crobuzon, a … 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 . . .
BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from China Mieville’s Embassytown.
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Finished this one last night and wasn’t as happy with the ending as I wanted to be, but what a vivid world! What awesome blending of fantasy elements with the philosophical and political! I hadn’t read Miéville before but I’d definitely read him again. I loved the magic-as-science and science-as-magic aspects of the plot, and the monsters were …
I saw today that Perdido Street Station is only $1.99! I really like the author, China Miéville: he writes a mishmash of fantasy/science fiction/horror often with a bit of a leftist political bent. I liked some of his other books more (Embassytown is my favorite) but this one is still great. If you like dark urban fantasy and gorgeous descriptions …
I find it difficult to review this book because it is amazing, literate, the most innovative world building I have ever read…but it is so awesomely weird! And let’s not forget to mention the outstanding vocabulary used in the beautifully descriptive writing that paints characters that sink into your heart and mind and a world that is often …
My favorite author is Stephen King, but King did not write my all-time favorite book. That distinction goes to Cllve Barker’s Imajica. Why do I mention these things in a review of Perdido Street Station? It is because I think I have now found my second all-time favorite book.
Perdido Street Station deserves as wide an audience as possible. …
Another of my all-time favourites. Suitably and wonderfully weird.
Perdido Street Station is a book by China Mieville sent to me last Christmas by my brother, who’s getting his Master’s in English literature and recommended this highly. (I have previously, and quite positively, covered a comic series China Mieville wrote, here.) It’s a little bit hard to describe the book because there’s a lot going on in it, but …
China Mieville is one of those author’s able to create richly drawn and insanely unique worlds with unrivaled confidence and authenticity. And ‘Perdido Street Station’ is a perfect example of his creative genius.
The novel is an immersive and enthralling journey through the bug-punk, gritty urban dystopian world of New Crobuzon; a bustling …
As revolutionary to the fantasy genre as Lord of the Rings was in its time. Mieville takes the standard fantasy tropes and flings them into the Abyss. This is an essential read for anyone who claims to love fantasy fiction.
I enjoyed a lot of Perdido Street Station’s parts — particularly the first half of it. I loved the atmospheric nature of the story. I thought Mieville did a great job of immersing me into the world. I loved the early discussions of chaos theory. I enjoyed finding out about Lin and Isaac’s relationship and their professional lives.
And then the …
A tough read but worth the trouble.
Great characters and good world building but the pace was so uneven it was hard to keep myself engaged with the story.
This was a rare read for me I found the prose both fecund and squishie yet highly enjoyable.
Good book. Wish the second half had been handled a bit differently (i.e. been more like the first half), but that’s just my preference. Crazy interesting and varied setting, which is probably the best part of the book. I had an uneven experience with the characters, who I found really interesting in stretches, and then boring, and then interesting.
Mieville is one of the best sci-fi writers of today. Every book has new surprises and ideas.
Great book but I wore out my dictionary lookup, surprisingly few were made up and most were archaic but real.
Childish and trite.
Great, weird and totally engrossing
This is a tough read. China Mieville is a brilliantly original author, but this work is far away from anything I’ve read in the sci-fi genre. Much more a fantasy theme.
not the best book, but good enough to read
A sprawling, unpredictable epic set in a city so real you can taste the alien sweat of it. There is literally a new, staggering idea on every page.