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Feb. 4th, 2011 02:46 pmOkay. I survived Perdido Street Station.
I'm not going to do a long review, because god knows I have spent enough time on this book already. Mind you, I don't think my judgment of it is an objective view of its quality; in many ways this is not the book for me. All other considerations aside, I really don't need to read about that many people being covered in excrement and/or bleeding from various wounds that often. It holds no interest and compels no emotion in me.
I feel like the book tried to introduce about twice the number of plotlines as it should have; some of them got lost and some of them were just plain tedious. As a companion to this, everything was -- within my definition -- over-described. But that's the rub: I don't know if this book was seriously that mind-numbingly boring, or if I was just fighting against all the description because I'm a stubborn asshole.
I mean, stuff happened, and a lot of it was pretty horrifying, but a lot of it also took eight pages to describe what could be described in a single paragraph. I'm not a fan of detail; I like to be able to flex my imagination. As we all know I also don't like to put detail into my own writing, because I assume everyone else will be able to build the world I'm translating from my head to the page. So it's possible I suffer the mirror image of Mieville's issues in this book; I don't proclaim my dislike for detail as some kind of positive character trait. But the point is that I believe one detail, the right detail, in the right place, is worth more both to the reader and to the story than a five-page wash that builds an intricate image.
The trick is, of course, finding that detail. It's not like I always succeed, or even succeed most of the time, but I still believe it's possible.
Or maybe I was just angry because Lin, who was the one character who interested me, got some short fucking shrift. What happened to Lin -- not just her ultimate fate but the fact that she disappeared for two thirds of the book -- annoys me. Not enough to throw the book against the wall like with The Stand, but still.
I barely finished the book. By the last fifty pages I was basically skimming for keywords that would tell me what was going on, because otherwise I was going to drown in prose; it didn't help that the climax of the book was basically about math.
And the thing is that I like China Mieville. I can see in this book the seeds of a good story, if it were about half as long as it is. I loved The City & The City and I very, very rarely love books enough to keep them when I'm done reading them anymore.
But, yeah, I really can't recommend Perdido Street Station in any respect. It's like being slowly smothered by words.
I'm not going to do a long review, because god knows I have spent enough time on this book already. Mind you, I don't think my judgment of it is an objective view of its quality; in many ways this is not the book for me. All other considerations aside, I really don't need to read about that many people being covered in excrement and/or bleeding from various wounds that often. It holds no interest and compels no emotion in me.
I feel like the book tried to introduce about twice the number of plotlines as it should have; some of them got lost and some of them were just plain tedious. As a companion to this, everything was -- within my definition -- over-described. But that's the rub: I don't know if this book was seriously that mind-numbingly boring, or if I was just fighting against all the description because I'm a stubborn asshole.
I mean, stuff happened, and a lot of it was pretty horrifying, but a lot of it also took eight pages to describe what could be described in a single paragraph. I'm not a fan of detail; I like to be able to flex my imagination. As we all know I also don't like to put detail into my own writing, because I assume everyone else will be able to build the world I'm translating from my head to the page. So it's possible I suffer the mirror image of Mieville's issues in this book; I don't proclaim my dislike for detail as some kind of positive character trait. But the point is that I believe one detail, the right detail, in the right place, is worth more both to the reader and to the story than a five-page wash that builds an intricate image.
The trick is, of course, finding that detail. It's not like I always succeed, or even succeed most of the time, but I still believe it's possible.
Or maybe I was just angry because Lin, who was the one character who interested me, got some short fucking shrift. What happened to Lin -- not just her ultimate fate but the fact that she disappeared for two thirds of the book -- annoys me. Not enough to throw the book against the wall like with The Stand, but still.
I barely finished the book. By the last fifty pages I was basically skimming for keywords that would tell me what was going on, because otherwise I was going to drown in prose; it didn't help that the climax of the book was basically about math.
And the thing is that I like China Mieville. I can see in this book the seeds of a good story, if it were about half as long as it is. I loved The City & The City and I very, very rarely love books enough to keep them when I'm done reading them anymore.
But, yeah, I really can't recommend Perdido Street Station in any respect. It's like being slowly smothered by words.
