Perdido Street Station
by China Mieville

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Book Reviews of Perdido Street Station

Book Review: A Dazzling Milieu
Summary: 3 Stars

Beyond the incredible scenery is an almost Victorian moralistic plot, where the protagonist is forced to deal with the consequences of his innocent-seeming research into methods of restoring flight to a criminal garuda bird-man. His fight against the slake-moths that were inadvertently freed as a result of one of his investigations forms the main story line, and slowly builds to an (almost) exciting story line. However...

Mieville's style is very densely descriptive. In the beginning of the book, this is excellent, as it paints a very dark, depressive, intimate picture of the city and its inhabitants. As the plot unfolds and becomes more pressing, though, this same style and repeated images become an obstacle to getting the story told. At the very moments when tension has been raised to high levels, we step out for two to three pages at a time for more descriptions, effectively destroying the pacing of the story. I think this book could have been considerably improved by some heavy cutting of this material in the latter stages of the book.

There are places where the plot could have been tightened. At multiple points, the Weaver saves our hero from impossible situations, an effective deus-ex-machina device as the Weaver can apparently do almost anything (except defeat the slake-moths single-handed). Although this is consistent with Victorian-era plotting, it really doesn't belong in a modern novel. Thematically the book also falls somewhat flat, with overly simplistic value/action/consequence matings, almost reminiscent of something out of Dickens.

A brilliant, off-beat, dazzling setting; an exciting adventure tale; but marred by too many words and too little depth.

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