Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category

Yes yes you all knew that I would get to this book sooner or later. When it came out, Perdido Street Station received nominations for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards. It won the Arthur C. Clarke Award. Look. It’s not House of Leaves (which I think is STILL giving me nightmares years later) but I have to say that a quick gander at the Amazon page shows that:
a) There are a lot of people who have nothing better to do than talk trash about an awesome book.
b) These people might be boogers.

Some of you might remember that I voyaged to Europe in October. Ah! Italy is so beautiful under the ground and in all the catacombs. During my trip, when I wasn’t entertaining famous vampires, frightening tourists out after dark, or pining over my poor broken heart, I got a lot of reading done. One of the books I brought was Perdido Street Station. To be honest, I read the first two chapters, thought to myself, “What the heck is this?” and then put it down. Luckily, I picked it back up again later on.

Yes, sadly, this is one of those books where the build-up is confusing and overly long. Frankly, there doesn’t seem to be much of a plot for quite a long time. On the plus side, I was able to imagine all of the goings-on in this book as if they had been illustrated by Enki Bilal. Mmmmm. Enki Bilal on Google Image. First off, there is a city, New Crobuzon. The city in this book is as much of a character as anyone else. New Crobuzon is huge, multi-layered, alien, and mostly corrupt. Each chapter of the book begins with a long description of one part of the city, or of a particular thing about the city. These descriptions can get a little long winded, and when I first started the book I felt like I was reading Italo Calvino, but how Italo Calvino might sound like if he was the little boy in The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen. Later on in the book, I started to enjoy these descriptions of the city.

One of our protagonists is an alien woman, Lin, who has a human body with a head like a beetle. She is an artist. Her lover, Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, is a human man, who is a scientist and is kind of disreputable. They both receive unrelated commissions which end up unlocking a terrifying and unfortunate series of events. The insect-headed artist is commissioned to sculpt a portrait of a terrifying drug kingpin. Isaac is approached by a bird man, Yagharek, whose wings had been sawed off, to make him able to fly again. The bird man, although he seems to be secondary, ends up being one of the main characters.

I’m going to stop here and add more detail because I’m worried that most of you who haven’t read the book are imagining that the character Lin looks like a human woman with a bug head. Meaning that where her head would be, there is a big head. That is not accurate. In fact, where her head would be, there is a full beetle-like thing with legs, a carapace, antennae, and wings.

The plot is very convoluted, but in the end, all you really need to know is that the scientist unwittingly sets a brood of horrifying flying monster moths loose on a city. Then basically everyone in the book is after him. The drug kingpin, the mayor, the police, the monsters. Everyone. On his adventure, Isaac is aided by an insane giant spider, a criminal, some mercenary grave-robbing professional adventurers, a fugitive political journalist, a sentient pile of garbage, the cult that worships said sentient pile of garbage, and a mysterious vigilante. He assembles this group of castaways in an attempt to destroy the monsters and make things right.

When I was reading this book, I was reminded of a lot of the better writing of Clive Barker. It is definitely in the “dark fantasy” genre. Also, some really messed up stuff happens in the book. There is magic, science, steam-power, corrupt politics, drugs, violent upheavals, bizarre monsters, and some bizarre alien sex. One of my favorite things about this book are the monstrous moths. They are ridiculously dangerous and almost impossible to kill.

This is probably one of the weirdest books I’ve read in a long time, and it is strangely literate and ambitious. It certainly has its faults. About 75% of the weird in this book is gratuitous, meaning that it isn’t necessary for the plot. The ending of the book is hijacked by the imposition of a moral decision that one of the characters is forced to make about one of the others, so the story reaches a climax, enters the denouement, and then unravels.

Creepy Factor: 5 out of 5
Suspense Factor: 4 out of 5
Weird Erotic Tension Factor: 2 out of 5
Funny and/or Strange Factor: 5 out of 5

Final result: Perdido Street Station succeeded in winning me over, simply because of that 75% gratuitous weird, the off-kilter ending, the dreary long-winded urban landscapes, and the bug-headed woman. It’s bitter, rambling, and it smells bad and tastes worse, but it’s also beautiful.

Perdido Street Station by China Mieville – Various Publishers – 2000
Get Perdido Street Station on Amazon

Thanks for reading another one of my book reviews. See you next time!

Just a quick note that I am on a trip in Europe with a brief stop in the land of Fairy. *shudder* hopefully I will return in 2 weeks. I had expected there to be more Internet connections here!

This week’s Weekly Geeks assignment is about collections, and specifically about certain kinds of collections. Yes Yes I know what you’re thinking. As a horrible monster, I probably have some kind of grisly collection of terrifying specimens. You might expect that maybe I have collected the pinkies of all my victims, or perhaps I have row after row of shrunken heads preserved in jars filled with a curious, swirling liquid. Perhaps you might think that I keep a small wooden box, that I secured in a trade with a mad Tibetan witch doctor, which is filled with hundreds and hundreds of dragonfly heads, all with strange bumps on their foreheads and glinting eyes that follow you about the room.

If you guessed the last, you would be very close.

Unfortunately, I can’t drag these sorts of collections out for you today because the Weekly Geeks is about books. I actually don’t even collect horror novels like you might expect (although I do have a modest Edward Gorey book collection). I have a rather large collection of books written by Australian author A.G. Yates, who wrote under the pseudonym of Carter Brown. Carter Brown books are the zenith of trashy detective fiction. As Carter Brown, Yates wrote well over 100 novels from the early 1950s on into the 1980s. He also wrote under quite a few other pen names, so there are really more books out there. Here’s a shot of my collection in their boxes. Each box contains almost 30 books.

To make matters more complicated, his books were published in different countries, in different languages, and sometimes each book was reprinted. A person who wants to collect something like this actually needs to decide what they AREN’T going to collect. For example, at some point I decided to stick with US and Australian editions.

The books he wrote as Carter Brown are quite trashy. The detectives are abrasive, the ladies are 100% trouble, the bad guys are heels, and the suspects are usually dumb and/or perverted. I love these books and have read almost all of them.

Some highlights from my collection:

Three Different Editions of The Mistress - Including Thai

Six Different Versions of The Passionate - UK, US, & AU

Signed by the Cover Artist - Robert McGinnis