Product Description

The metropolis of New Crobuzon sprawls at the centre of its own bewildering world. Humans and mutants and arcane races throng the gloom beneath its chimneys, where the rivers are sluggish with unnatural effluent, and factories and foundries pound into the night. For more than a thousand years, the parliament and its brutal militia have ruled over a vast array of workers and artists, spies, magicians, junkies and whores. Now a stranger has come, with a pocketful of gold and an impossible demand, and inadvertently something unthinkable is released. Soon the city is gripped by an alien terror - and the fate of millions depends on a clutch of outcasts on the run from lawmakers and crime-lords alike. The urban nightscape becomes a hunting ground as battles rage in the shadows of bizarre buildings. And a reckoning is due at the city's heart, in the vast edifice of Perdido Street Station. It is too late to escape.

'A work of exhaustive inventiveness...superlative fantasy' Time Out

'A well-written, authentically engrossing adventure story, exuberantly full of hocus-pocus... Mieville does not disappoint' Daily Telegraph

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14300 in Books
• Published on: 2001-02-23
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 880 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Like the author's 1998 debut book King Rat, this is an urban-gothic novel full of rich city squalor--but this time the setting isn't London but the grimy fantasy metropolis of New Crobuzon. The city sprawls like a mutant Gormenghast, contains strange ethnic minorities such as the khepris (women with huge scarab-beetles for heads), and seethes with seedy technology and thaumaturgy. There are Babbage engines, coke-powered robot "constructs", and an underclass of biomagically "Remade" victims of cruel justice who may be part-machine, part-animal or wholly nightmarish. A visiting garuda--a winged being now stripped of his wings--approaches the overweight, eccentric amateur scientist Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin in hope of buying back the power of flight, and the resulting research programme has accidental but monstrous consequences. Something appalling is loosed, a horror whose deadliness is underlined when New Crobuzon's corrupt government begs help from the Ambassador of Hell ... who refuses, because even the demons are frightened. Dealing with the flying terror becomes a job for Grimnebulin and a much-harried group of cronies--including his khepri lover, the garuda, a reporter for a brutally suppressed subversive newspaper, the group mind of New Crobuzon's constructs, a secret traitor, and one of the strangest giant spiders in fiction. A big, powerful, inventive, mesmerising and memorably horrid novel. --David Langford

From the Publisher
Publisher's comment
Early reactions to PERDIDO STREET STATION

When Macmillan published China Miéville’s first novel KING RAT in 1998, we knew we had found a rare new talent – to quote The Times, "an author to be watched". When his second novel, Perdido Street Station, arrived earlier this year, I was interested to note it was very much longer. Six hundred and nineteen pages later, I was gasping for breath – I just could not believe the scale and ingenuity of what I had been reading. The intricacy of the imagination, the sheer power of the action scenes.

Imagine elements of Mervyn Peake, Charles Dickens, Alice in Wonderland, Gene Wolfe, Philip K. Dick and Iain Banks all drawn together, yet in a completely individual way. Perdido Street Station is epic urban fantasy on a dazzling scale. It centres on the huge chaotic metropolis of New Crobuzon. To quote one reader: "He has created a real city with districts, areas, arteries, character, a frightening ‘city of dreadful night’ in places, peopled by weird and wonderful creatures." Creatures that (apart from human beings) include aliens, hybrids, mythical beings, constructs and chilling ‘Remades’. Unknown to most of them, a terrifying and growing force has been innocently unleashed, and it falls to a small group of social misfits and rejects to rescue their countless unwitting fellow citizens from a fate of nightmarish horror.

Another reader adds: "Devising a metropolis as magnificent in its rich corruption as the London of Great Expectations or the Los Angeles of Blade Runner , there can be no doubt that Perdido Street Station offers an entirely new perspective on fantasy fiction." I second that wholeheartedly, for Perdido Street Station marks the arrival of a sublime imagination, and it will indubitably take its place as one of the definitive works of fantasy literature.

All I can say to you now is enjoy it!

Peter Lavery, Editor

Here some early reactions to Perdido Street Station:

‘I salivate when I tell other people about this book. I can barely find words for it now. Perdido Street Station is a huge, crusty otherworld fantasy, all corroded clockwork and mutant scabbed organics, putrid cityside rivers and ungainly anti-heroes, rooftop cloak-and-dagger and sewer romance. Oh, my, oh, my. Miéville's debut novel, 1998's King Rat, was excellent, but this one is just astonishing. You want darkness with your fantasy? Get it here. Yes, I'm biased, because I've always wanted to read about a world like this. Miéville has created a world that feels and moves like the criminal best of cyberpunk, but which is blasted and crumbling, crawling with oddnesses like a berserk and insectile Oz. The descriptions of the world, the city, and the inhabitant races are rich and varied: Miéville never cheats and uses a race as a shortcut to characterization via stereotyping, though his characters might. His plot is tricky and excellently crafted: every problem besetting the characters is the result of their own actions, be they noble or inadvertent. Though the novel comes close to eight hundred pages, this isn't your normal tome padded with extraneous fat to give it that classic contemporary doorstop appeal. Believe it or not, every word counts. (Rumor is that the book will include a map, which means that it really is a fantasy. Miéville's descriptions, however, were enough to enable me to easily visualize the layout of the city without a map.) I could go on forever about this novel, and I probably will, but I can boil it down for you: this book is stunning.’ MEHITOBEL WILSON (Carpe Noctem)

‘Perdido Street Station is a phantasmagoric masterpiece whose grotesquerie is unmatched by any other work of contemporary imaginative fiction. Its surreal imagery recalls the work of Hieronymus Bosch, and only a writer of the very highest quality could bind such a hectic torrent of exotica into a plot as taut and compelling as this one. The city of New Crobuzon is an archetypal decadent metropolis populated by magnificent monsters and Isaac Dan de Grimnebulin, Yagharek and the Weaver are the perfect heroes to meet its hour of desperate need. The book left me breathless with admiration.’ BRIAN STABLEFORD

‘Energetic, thuggish, constantly inventive, China Miéville continues his project of rebuilding fantasy from the sub-cellar up. New Crobuzon, city of clockwork engine and subterranean punishment factory, has the architectonics of a living thing. It is a site of elation, dispute, danger and change: a city raucous with dreams. You catch the train to Perdido Street Station at your own risk: but leave a corner unexplored and you’ll always regret it.’ M. JOHN HARRISON

Customer Reviews

Overwritten but bursting with ideas.
In this excellent second novel, Mieville delivers on the potential hinted at in his first work 'King Rat'. Whilst 'Perdido Street Station' is very strong on characterisation and plot, its major achievement is the creation of a unique metropolis, which never fails to surprise and engage the reader.

Mieville is a true polymath, with an ingenious imagination and a formidable vocabulary. He seems able to write with authority on most subjects and weaves technical language and metaphors in to his work with ease. However, one of the greatest joys of this novel is its accessibility; the author uses his obvious intelligence to entertain rather than to impress. The result is an engaging, exciting and highly enjoyable read.

However, a valid criticism of this book is that it is overwritten. This becomes a serious nuisance towards the end of the book, when the highly descriptive prose slows down the plot instead of allowing the pace to pick up as the finale approaches. This loss of momentum caused me to lose interest at what should have been a critical point in the book.

Although this is a great novel, it is certainly not the best that this author can produce. The follow-up, set in the same world, is a far more accomplished novel and if you like 'Perdido Street Station' you will love 'The Scar'.

Real Fantasy For A Change
This book is an excellent read, although not always easy going. China Mieveille's writing style is often a little too heavy, but always conveys the turgid, unkempt feel of the ancient city of New Crobuzon. The characterization is generally good, although some of the characters are not particularly strongly voiced (Isaac for example): more often than not their personality comes across more from their actions than from their dialogue (in the case of Lin the Khepri this is of course inevitable, being unable to speak!). All the characters feel real, however, even the most grotesque and physically alien, and the reader is capable of feeling some degree of empathy with them.

The description is excellent, providing vivid images of a decadent and squalor-ridden alien city that is just close enough to those of our world to be familiar. The feel is always futuristic and ancient- the steam technology always feels like an echo of something far more advanced that has long been lost. In some ways this is a drawback: almost all we ever see of the city is squalor and grime, to the extent where it feels that even the upper eschelons of New Crobuzon eschew the use of cleaners and maintenance staff. This is only a tiny quibble though. A superb touch is the occasional lack of detail one is given, which counters the occasional over description well: sometimes creatures are merely named and the reader left to dream up what that something is. The effect is that the city always feels yet more alive and just beyond the periphery of the reader's vision.

The plot is very simple (unknown monster terrorizes city), but is presented in a complex way: a number of lives and incidents converge on the central plot. The rationalization behind all of this is tremendous and the magnificent amount of imagination that has been bestowed on Mieville's creation is wonderful: every facet of the city lives and breathes, often in more ways than one. The downside to this is that there is a bit of a kitchen-sink feeling to the book: insect-people (check), cactus people (check), vivisection victims (check), genetic aberrations (check), steam-punk cyborgs (check), multidimensional horrors (check)- and all in the first few sections of the book, the list goes on beyond this! That said this does make for a wonderfully cosmopolitan world, and a good dose of character and colour that is sorely lacking from 99% of fantasy writing available these days.

Much has been made of the extensive vocabulary used: but this is surely a good thing? Generally where unusual vocabulary has been used it is used to create an atmosphere and effect.
Thankfully this book cannot be pigeon-holed: it truly is a work of real fantasy and proves that fantasy can be made to deal with any number of parallels and real-world issues (dominance of technology, distribution of wealth and economics, racial discrimination, social discrimination- all can be found in the book in one form or another).

The book is a little clumsy from time to time, featuring wasted sections and, ironically, a little too much creativity that does not always gel, but overall is a truly refreshing experience when the bulk of fantasy novels are pale imitations of each other mimicing Tolkien in one form or another. A superb read, though, well worth the money and a prime example that real fantasy is still alive and kicking: recommended to anybody but particularly those who have enjoyed Michael Moorcock's fiction, M. John Harrison's `Viriconium' series and Mervyn Peake's writing too. Perdido Street Station isn't the same or similar to any of those except it carries a wonderfully ornate and alien feel to it. What it does share is that it is rarely a jolly book, but is always an interesting and enjoyable, imaginitive read.

Worth reading, but needs editing down by at least 200 pages.
That said, the dark, almost medieval atmosphere is conjured up most effectively and the idea of a world like our own, but gone strangely awry, is undoubtedly compelling. The inhabitants of the City have an understanding of "chymistry" and physics akin to that of a modern day alchemist and ally this with "thaumaturgical", i.e. limited magical or supernatural power, to achieve their idiosyncratic technology. This peculiarly employed and strangely dated technology, and the cumbersome ways of achieving many of the things we take for granted, are intriguing. Mieville has also come up with some inspired life forms to populate his city: the Kephri and Weaver are particularly evocative. The man sized Garuda are also an interesting development of a classic myth and restoring flight to one who has lost his wings is a central theme in the book. However,how do you get past the old schoolboy problem of angels: where are the muscles to power their wings and how can all that weight ever be lifted?. That may be a bit pernickety, the real flaw is that the ideas in the book are over stretched. Far, far too much space is devoted to constant reference to places: it is intrusive and completely unnecessary. The map at the beginning is a bit of a giveaway and re-affirms my suspicion of any science fiction book that needs such a detailed geographic map to guide the reader. Places and scenery should be generated by, and flow naturally from, the passage of the characters through the narrative, as they do in a "Snowcrash" for example. The topography should be secondary, rather than dominant, yet one feels that for Mieville the map and the names and the rail lines are an end in themselves! Many readers are going to find themselves skipping over repetitive and superfluous descriptive passages. The book would be a far better one if less rein were given to this grandiose world designing and the plot was allowed to flow a little better. Perhaps Perdido is intended to be the setting for a series of novels; if so, maybe the plot and the characters should be allowed more space on the stage and less time and room be devoted to the backdrops.