Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15124 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-04
• Binding: Paperback
• 624 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The question was always: what would he do for an encore? China Mieville's third novel The Scar is set in the same world as his award-winning Perdido Street Station but is a very different book, set in a very different city. Where his New Crobuzon was an old metropolis of cruelty, oppression and glamour, the floating freebooter city Armada is a place of refuge even for those who experience it as a prison. Brilliant linguist Bellis Coldwine is on the run when she is press-ganged by pirates who turn out to be rather more; her abilities make her a valuable commodity and she finds herself intermittently useful to a project so ambitious that it takes her much of the book to comprehend fully. Mieville takes interesting chances by making Bellis his protagonist--she has an arrogant selfishness that at times makes one breathless--but her guts, determination and intermittent realism about herself gradually endear her to us. This is an intelligent book about how individuals and events influence each other and the meaning of freedom. Mieville has a sense of the sea as the place of a menace almost incomprehensibly huge; like Perdido Street Station, The Scar is full of breath-taking moments of wonder which are also moments of heart-stopping terror. --Roz Kaveney

Synopsis
A human cargo bound for servitude in exile...A pirate city hauled across the oceans...A hidden miracle about be revealed...This is the story of a prisoner's journey. The search for the island of a forgotten people, for the most astonishing beast in the seas, and ultimately for a fabled place - a massive wound in reality, a source of unthinkable power and danger. From the author of Perdido Street Station, another colossal fantasy of incredible diversity and spellbinding imagination, which was acclaimed in The Times Literary Supplement as: 'An astonishing novel, guaranteed to astound and enthral the most jaded palate...exhilarating, sometimes very moving, occasionally shocking, always humane and thought-provoking'.

Customer Reviews

Re-read delights
I re-read this a few weeks ago and I can't stress enough how important it is to the genre. Miéville is a great wordsmith, but his imagination is dazzling. The more you sift beneath the surface, the more there is to find.

The Scar
It really can't be rated as less than five stars. "Perdido Street Station" will always be "the Mieville book to read", but "The Scar" froths with similar brilliance, surprises and shocks always under the surface.

The story is masterfully composed, and I don't say this lightly; plot and pacing are perfect, with the story dipping and rising exactly when necessary to keep the story moving satisfactorily. The locations here are beautiful and terrifying, expanding on the marvelous world that Mieville created with "Perdido Street Station" - an island populated by horrific mosquito people; a floating city of ships and barges lashed together with tarred ropes, populated by all forms of life; and shadowy glimpses of a dark city from which a secret has been stolen and brought to the floating city.

There is a magnificence to the politics that Mieville is showing us, mixed with truths of our own past and present, which really bring the novel to life. It's difficult to image the story without the political wrangling that the various rulers of the city undertake; and, the net result being the search and capture of one of the largest and most powerful entities in our dimension and the next, even word is astutely relevant. The goals of the characters are crystal clear even when they are hidden, if that makes sense, as though the world is so perfectly realised before being written that it was alive before it was even on the page. It's all hyperbole I know, but it's a struggle for a reviewer who is also a fan of the author not to gush with joy with each new work. It thrills me to even rememeber the first time I read "The Scar"!

A good read with plenty of plot twists and manipulation.
The main character, Bellis, is an unpleasant person and not in the "heart of gold" sort of way, she is cold and arrogant and although she does become a little more likeable as the book progresses there is no real attempt to make her sympathetic.

This should hurt the book but doesn't, it instead makes her viewpoint of events quite objective and allows us to see things without too much baggage and, since we are always aware of her flaws, the other characters come across as much more likeable.

There are a few other main characters are given believable motivations and personalities and even the bit players are interesting.

The plot seems to be pointing in one direction and then changes and changes again leaving you with no idea of what will happen next or who is playing who and you simply ride it out until the end.

The ending is good with a few surprises thrown in at the last moment and nothing seems forced or unbelievable.

The plot and writing deserve 5 stars but for me the fact that you never empathise with the main character weakened the book.
Not quite as good as Perdido Station but still a good book.