So I've been meaning to read China Miéville for a while now.
Of course, I thought for a long time that China Miéville was a female author, and was super excited for an eminently successful female fantasy/science fiction author whose work did not purportedly rest on sex and/or dragons.*
China Miéville is in fact a man.** A eminently successful and respected man of many talents, recommended by many of my coworkers and favorite authors, not the least of whom is Neil Gaiman.
Some disappointment in this may have contributed to a more prolonged delay in picking up Mr. Miéville's work. Also the disappointment when I realized that the book featured above is in fact not called Presidio Street Station, and does not in fact take place in San Francisco, my city of birth.
But with so much recommendation, and Mr. Miéville's new novel Embassytown racking up all the award nominations, I figured I at least owed it to read one of his books before I stopped working at an independent bookstore, where I am known as one of the few science fiction and fantasy "experts."*** And of course I had to start with Perdido Street Station, as the stubborn and crazy part of me still wanted to believe it'd turn out to have something to do with San Francisco.
But...guys. GUYS.
Holy shit, can this guy write. I feel like anyone who ever aspires to write and reads a lot, pays homage to the writers they enjoy, but at some level thinks "I can do this. Someday. It won't be this, but I can be this good."
I'm here to tell you now...you ain't never going to touch this guy. And neither am I. He has created a thrilling dark, complex, and whole world, where I opened this book and felt like I was visiting a foreign country - enough like my home to feel completely real, but removed enough to be strange, to make me want to find out more, and leaving me convinced at the end that there's more I'm going to need to go back for, that I missed on this trip. The story itself was multi-faceted, told from the perspective of multiple, multi-dimensional characters that were in fact totally real people, even while being members of alien species never seen on this earth.
The story itself was terrifying, depressing to an extent - but kept pulling me back in to find out what happened next, to finally get the answer to this mystery, or that mystery. The city of New Crobuzon, in which the book takes place, is a living breathing, multiple-cross bred organism, whose dark, damp bowels you are lost in, not knowing what's going to come next - if it's going to be a beautiful marvel, or a horror of teeth and pustulence.
I kept having to stop reading this book, because the things that were happening were so intense and immediate - again, in as completely real a way as bio- and steam punk fantasy can be - I had to catch my breath....but then would be picked the book back up five minutes later, because I had to know what happened next.
I'm still processing, weeks later, how I feel about this story. It was complex, dark, realistic - in terms of people, and the play of politics and individual's strange motivations. It was vulgar and harsh, but also fantastic with the ideas of peoples and magic and theoretical science. There was sex and drugs, art and philosophy, politics and corruption. Horror, both of the impersonal forces of nature personified, and of the cruelty of humanity - or at least, of sentient beings to each other. Perverse and marvelous, full of heroics and betrayals - including a revelation post-climax, that changes the future of the characters at least, if not the world.
I'm not sure I'll ever go back and re-walk the streets leading to Perdido Street Station, but I feel I'm bound to be pulled back to New Crobuzon, potentially to see familiar faces. It was an awe-aspiring trip, but I'm ready to go back to smaller, simpler stories.
But I won't ever fully leave where I've been.
*Not that I have anything against sex and/or dragons. But while female fantasy authors are getting awards and acclaim, the truly famous and eminent ones seem to remain the ones who unload all the fast, cheap, and delicious sex (::coughcough::SookieStackhouseandLaurelKHamilton::coughcough::), or are the ones who unfortunately are deceased or don't seem to have written in the past decade or two. I have many female, contemporary fantasy and science fiction writers that I love, and devour their books voraciously as they come out. I love them, but I'm waiting impatiently for a female fantasy writer whose name means as much as Neil Gaiman or George R.R. Martin.
**Disappointing, but not nearly so much as when I found out Kim Stanley Robinson is also a man.
***I make no claim to being an expert. But I can make a bunch of recommendations in the genres.
No comments:
Post a Comment