Perdido Street Station

This novel is as good, as bad, as overstuffed, and as enjoyable as readers report. In a recent issue of Locus, Simon Ing complains, I think humorously, that Mieville made all the money off ideas that M. John Harrison and himself had developed years before. I have read very little of Harrison or Ing, but I can see his point. Nevertheless, Mieviille gleefully dunks the reader into an urban world that combined the grittiness of cyberpunk with the monsters and magic of weird fiction. Readers should keep the dictionary app open, because descriptions are delirious linguistic forays into a relentlessly abject world. (I imagined a tiny voice in Mieville's head whispering, "Wouldn't the word faecal fit nicely here?") My interest was flagging about 400 pages into this 700-page novel, but Mieville cranks up the action for a round of suspenseful, violent, and sensational set pieces. As might be expected, he is especially good at describing the mating habits of his monstrous villains, the Slakemoths.

I have also read Embassytown, so I know that Mielville came to write in a less florid style. But for his sophomore effort, he pulls out all the stops in his determination to dazzle and entertain the reader. The book may try the reader's patience, but he largely succeeds.