It's 5:42 AM, according to the computer clock, and I've just finished PSS (and starting on American Gods).PSS was brilliant. It's set in New Crobuzon, this great big city-state of steam-industry and grime and fantastic alienesque races.
Quick summary of plot: In the winding streets of the sprawling city of New Crobuzon, a human scientist, Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, accidentally releases a monster that feeds on dreams and sentience: a slake-moth. This singular runt goes on to release its brothersisters (they're hermaphrodites) from captivity in the bowels of the Spike (I think, details all fuzzy now), and the five of them create havoc, as you can imagine, within New Crobuzon. They feed by sucking out the consciousness of all sapient beings, leaving a drooling, unresponsive shell, that cannot be revived. As dangerous as the slake-moths are, they are valuable. Motley, the ganglord of the city, wants them for the production of dreamshit, a hallucinogenic drug that allows the user to dream the dreams of others. The government wants them for... eh, come to think of it, I'm not entirely sure why they're so wanted by the government. Possibly a case of "I want mine back!". Oh, and research, also. Isaac is helped by Derkhan Blueday, a journalist for a renegade, anti-government newsletter, Yagharek, a wingless garuda (great flying bird-man; natural habitat desert; came to Isaac to ask for help with flight), Lemuel Pigeon, a criminal with many contacts (originally hired by Isaac to procure materials for research into flight), and, umm a construct (or robot) with Constructed Intelligence. Which means it's sentient. Or capable of independant thought, if you like. Also, Isaac's lover, Lin, a khepri (which looks like a human woman from the neck down, only with red skin; and an insectoid head) is kind of working for Motley, which rather complicates things.
That wasn't a quick summary at all. And I think I've given some plot away. Oops.
Anyway, reading PSS was... um, I don't want to say torturous, but like torturous, only a lot less. Frankly it was mostly because of me. You see, Miéville likes to use words that escape a 17-year-old's (Malaysian) understanding, like vertiginous (characterized by or suffering from vertigo or dizziness) or etiolated (to make pale; to deprive of natural vigor), and usually when I face those kind of words I just ignore them, 'cause I figure I'll suss out the general meaning of the word from the surrounding, less challenging words, but I literally had to stop every five pages or so to write down an unfamiliar word so I could look it up. Have you any idea how annoying that is? To have to stop midflow in this twisty plot with all the descriptions to note down one word then stress about it for five seconds before being sucked back into the twisty plot so I can find out who gets killed and who doesn't?
And the descriptions, also. So many descriptions! I have issues with descriptions. I tend to gloss over them, which is why I do better with stories like They're Made Out Of Meat (Terry Bison). I suspect it's my obvious lack of fluency in language that stops me from visualising anything. Actually, if I do concentrate and go very very slowly, line by line, I can usually make something out. But I couldn't be bothered this time, because of the twisty plot! Damn you, twisty plot!
Griping aside, it is a great book. I loved the ideas in it. I'm now morbidly fascinated by the Remade. Remade are people who have been sent to the punishment factories to be, literally, remade into something else by adding, replacing, or removing parts of their anatomy. No overcrowded prisons in New Crobuzon. At the discretion of a magistrate, a person can be sentenced to, oh, having legs replaced by steam engines or insect legs, arms replaced by mantis claws, mouths smoothed over with a piece of flesh (the Remade in question ended up cutting himself a new mouth. Yech). One example in particular scared the hell out of me. A woman arrested for infanticide (by accident, she didn't mean to kill the baby, it was hers for heaven's sake) was sentenced to having her baby's arms grafted to her face so she could remember what she had done, while all the while she's going half mad in grief and disbelief.
New Crobuzon is a cruel, cruel place.
And it is, you know, its gritty and dirty and real, somehow. Which may explain my recent love for steampunk.
Oh and Perdido Street Station is the heart of the city, more or less. The railway and skyway lines fan out from the station, and the action eventually ends up there. Although it turns out to be a bit of a Macguffin.
Okay, okay, I'll have to stop before I give the whole thing away. Go read it! Beg borrow, or steal.
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