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This thread is to talk about China Miéville and his novels, whether you liked them (whoo, cool monsters!) or didn't (rar stupid politics!). "Tolkien was in it for the languages. I'm in it for the monsters." China Miéville (wikipedia) is a British bloke with an odd name (his parents chose it because it's Cockney slang for "mate"), who writes books which have been categorised in genres such as fantasy, sci-fi, steampunk, biopunk and "new weird". His books all carry a political undertone, which some might say is a bit blunt and unnecessary. Miéville is an outspoken socialist and has written many articles (as well as his PhD, which has been published) on socialism. Feel free to discuss the man's politics in this thread, but I'll dedicate the OP to his fiction. Here are his fictional works: - King Rat (1998) - Perdido Street Station (2000) - The Scar (2002) - Iron Council (2004) - Looking For Jake (2005) - a short story collection, mainly urban fantasy and horror - Un Lun Dun (2007) - his first young adult novel - The City & the City (2009) - Kraken (2010) - "I can has squid back?" - Embassytown (2011) - "A quirk of psyche and phonetics." - Railsea (2012) - & young adult, & awesome - Three Moments of an Explosion: Stories (2015) - 28 new short stories! - This Census Taker (2016) - a standalone novella - The Last Days of New Paris (2016) - alt-history weirdness  ----- THE BAS-LAG BOOKS Miéville's main series of novels are the Bas-Lag novels, outlined below. Two of them are set in/around New Crobuzon (a city-state in the world of Bas-Lag), and the other is set on the open ocean, but the plot events heavily involve the city. The city is huge, dense, grimy, ugly, and under the rule of a fascist government. It is filled with all sorts of bizarre creatures: - Khepri, a race whose sentient members are the females. They have heads shaped like scarab beetles, and are a race of accomplished artists. The males, however, are mindless beetles. - Cactacae, a race of humanoid cacti with skin, muscle, bones and organs made of vegetable tissue instead of meat. They mostly live in New Crobuzon's Glasshouse. - Garuda, birdmen from the desert who have bizarre laws and don't like people or cities much. - And of course humans, who come in many flavours themselves. One notable kind are the Remade: criminals who have been punished for their crimes by having their bodies gruesomely modified and appended with strange animal- or machine-parts. These are the main races in the books, but Miéville's imagination is endless and throughout the novels you'll meet multitudes of strange and unique creatures. A lot of people like to label Miéville's world a steampunk world, but it's not so easy to categorise. It is a world which was once far more technologically advanced – but the modern residents simply have forgotten how to use a lot of the technology, so it all sits around rusting and falling apart. Bas-Lag has reverted to a somewhat Victorian-like era, with coal-powered industry, clockwork and so on. In place of more advanced technology are a large range of magical skills (called "thaumaturgy") - these include: - golemetry (making inanimate objects animate themselves, IE golems), - elementarii (raising demons of the elements), - watercraeft (one race, the Vodyanoi, can manipulate water), and many weirder things that go beyond comprehension (see, for example, the grindylow's "puissance", Tesh's "haints", rockmilk drilled from the earth by oil rigs, Uther Doul's "possibility sword", etc). One of the more frightening forces in Bas-Lag is Torque, which can be described as a cancer of reality. It is unpredictable and uncontrollable, and some of the most unsettling things alluded to in Miéville's world are the products of Torque. I will now attempt to summarise the plots (with as few spoilers as possible) of the three Bas-Lag novels, in 100 words or less each: PERDIDO STREET STATION (wikipedia link) Eccentric New Crobuzon scientist Isaac, obsessed with crisis energy and curious beasties. He is commissioned to restore flight to a dewinged garuda, Yagharek. While studying every kind of animal which can fly, accidentally releases an exotic monster into the city: a nightmare-inducing, brain-sucking, prey-hypnotising, giant moth. Isaac, Yagharek and friends (bug-headed girlfriend Lin, shifty criminal Lemuel and lesbian seditionist-newspaper-editor Derkhan) aim to save the city while escaping the mob and the fascist military; they are helped out by a poetic, multidimensional spider god and a garbage-built, artificially intelligent hive-mind. THE SCAR (wikipedia link) Bellis Coldwine, fugitive linguist, escapes New Crobuzon on ship carrying prisoners, scientists and sundry. Ship is captured by pirates, passengers press-ganged into life aboard Armada, a floating city of boats. Bellis becomes aware of a plan by Armada's leaders to raise a leviathan sea monster, and to find the mythical Scar, a tear in the fabric of the universe where possibilities merge and ultimate power can be drawn. Complications include full-on war with New Crobuzon's mighty navy, attacks by the relentlessly violent grindylow, a detour to an island populated by horrific mosquito-women, and Armadan civil uprising. IRON COUNCIL (wikipedia link) Brutally oppressed railway workers hijack a train (and its rails) and break free of New Crobuzon's rule, disappearing into the desert. One of these revolutionists, Judah Low, a gifted golemist, returns to New Crobuzon to spread the message of the "Iron Council". Years later, war breaks out with Tesh (city of witches), and seditionist groups grow stealthily in New Crobuzon. One day Judah disappears to rejoin the train - his former (gay) lover Cutter goes in search of Judah and the Iron Council, he and his party travel across bizarre landscapes and fight many weird creatures. Meanwhile in the city, youngster Ori joins a militant rebel group whose mission is to assassinate the mayor and bring about revolution. Tesh begins to unleash its surreal attacks, the peasants revolt, and things go to hell. (Okay the last one went longer than 100 words, but I don't give a gently caress) The books are all stand-alone stories, so you can read them in any order, but it probably would help to read Perdido Street Station before Iron Council, because you really get a feel for New Crobuzon's layout in the former, while the latter doesn't really describe the city much at all.  ----- Here's the basics of his other books: THE LONDON BOOKS King Rat is a Gaiman-esque urban fantasy involving animal gods and drum n' bass music. It's basically a modern retelling of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. It's not his best book. Looking For Jake is his first short story collection, leaning heavily towards horror with some other genres in the mix. Concludes with a novella called The Tain which is like 28 Days Later with vampires instead of zombies. All but a couple of the stories are set in London. There's also one short story set in Bas-Lag. Un Lun Dun is his first book for young adults, and is about an alternate version of London where everything is wacky! China illustrated the book himself, and it's quite cool. Kraken is about the magical underworld of cults and witches and what-have-you in London. It's kind of like a dark version of Terry Pratchett, or a grittier Neil Gaiman. An apocalyptic novel, but also very funny. OTHER BOOKS The City & the City is a murder mystery set in two very strange cities. To even describe what is strange about them would be to spoil the incredibly cool premise of the book. The setting is our world, modern day, somewhere in Eastern Europe; but there is a definite sci-fi slant to it. This is the novel that really gained the attention of the wider literary world and nabbed China a poo poo-ton of awards. Embassytown is planetary science fiction, mashed up with colonial literature, lingual exploration and zombie apocalypse. -----  Now, discuss away! edit: stupid ugly retard posted:China meiville does it ok. One time a dude almost has sex witha retarded girl with a beetle for a head and another time he talk about how hard it is to gently caress a chick bolted to a steam engine Hedrigall fucked around with this message at 13:32 on Nov 6, 2015 |
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Oct 27, 2008 14:27
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 LATEST NEWS Two new books in 2016! 1 — This Census Taker (novella) - January 5th 2016 (US), February 25th 2016 (UK) quote:In a remote house on a hilltop, a lonely boy witnesses a profoundly traumatic event. He tries - and fails - to flee. Left alone with his increasingly deranged parent, he dreams of safety, of joining the other children in the town below, of escape. 2 — The Last Days of New Paris - date unknown, 2016 quote:THE LAST DAYS OF NEW PARIS is an intense and gripping tale set in an alternative universe: June 1940 following Paris’ fall to the Germans, the villa of Air-Bel in Marsailles, is filled with Trotskyists, anti-fascists, exiled artists, and surrealists. One Air-Bel dissident decides the best way to fight the Nazis is to construct a surrealist bomb. When the bomb is accidentally detonated, surrealist Cataclysm sweeps Paris and transforms it according to a violent, weaponized dream logic. ------------------------- Note for those reading from the start of the thread now: This news section was originally about the announcement The City & the City, so the replies below are talking about that. It's like being in a time machine to the year 2008! Woooo~ Hedrigall fucked around with this message at 13:38 on Nov 6, 2015 |
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Oct 27, 2008 14:28
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Ballsworthy posted:Aw poo poo, you just made my muthafuckin' day. Both, I think. More info here: http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780345497512 Here's something interesting: Edward Miller (pseudonym of artist Les Edwards) painted the cover for the first two Bas-Lag novels, but inexplicably the publisher used some generic stock photography for Iron Council's cover. Here's what Edward Miller's version would have looked like:  I hope they rerelease the book someday with this artwork. Hedrigall fucked around with this message at 16:57 on Oct 27, 2008 |
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Oct 27, 2008 16:50
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onefish posted:Oh man, do I ever love Mieville and Bas-Lag. All three are among my favorite fantasy novels. Hey, if anyone ever finds out any info on The City & the City, be sure to come here and post about it, 'kay? No worries, I'll be updating the first reply to this post with all the new book news, for as long as this thread survives. Literally next to nothing is known right now, besides the title, publisher, page count (416) and release date. If you're hankering for some recent Miéville stuff, he's done a couple of good interviews this year. Check them out here.
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Oct 28, 2008 01:59
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Ballsworthy posted:Anyone read Un Lun Dun? I haven't gotten to it yet, but I told my mom to read it; she's a childrens' librarian and hardly ever reads anything beyond YA these days. Anyway, she loved the poo poo out of it, and actually wants to read some of his adult novels, which is a pretty big deal for her. Yeah, it's great. Rather Gaiman-esque, but China has stated Neil Gaiman as a friend and influence for Un Lun Dun. The book is funny and completely chock-full of China's insane creature ideas. Of course there's an underlying political message, but it's toned down much more than in the Bas-Lag novels. Overall the book is a whole heap of fun, and very refreshing, because it messes around with a lot of the tired clichés of fantasy.
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Oct 28, 2008 02:01
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Terrifying Effigies posted:I was reading Hal Duncan's Vellum recently and it reminded me a lot of Mieville's style, particularly the descriptions of Reynard wandering the deserted multiverse. I was pretty sick at the time so I wasn't able to keep track of some of the non-linear storylines though, I'll have to reread it before moving to Ink. I started Vellum but couldn't get more than about 40 pages into it. The modern-day sections were good, but I got lost in the "fantasy" sections with the more archaic writing style. I guess one day I'll take a crack at it again. A book that has been hugely praised, and apparently is similar to Miéville's work, is The Etched City by Australian author KJ Bishop. I've heard it's like a mix between Bas-Lag and the Dark Tower series, with its "weird western" setting and odd creatures. I'm gonna read it after my exams. Hedrigall fucked around with this message at 04:25 on Oct 28, 2008 |
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Oct 28, 2008 04:17
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Ballsworthy posted:He's so tight-lipped about that sort of thing, we'll find out for certain that he's stopping Bas-Lag when he dies and not one second before. It's not quite so bad as that. He said he'd definitely return to Bas-Lag, he was just going to take a break for a few books. First we got Un Lun Dun, now The City & the City, and possibly in the near future we'll get Kraken, if it exists. He'll return to Bas-Lag eventually. Eejit posted:The Scar was really a great book and much better than Perdido. Perdido was interesting, but not as captivating. I guess that I felt that in the case of Perdido, the book tended too overtly towards a thought experiment and so it felt more like you were reading one of Mieville's papers on speculative fiction wherein he loosely tied the presentation of his ideas together with narrative. Not that it wasn't still cool, but it didn't make for as engaging of a read as The Scar. PSS is my least favourite of the Bas-Lag novels. Whenever I read The Scar, it becomes my favourite, and whenever I read Iron Council, it becomes my favourite instead. Possibly because I find the ocean/arid-wilderness much more interesting settings than a city. Eejit posted:Also, how about the Anophelii, the mosquito people. I thought that they were a really awesome invention since it just comes straight out of left-field. The coolest part about them is how the male half of the race is incredibly brilliant, but the female part of the race is all animal and violent, barely sentient. My favourite thing about the Anophelii is all the little things we don't know about them. For example, we know they're kept prisoner on the island because of a time in history when they enslaved the world ("Malarial queendom"), but as for what exactly happened we don't really know. I love that about China Miéville. He mentions so many intriguing little notes about Bas-Lag's history and geography then jumps right back to the story, leaving us wondering. Examples: the pirate wars, that city with the casino parliament, the "limb-farms" in the grindylow's city, and so on. I can't wait until he writes an encyclopedia of Bas-Lag. (He's mentioned that in the past)
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Oct 29, 2008 00:03
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Ballsworthy posted:Things I don't like about the books: For Iron Council, the first time I read the book the Anamnesis section brought me to a grinding halt, and it took me maybe a month to get back into the book. Plus, my brother told me they were going to the Cacotopic Stain, so I was sorta skimming sections to get to that quicker. I think that would be my only complaint about IC: the "Stain" chapter is far too short, and a bit of a let down after the build up about it in PSS. But I reread IC this year, took my time, and loved every bit of it. There is so much depth, the entire book is just sublime. It's hard to think of my favourite part of the book, there are too many: Cutter's initial journey to find Judah, the elementarii battle, the scenes with Weather Wrightby (an awesome villain, even though he only appears in two scenes), the scene with Toro and Ori in the Mayor's mansion, and so on. Judah's back story is an amazing novella that could have been published on its own - it alone has so many amazing moments, from the track-side revolt, to his time as a servant for that rich gambling guy, and his stint as a golem battler at New Crobuzon University. (An aside: did anyone think that, when the militia who had followed the Iron Council across Bas-Lag, through the Stain and all, finally caught up to the train, the leader of their unit would be that university student whom Judah initially starts the golem-battling business, and who eventually goes to make golems for the New Crobuzon parliament? 'Cause I did.) PSS, for me, is the most flawed book. There's the lack of a satisfying ending (sure, they defeat the slake moths but Lin is left a vegetable, Yag is abandoned without flight, Isaac and Derkhan become fugitives, it's all so bleak) - and while you could say the other two books also end bleakly, the endings in those still feel appropriate and satisfying, to me at least. There's also the clumsiness of describing crisis energy, which is basically China throwing a whole bunch of scientific-sounding sentences at us. And, Lin's plot doesn't really go anywhere except her ending up a drooling idiot. She really only serves the story by giving Isaac something else to worry about, on top of the slake moths, the militia, and so on. If they made a movie of PSS, I think her subplot would have to go. On another topic: You know, even for all the creepy bug sex and gross monsters and all that, the thing that squicks me out the most when I read PSS is when Vermishank is eating the soup. He's just dunking bread in the bowl and sucking on the bread, over and over. 
Hedrigall fucked around with this message at 02:07 on Oct 29, 2008 |
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Oct 29, 2008 01:55
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Chenghiz posted:Mieville creates a pretty awesome setting, but PSS was not very well written, all told. It was encouraging to see the significant improvement with The Scar, and though I haven't read it I hear Iron Council shows improvement too. Iron Council is exceptionally well written, but Miéville does change the writing style deliberately, to make it more sparse, and uses more archaic words. Some people didn't like that. Apparently he was influenced by Cormac McCarthy's style. (However the sections of the book set in New Crobuzon are slightly more conventionally written)
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Oct 30, 2008 00:56
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New book info! Are you bitches and hos ready for a blurb? When the body of a murdered woman is found in the extraordinary, decaying city of Bes el, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks like a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlu of the Extreme Crime Squad. But as he probes, the evidence begins to point to conspiracies far stranger, and more deadly, than anything he could have imagined. Soon his work puts him and those he cares for in danger. Borlu must travel to the only metropolis on Earth as strange as his own, across a border like no other. With shades of Kafka and Philip K. Dick, Raymond Chandler and 1984 , "The City & The City" is a murder mystery taken to dazzling metaphysical and artistic heights.
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Oct 30, 2008 23:56
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mcustic posted:
Blame Amazon.co.uk V  V
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Oct 31, 2008 00:25
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That blurb is exceptionally badly written.
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For fans of badly written blurbs, here's a slightly more detailed blurb for the new book:blurbaroonie posted:China Miéville's new novel is an existential thriller set in a city unlike any other, real or imagined. Seriously, that's loving painful to read, but the story sounds fantastic. I'm counting the days until May... Hedrigall fucked around with this message at 11:17 on Nov 18, 2008 |
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Nov 18, 2008 11:15
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Mrs. Badcrumble posted:Sounds great, I hope it won't be another several years until his next book after this one is published. I'm hoping he's secretly had another Bas-Lag book in the works and he'll announce it soon after this book is out.
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Nov 21, 2008 20:32
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New cover art, courtesy of Amazon.co.uk!
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Dec 2, 2008 00:09
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Pious Pete posted:Is "Looking For Jake" worthwhile? I've enjoyed Perdido, The Scar, and Iron Council so far. Absolutely. Some of the stories are amazing. My favourites are the titular story and Reports Of Certain Events In London, which is told in a really unique way. cult_hero posted:On amazon.com there's a reference to a book called "leviathan" and I remember seeing mention of a title for "Kraken" coming out in 2010 on some webpage or other. It's doubtful if these are actual titles, but perhaps there's a revisit to Armada in the works? Leviathan is the French title for The Scar, and Kraken was a rumour that Miéville has confirmed never was a book title.
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Dec 2, 2008 21:11
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Turpitude posted:Woah, when is Spiral mentioned in The Scar? I missed that one apparently!! IIRC, Tanner Sack mentions buying drinks for Sprial Jacobs back in New Crobuzon. Can't remember what part of the book.
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Dec 3, 2008 08:56
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MinionOfCthulhu posted:(By the way, for you RPG nerds out there, the world of Bas-Lag was featured in issue #352 of Dragon magazine with input from Miéville himself. Really nice artwork, stats for the races and monsters, a nice explanation of the world and the city, and they even stat up the Possible Sword.) I had a PDF of that issue, but I lost it when my hard drive crashed. Anyway, Adamant Entertainment is releasing "Tales of New Crobuzon" next autumn (N. Hemis.). Their news page doesn't have much info though... Adamant Entertainment posted:Fall 2009 will see the release of Tales of New Crobuzon our role-playing game based on the works of China Mieville. We'll be partnering with Cubicle 7 Entertainment on this one, with Adamant handling development and design, and Cubicle 7 handing distribution to the hobby and book trade. Edit: a press release from a while back: press release posted:Adamant Entertainment has reached an agreement with award-winning author China Miéville to license his fantasy setting of Bas-lag, which featured in the novels Perdido Street Station, The Scar and Iron Council. Adamant Entertainment will publish a roleplaying game that will allow fans of the series to have their own adventures in the city of New Crobuzon. Subsequent game books will continue to explore the setting and characters of the world of Bas-lag.
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Dec 14, 2008 13:04
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US cover art is here! It's pretty much the same as the UK version but blue instead of red? Go figure. Only 4 months to go! 
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Jan 22, 2009 01:57
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Casimir Radon posted:How overt is it? don't listen to the whiney bitchers, it's only really in the foreground in Iron Council, and even then it's treated critically, with many of the flaws of revolution being addressed.
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Jan 23, 2009 00:45
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SaviourX posted:Haven't read The Scar yet, and I'm holding off for a while Dude, don't hold off, read it now! The Scar is an amazing loving novel. I'm going to read it for the third time sometime in the new couple of weeks.
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Jan 23, 2009 09:42
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Thanks Z! On the subject of the Iron Council ending... I love it, all of it, but I've always been confused as to what exactly happens to Spiral Jacobs and his haints. The gender-ambiguous priest whose name I forget (Quaraban?) asks the Moment something, then says something to Jacobs and suddenly it's all over. I've read that scene three times and I can't follow it. Anyone have any thoughts?
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Feb 23, 2009 08:15
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oh holy loving poo poo I am so jealous! Don't spoil anything, but, what's the fantasy aspect like? Is it weird and twisted like Bas-Lag, or more Gaiman-esque like King Rat and Un Lun Dun?
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Feb 23, 2009 12:39
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Well The City & The City comes out this week, in the UK at least. US should get it soon and Australian bookstores will only have the UK imported version until July - so it'll be expensive. I'm going to buy it online myself, it'll be much cheaper. Also, at the end of this month audiobooks of Perdido Street Station and the new book are coming out. Pretty sure they'll be download-only ones. Finally, I read an interview with Mieville's editor recently, where he/she said that Mieville handed in two manuscripts at once, and The City & The City is the first of those to be published. Apparently the other one is a fantasy story they'd been expecting from him. A new Bas-Lag book maybe?
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May 14, 2009 01:42
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Oasx posted:I dont think it was mentioned but Dragon (the Dungeons and Dragons magazine) did a Bas-Lag special some years back, it is probably of most interest if you are interested in D&D, but it had some nice art and a talk with Miéville himself. I think the ending is what makes an already-amazing adventure/horror/pirate story into a mindblowing one.
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May 20, 2009 13:05
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But Mieville himself saysChina Mieville posted:This is what happens in a world of rumor. I never talk about work in progress, and then the next thing you know some hint gets released, some misunderstanding generalizes, some whisper fractals, and then Amazon is trying to sell a non-existent book. My position is as follows: Kraken may or may not exist. If it does, it may or may not be called Kraken. Whether it exists and whatever it's called, it may or may not be out next year or the one after or another time. Sorry to be a pain! That's from this interview. Here is the one (blog post, not an interview) by his editor/agent/whoever, which mentions two manuscripts. Bolded the best parts: person posted:I shouldn’t admit this, but I am always a little surprised when an author meets a due date. Being a good writer requires a lot of thinking and planning, and those acts are often indistinguishable from their unruly stepcousin procrastination. So it should be no surprise that writers are late with their work sometimes. Hedrigall fucked around with this message at 23:50 on May 20, 2009 |
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May 20, 2009 23:47
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Mine's coming in the mail soon. I probably won't get to read it until after my exams though.
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May 26, 2009 22:06
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queenoffarts.edu posted:Iron Council (and I'm probably in the minority) I thought was his best I agree with you, Iron Council is his best (haven't read City & the City yet but I got it in the mail today!)
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May 31, 2009 08:56
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SaviourX posted:Well yeah, it just takes them a gently caress of a long time to get anywhere, thus deliberately going through smokestone and the Torque; they also have a bunch of remade working day and night. I see it as about a mile of track, and they crawl about a mile an hour. Weather Wrightby is one of my favourite antagonists of the Bas-Lag books. He's only in like 3 scenes of Iron Council (plus he has the awesome prologue) but he's just so bad-rear end. I hear his voice as Daniel Day Lewis's character in There Will Be Blood.
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Jun 2, 2009 07:53
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Grimfate posted:I went to the signing on Tuesday, and it was a cool experience. We did had a few slimy nerds ask some retarded non-questions though. China mentioned that he has no plans to write another bas-lag story unless he is certain he can top iron council, which he considers his best work so far, and that he was worried of running the series into the ground, and would prefer it to be unfinished than overdone. drat. But he's right, Iron Council was loving brilliant and it will take a mother of a story to outdo that.
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Jun 11, 2009 06:23
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http://www.goodreads.com/interviews/show/38.China_Mi_ville?utm_medium=email&utm_source=Jun_newsletterChina Mieville posted:I'm doing a bit of last editing on a manuscript that is much more like the more baroque stuff in the Bas Lag books, and then I have a couple of texts that are in a slightly less completed phase. There's a couple of young-adult things I'm thinking about, and some stuff about ghosts, and an early version of a Bas Lag book. And some nonfiction, some literary criticism on early Weird Fiction stuff.  Still halfway through TC&TC myself. Stupid exams taking up all my time.
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Jun 21, 2009 18:09
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Just finished TC&TC, I liked it. People here are saying that it turned out there were no supernatural elements at all, but i'd like to know how Breach knows even when you simply look at something in the other city. Clearly Breach has some sort of power that goes unexplained. Did anyone else get Dark City vibes at points during the book? They would've been a lot stronger if Orciny turned out to be real but the general conspiratorial tone of the book and the urban weirdness gave me those feelings a lot. I want to watch that movie now 
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Jul 6, 2009 17:59
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NEW BOOK http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780345497499 Kraken exists, and it's going to be published in May 2010. That's the second new China Miéville novel in the span of a year! Hopefully a Bas-Lag story will follow this one.
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Sep 5, 2009 13:58
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adamarama posted:Woah, I didn't realise there was a thread. I just finished Perdido St Station, on the recommendation of a friend. Very surreal, the guy has one hell of an imagination. Really enjoyed it though, hoping to get into more of his stuff again shortly. You're gonna love the other two Bas-Lag books. Read them ASAP and report back here with your thoughts. At the moment I'm on my third "read" of PSS - not really a read though as I'm listening to the audiobook this time around. It's really well narrated, and whoever does it does excellent character voices too (especially for Yagherek: that particular bit of voice acting is a feat in itself). The only thing is some of the pronounciations are a bit weird. For example, the dude says Bas-Lag as "Bah-lag", whereas I swear I've heard China say it "Baz-lag" before. And also he pronounces Isaac's last name "Grim-neh-BOO-lin" rather than "Grim-NEB-you-lin", which I thought was the obvious pronounciation.
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Sep 7, 2009 09:31
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The John Bull posted:I just finished rereading Perdido Street Station, and noticed something; The Runagate Rampant and others talk about the 'Eyespy Killer', who kills poor people, gouges out their eyes, and then dumps them in the river. This is what eventually happens to Ben Flex; after he is captured by the Militia and tortured, his body turns up without the eyes, and the Eyespy Killer has struck again. Then later on, when the Mayor makes the agreement with the Handlingers about trying to hunt down the moths, Stem-Fulcher asks Rudgutter how his eyes are doing. "Going," he said sadly. "We just can't solve the problem of rejection. It's about time for a fresh set". Obviously, Rudgutter / the Militia is behind the Eyespy murders, but I don't remember seeing anything in reference to it elsewhere. Did I miss something, or is this another thing put in to enforce the weirdness of the world and the brutality of New Crobuzon? Yeah it's quite carefully hinted at that Rudgutter is the killer. Pretty clever little detail
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Sep 14, 2009 22:46
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SaviourX posted:gently caress yes, just got City and the City from the liberry. That's true for Iron Council maybe, but The Scar you can read with no knowledge whatsoever of New Crobuzon. It was the first Bas-Lag book I read.
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Oct 9, 2009 03:40
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Aussie Crawl posted:Prepare to be disappointed. Dont listen to this dude ^^^^^ It was a good book. It was just no Scar/Iron Council. Here's some content: the Czech cover for TC&TC:  Again it's done by Edward Miller, who did the British PSS & Scar covers. Check out a gallery of his book covers here: http://www.laser-books.cz/neweird.html Anyway I can't wait until after my exams are over. I'm going to read the Scar again
Hedrigall fucked around with this message at 12:38 on Oct 11, 2009 |
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Oct 11, 2009 12:34
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Also if any mod reads this could they please append the thread title as so: "China Miéville/Bas-Lag megathread: Kraken coming 7 May 2010!" Thanks in advance
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Oct 11, 2009 13:19
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Crisco Kid posted:I just finished The Scar, then immediately went out and bought three more copies as gifts. I've been listening to "I'm On A Boat" ever since. Such a loving awesome book. Hence my username Another song which always reminds me of The Scar is Mosquito Song by Queens of the Stone Age. Listen to it here, it suits the Anophelii island sequence perfectly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiLsvRSU5H8
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Oct 24, 2009 08:24
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Are you motherfuckers ready for a blurb? The Natural History Museum's prize exhibit - a giant squid - suddenly disappears. This audacious theft leads Clem, the research scientist who has recently finished preserving the exhibit, into a dark urban underworld of warring cults and surreal magic. It seems that for some, the squid represents a god and should be worshiped as such. Clem gradually comes to realise that someone may be attempting to use the squid to trigger an apocalypse. And so it is now up to him and a renegade squid-worshiper named Dean to find a way of stopping the destruction of the world as they know it whilst themselves surviving the all out-gang warfare that they have unwittingly been drawn into...
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Oct 27, 2009 00:12
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RoboCicero posted:Hell yeah! I was sort of disappointed when, in The City and The City, Orciny didn't show up, so I'm ready for some Dark Magic and Terrifying Machinations. I recall vaguely that he mentioned how he wanted to do a different genre with each successive book -- what's this one going to be? Lovecraftian horror by the sound of it!
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Oct 27, 2009 10:29
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