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ConfusedUs posted:Picked up The Scar. Read the intro. Oh man you are going to loving love, and be terrified by, the rest of the book. I'm envious of you  I should read it again soon.
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Sep 12, 2011 02:34
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The blog Nerd Redefined has done a running commentary/re-read of the three Bas-Lag novels. They're pretty cool discussions of the books, offering a bit more than the average review. Because the blog itself provides no index of these posts, I dug through their archives to come up with my own index (mainly for my own benefit, so I can find these posts easily later): The Bas-Lag Reading Project PERDIDO STREET STATION Commissions Physiognomies Of Flight Metamorphosis A Plague Of Nightmares The Construct Council The Glasshouse Crisis Judgement THE SCAR Channels Salt The Compass Factory Blood Storms Morning Walker Lookout IRON COUNCIL Trappings Returns Wine Land Anamnesis - The Perpetual Train The Hainting Retread The Caucus Race The Stain The Remaking Sound And Light/The Monument I'll put this in the post-below-the-OP as well. Check it out if you guys are interested!
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Sep 12, 2011 08:19
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Triple postin' to bring you all the China Miéville news. There are some new audiobooks available! http://www.audible.co.uk/search?searchAuthor=China+Mieville The Embassytown and TC&TC ones are the same as what's been released before, but the Perdido Street Station is a new version, narrated by Jonathan Oliver (the first was done by John Lee). Furthermore there are now audiobooks of The Scar and Iron Council!! gently caress, I may have to sign up to Audible for these...
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Sep 13, 2011 13:46
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I'm currently reading Alistair Reyonlds' Chasm City and it feels like I'm reading Mieville.
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Sep 13, 2011 13:55
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Hedrigall posted:I'll put this in the post-below-the-OP as well. Check it out if you guys are interested! I don't read enough literary criticism/discussion to know how this stacks up against the average, but he missed the point by a mile about Yag at the end of PSS. Crying about how Yag choosing to be human is species-ist, and implies that humans are better than garuda, etc. No, the point is that Yag is a piss-poor Garuda, he is too too abstract, he doesn't have wings, in spite of his punishment and exile he persists in non-concrete behavior. However, he is as illustrated by the events in the book, a reasonably good human. By the standards of his culture/race, he is as bad as he can possibly be and continues to be so throughout the book. By the standards of (dissident) human culture, he is a big drat hero. So, rather than continue to be a bad Garuda, he becomes a good-ish human. It isn't better to be human, it is just as a non-flying, abstract, self-concerned, exile, he is proficiant at it. Yag is unacceptable in one community, and acceptable in another. If I had to assign 'goodness' related to species, we know a lot more about what a crapsack place human New Corbuzon is. Slo-Tek fucked around with this message at 16:35 on Sep 13, 2011 |
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Sep 13, 2011 15:41
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Junkenstein posted:I'm currently reading Alistair Reyonlds' Chasm City and it feels like I'm reading Mieville. I've heard tons of good things about that book, but this may be the one that gets me to read it.
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Sep 13, 2011 17:18
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Hedrigall posted:Furthermore there are now audiobooks of The Scar and Iron Council!! gently caress, I may have to sign up to Audible for these... Awesome news! Thanks! Going to get The Scar immediately. But I don't want to hear a PSS without John Lee's Yagharek voice. gently caress that. I've been rereading Felix Gilman's The Half-Made World. It's a Weird Western, pretty enjoyable, definitely Miéville-ian in places. In other China news, he just handed in the second draft of his new YA novel this week. It's not set in the world of Un Lun Dun.
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Sep 24, 2011 05:10
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nixar55 posted:Awesome news! Thanks! Going to get The Scar immediately. But I don't want to hear a PSS without John Lee's Yagharek voice. gently caress that. Yeah Yag was pretty amazing in that audio production. He really nailed the "human language from a creature without vocal chords" thing. The Half-Made World is on my Bookdepository wishlist, I might order that soon! And where did you hear about the second draft handed in?
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Sep 24, 2011 05:20
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I just read Ted Chiang's short story "Story Of Your Life", and I strongly recommend it to anyone who enjoyed Embassytown. It's an utterly mindbending story about communicating with aliens. Brilliant and moving.
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Sep 24, 2011 15:04
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Finished The Scar. I didn't find it as scary or anywhere near as good as PSS. It just sort of ended.
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Sep 24, 2011 16:17
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ConfusedUs posted:Finished The Scar. I didn't find it as scary or anywhere near as good as PSS. It just sort of ended. I finished it recently as well and I definitely enjoyed it, but PSS had much more impact, I agree. I was OK with The Scars ending. I don't know what will happen to the characters and I don't see that as a bad thing. Although a direct sequel someday might be nice...
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Sep 26, 2011 21:05
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http://www.scifinow.co.uk/blog/free-china-mieville-audio-book/ Free China Miéville audiobook! It's Iron Council. First the terms and conditions: "You will need to create an Audible account to claim your free audiobook. You will not be asked for any billing details and there are no hidden costs - this audiobook is Audible's free gift to you. One download of Iron Council audiobook available for every SciFiNow reader. This free download offer is available to SciFiNow readers until 10th October 2011 at 11.59pm." I wonder if my ollllld Audible account is still active. If you don't have one, it's very quick to sign up, and you can turn off all the email newsletters and similar junk in your account settings. So I can't think of any drawbacks! Except, I've listened to the samples of The Scar and Iron Council and the narrator is utterly poo poo. But it's free, so oh well. Hedrigall fucked around with this message at 12:32 on Sep 27, 2011 |
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Sep 27, 2011 12:25
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quote:We're sorry. Due to publishing rights restrictions, we are not authorized to sell this item in the country where you live. 
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Sep 27, 2011 15:24
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Oh that sucks But if you're in the US and you're getting that, it probably means that Random House are going to do their own versions of the audiobooks, which bodes well for a better narrator than the UK versions. They might even get, shock horror, a female narrator for The Scar!
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Sep 27, 2011 15:27
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The podcast "To the best of our knowledge" just had an episode where Mieville talks a bit about Emabssytown. It's brief, but I found it pretty interesting.
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Sep 30, 2011 01:33
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I've only read King Rat and Perdido Street Station so far. Both were fairly enjoyable, and it was pretty obvious his writing improved in the latter. I'm going on a trip and will have time to either read The City & The City or The Scar. I can't decide ;( I've seen good praise for both except on this latest page where someone said The Scar was okay. edit: Decided on The Scar, seems like it has more goon praise, and Bas-Lag is 
lokk fucked around with this message at 06:51 on Oct 2, 2011 |
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Oct 1, 2011 18:49
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lokk posted:I've only read King Rat and Perdido Street Station so far. Both were fairly enjoyable, and it was pretty obvious his writing improved in the latter. I'm going on a trip and will have time to either read The City & The City or The Scar. I can't decide ;( I've seen good praise for both except on this latest page where someone said The Scar was okay. Glad you decided that, I loving love it. I don't know why that poster above ended up ambivalent towards it. I'm on my fourth read-through now. I've decided to do a chapter-by-chapter blogging thing as I read it. About time I put something else on my blog apart from my Embassytown review. I don't recommend you read my blog if you're reading The Scar for the first time, as they might have spoilers for later stuff in the book. But for anyone who's read The Scar already you can check it out here if you want: http://outtherebooks.wordpress.com/
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Oct 2, 2011 14:32
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TouretteDog posted:The podcast "To the best of our knowledge" just had an episode where Mieville talks a bit about Emabssytown. It's brief, but I found it pretty interesting. Cool interview. Thanks for posting it.
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Oct 5, 2011 03:30
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Perdido Street Station and The Scar were good. How come Iron Council is poo poo? Uhnn, please no more homosexual, socialism, anti-war bullshit, just explain what a llorgiss is for fucks sake. Edit: Oh cool at least I know what the Hotchi are now. Hedgehogs, huh? Ridin' giant chickens? Okay, sure man, sounds about right. Assumethisisreal fucked around with this message at 06:37 on Oct 21, 2011 |
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Oct 21, 2011 05:25
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Assumethisisreal posted:Perdido Street Station and The Scar were good. How come Iron Council is poo poo? Uhnn, please no more homosexual, socialism, anti-war bullshit, just explain what a llorgiss is for fucks sake. you know, i think that china miéville just might not be the author for you
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Oct 21, 2011 11:54
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Hedrigall posted:I just read Ted Chiang's short story "Story Of Your Life", and I strongly recommend it to anyone who enjoyed Embassytown. It's an utterly mindbending story about communicating with aliens. Brilliant and moving. Noricae fucked around with this message at 13:28 on Oct 21, 2011 |
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Oct 21, 2011 13:10
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Weremacht posted:you know, i think that china miéville just might not be the author for you I don't know, three out of four aint bad. I liked the first two bas-lag books, and Kraken was brilliant. It's just that Iron Council throws me headfirst into a story with a bunch of characters that I don't care about. I can hardly be expected to really care when they start dying left and right on their journey to find Judah, and I find their constant dialogue about how sad and tough things are annoying because they didn't even explain who Judah WAS at that point. Finally about about 100 pages they meet the guy, only to completely change the narrative to Ori, which is slightly more interesting. The book really only picked up steam about halfway through when I got to read Judah's backstory. But frankly, the book is just too overloaded with messages. I'm fully aware the other two bas-lag books had a lot of political and social commentary in them, but Iron Council is almost aggressively proselytizing about it. I mean, great, Cutter is gay. That's totally fine, I couldn't care less. However, Cutter won't SHUT UP about being gay. I'd be just as annoyed if he was straight and never stopped talking about having sex with women, however. The problem is that it's practically his only definable trait. Motherfucker must have harped on about being gay a dozen times in his 100 pages as the POV character. And while the whole #occupy subplot from PSS was interested, when its the focus of the book I find it a little dull. The Parliment comes of as the most ludicrously cartoonish fascists since it was in vogue to have Nazis as villains. At first I thought that was a real shame because the Caucus seemed like it at least had some potential. Eventually, though, I realized the Caucus only seemed that way at first but never really evolved past a disparate anarchist group. I don't know, I've got another sixty pages before I finish the book, so it's possible that the ending will somehow address all my problems, but I doubt it. LS;DR: Don't get me wrong, I voted against the war, and for workers rights and lbgt right, but IC is just so over saturated with he message I think it really hurt the story. I still want to know what a loving llorgiss is though 
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Oct 21, 2011 17:20
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I thought that IC was a failure from a storytelling perspective. I've listened to an interview with him recently and the interviewer asked him why does he think the readers generally prefer The Scar to Iron Council. His answer? "I have no idea why, the prose in IC is so much better than TS and I've made much improvement as a stylist between those two books and I have no idea why would someone pick TS over IC because the prose is better in the latter." Way to miss the point, dude.
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Oct 22, 2011 00:39
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On some level I really really like Iron Council because of the overall plot and the neat stuff with the uprising in New Crobuzon. However, I loathed most of the characters - Cutter being gay isn't an issue, his being just ridiculously needy does grate, however. Also, Judah is quite deserving of hatred for the way that he just makes all these executive decisions. You can tell China doesn't like him. You can tell he doesn't like any of them, really, or actually believe in their possibility of success. Iron Council has some hope in it, but it's a very, very bitter book. Most of the stuff China writes is. I love his stuff and the guy has more unique ideas in a page than most fantasy authors ever do. The very fact that the guy will go out there and write about a socialist uprising in a fantasy novel is something fresh, and certainly no more blatant (actually, a good deal less) than the pro-fascist or pro-medieval ideas that most fantasy novels kind of trot out just as a matter of course. The fact that the socialists in the book are a bunch of fuckups who can't get anything done reveals a lot of intellectual honesty on his part - he's willing to skewer his side, too. But I dunno, none of it really seemed that over the top to me, at least in comparison to other fantasy tropes. Like, a really really gay dude banging weird forest cannibals is a valid expression of a fantastical world too, just saying. My main issue with him is that he seems really devoted to the idea that everyone is, on some level, a son of a bitch. I get that and I'm not sure I entirely disagree, but it's hard to care about his characters and really invest in the outcome of the story when so many of them are just complete shitbirds.
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Oct 22, 2011 01:25
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That Rough Beast posted:Cutter being gay isn't an issue Cutter being so in-your-face gay that he has literally no other personality traits is an issue. I'm being serious. Think about Cutter. Try to tell me who he was, EXCEPT some gay dude that was in love with Judah. He never said a word about caring about the uprising except in the sense that he wanted Judah to succeed. After they met up with Judah and he stopped being a POV character, he had practically no lines, and just tagged along without saying anything. I know if makes me sound like an awful person, but goddamn, I sort of wish Cutter wasn't gay because I would have liked to know if had personality outside of his sexual orientation. Edit: I realize this is making me sound like I hate gays, and it is bumming me out. Edit: Think of it like this. If Cutter was a woman, what would you think about her? She would be a boring, one-dimensional slut. Assumethisisreal fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Oct 22, 2011 |
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Oct 22, 2011 01:57
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As a gay man, I enjoyed the perspective of a gay main character. From my view, it wasn't so much that he was a character defined by his gayness, so much as his utter and total devotion to Judah. I actually don't recall that much gay stuff, except for a few instances of sex and a small look into the New Cobruzon gay dating scene. Most of my memory of Cutter was him pining for Judah.
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Oct 22, 2011 11:52
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How was that a uniquely gay perspective on relationships, though? Judah could just as easily have been female, at which point the romance would've been rightly panned as a flat and unbelievable. Yet because they're gay it's edgy and we're supposed to give it a pass. I have no problems with Mieville using the narrative as a vessel for social commentary or political messages or just mucking about with what-ifs. I have problems with him sabotaging the narrative to do it. Iron Council just feels like a story well written but badly told. TC&TC is one of my favorite novels and I had fun with Bas-Lag (the setting more than the plot, though), but I didn't enjoy myself at any point during IC.
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Oct 22, 2011 12:16
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Iron Council is a really, really smartly written book on a thematic level, but for the folks who read his books mostly for the monsters I get why it's disappointing.
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Oct 22, 2011 12:18
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I dunno, it has the Stiltspear, the weird giant cacti, the Inchmen, the Proasme and all the other elementals, and a bunch of other wild stuff. I think I like it because it's the most travelogue-like of the books - you cover a lot of territory. But by the same token, I had some problems with it that are hard to pin down. As for Cutter, his relationship with Judah IS pretty pathetic, but I'm pretty sure it's intended to be. In that context you can view his behavior as being him acting out and being very needy but the gay stuff is just incidental. Like I said, I found him annoying, but his sexuality has nothing to do with that; if he were a woman or a man lusting after a woman he'd be just as bad. If I had to guess, China made him gay because it's rarely done and "gently caress it, why not?" I don't think it's fair to judge it as an attempt to deflect criticism. So I guess it's done deliberately, but like I said, that doesn't mean I can forgive the book its mistakes. I think China has contempt for both Judah and Cutter and it leaks through.
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Oct 22, 2011 23:11
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I think it works slightly better with both character's being the same sex. I think gender and sexuality within fantasy is really hard to get right because of the tropes of the genre, and of the genre's writers and readers. If it's a desperate man lusting after an aloof woman then it comes off as "huh, women! Always forgetting the nice guys ammirite?" It it's a desperate woman lusting after an aloof man then it comes off as "yeah, this is how I would make a fantasy world, turn the tables on them right? That'll show them!" By making both characters the same sex, you kind of avoid that. Like The Rough Beast said, I think the pathetic relationship is supposed to be ridiculous. Judah is aloof and uncaring and a bit of a sociopath, Cutter is desperate and affectionate and a little bit broken. They're both men, they're both capable of doing something most character's in the fictional world could never do Crossing the continent and coming home again.
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Oct 23, 2011 00:33
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As far as storytelling goes, the first 100 pages of IC are pretty much window dressing, and if you like worldbuilding that is a pretty awesome thing. Yes, Cutter is useless. He's a vehicle to get us to the point of the story that is interesting. The point 100 pages in. I didn't mind that on the first read through, but I probably will on the second. I didn't care that he was gay, I didn't care about him and his party much at all. They're just an RPG group rolling towards and inciting event. Normally in fantasy (and genre fiction), I have trouble considering characters anything other than vehicles; sometimes they become people, but most of the time they are ideas and and counterweights to the world around them, so IC was a pretty great book for me. The ideas worked, the failures worked, and the journey was neat on a literal and figurative level. The Scar is similar in many ways, but the prose is more accessible and it is almost a straightforward narrative, which is cool, but Uther and The Lovers (I have 50 pages to go, so I this might be wrong) don't really have any other reason to be themselves other than 'this is a great idea China had'. Also, fwiw The Scar moves at a dreadfully slow pace, despite some good worldbuilding and setpieces.
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Oct 26, 2011 20:14
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Here's a random and totally awesome drawing of a Host I found on Flickr: (Artist: http://www.flickr.com/photos/natsudesign/ )
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Oct 27, 2011 15:05
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They look nothing like i imagined, but then again i am usually bad at stuff like that. I just started reading Looking for Jake, it is really good, a little surprised that Miéville is so good at writing short stories, most authors dont seem to be good at both long and short stories.
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Oct 27, 2011 15:35
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So I finally got around to finishing Perdido Street Station after getting it interrupted with other books. The whole ending was very... convenient in how everything resolved. Not in a good way. In a very overtly Deus Ex Machina way that didn't make any sense. How did Half-a-Prayer find out what they were doing and just helped out there? He just did! How did the Garuda woman from like 10,000 miles away hear of the deal, how it was supposed to work, who was involved, and where to find them despite them being entirely in hiding and a much better funded mafia and military out to find them? She just did! Mieville is a very stylistically adept writer, and great at details, but he really struggles with the overall structure of the narratives at times. He writes himself into a corner, and then uses a hand-waved contrivance to pass through it. The City and the City did the same thing; great setting, great detail, very stylistically entertaining writing, but the overall structure was sort of stuck together by wire and even hard spaghetti in some places.
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Nov 9, 2011 23:51
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Yeah, there was an interview somewhere where he was asked about plotting and he was like 'oh yeah, I just have a wall of flowcharts, I really get into it,' and I was like 'no you don't.' Actually, it seems like he might do that every other book. He might chart out all the ideas and backstory, but in narrative terms, the plot itself will fall under itself half the time. Which, I mean, PSS is the most egregious of those I think, but most of the time the book itself is so good that something like that can almost be given a pass. Almost.
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Nov 10, 2011 19:35
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Nov 16, 2011 01:27
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It'll be a mix up of the best parts from The Scar and Iron Council (maybe).
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Nov 16, 2011 11:24
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Dunno why, but the cover looks YA to me. Is it YA?
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Nov 16, 2011 17:26
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Dunno why, but the cover looks YA to me. Is it YA? It's listed as YA, Sci-fi and also as not a Bas-Lag book. From here and the Wikipedia article on it.
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Nov 16, 2011 18:21
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I'm about to spend a couple of months overseas, and am thinking about getting the audiobook version of Perdido Street Station. Can anyone tell me how large it is? My ipod only has 8 gb of space (total, not available).
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Dec 9, 2011 09:17
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