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I just finished Perdido Street station and I'm working my way through The Scar. I enjoyed Perdido Street Station, but I find hands-down The Scar to be heads and above Perdido. I think over-all it's because I didn't really like any of the characters in Perdido but with The Scar I really have become emotionally invested in all of the characters plights. Especially Tanner who's remaking when he's on Armada is one of my favorite scenes so far in the book just because it's so graphic yet so well written. I did want to address my own thoughts on the ending of Perdido. I think that Issac's choice to not give Yagharek his flight back might not have been the happiest ending and a rather anti-climactic one, but it fits with the books extremely grim tone. To have a happy ending would have felt out of context with the rest of the story. Issac also makes his choice out of seeing what Lin went through at the hands of Motley and even though the female Garuda tells him that what she went through isn't the same as how he views rape, he still can't help by empathize through Lin. Secondly, the female Garuda tells him to please respect her people's judgment on Yagharek. Even though he didn't know what Yagharek had done, Issac's choice to agree to help him is what released the slack mouths in the first place. Intentional or not, Issac's caused enough damage to New Crobuzon. I'm not saying it's the perfect ending, but I see the logic that Mieville had when he wrote it.
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Jan 25, 2010 04:34
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 12:27 |
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Juuuuust finished The Scar last night, and yeah, it's THAT good. The BIG twist I did not expect was something so amazingly subtle who Bellis's letters were addressed to that it just made the book for me. How the twist was "resolved" at the epilogue was fantastic as well and really showed some key development for that character. Now to read the Iron Council, though I fear I'm going to be very under-whelmed after how much I loved The Scar.
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Jan 26, 2010 04:34
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I think The Scar works best when you don't think of it as the story of Armada , but rather the personal changes that Bellis goes through along her journey. That manages to turn the story from  into 
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Jan 31, 2010 05:31
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Sadly, as much as I raved about The Scar. I cannot get through IC. When I look back though, I think The Scar worked because it's character base was MUCH smaller then IC, which lead to an easier time to expand and develop them. With IC, I felt like Mieville was throwing the entire ensemble with a manic-like style, which of course lead me to not care about -anyone- in the book. Where as, in The Scar, I sincerely enjoyed and cared about all the characters.
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Feb 11, 2010 00:45
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soag.242 posted:Getting a major Pratchett vibe from this. Especially because I've described Mieville's Bas-Lag world as "Discworld meets Peter Jackson's Meet the Feebles" It takes the "Wow! This is my magical world filled with wonderious races and lands!" notion and fills it with violence, horror and lots and lots of poop.
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Feb 14, 2010 03:14
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So far I am very much liking this. Too bad it comes out in the states after it comes out in the UK. Oh well, that is what amazon.uk is for.
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Mar 17, 2010 02:49
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While we're on the subject of Bas-Lag fanart. 
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Jul 10, 2010 04:25
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I bought Kraken the day it came out and I STILL haven't finished it. I just simply can't stay interested in it at ALL. Which is weird when I remember starting The Scar on a flight from London to Los Angeles, reading the book the whole flight through, reading it on the shuttle home, getting home and finishing it that night.
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Sep 3, 2010 04:18
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My argument was always, while I feel that we're suppose to be amazed at what a bad-rear end Doul is.  Bellis is obviously written intentionally to be unlikable, which as someone else pointed out, is pretty normal of how Mieville writes his protagonists for the Bas-Lag books. That's why it's such a big deal that Bellis has all those letters that she hasn't written to anyone. I think I said this a few pages back, but when you think of The Scar as a personal journey for Bellis, the ending is a lot more fitting.
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Oct 27, 2010 18:19
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I couldn't get into Kraken either which is weird because I have loved everything else I've read from Mieville. There was something about the book that felt a tad too much like Neil Gaiman's "Neverwhere" where Oh ho ho! It turns out London is weird and kooky and YOU didn't realize it now did you??. On the other hand, I'm reading The City and The City and am loving it to bits, though The Scar is still my favorite book of his so far.
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Apr 12, 2011 04:56
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I ended up using Embassytown in my English class for our research paper. (the subject was "Read a book you've never read and write a thesis"). To get a bit spoiler here, my over-all thesis was that Humans regard the concept of lying to be an evil thing, but lies and the over-all concept of abstract thought are so important to how we communicate with one and other and perceive the world. To the point where it's not until the Arieki can learn to talk in metaphor that they can be free of their addiction from EzRa I got a 93 on it.  It also probably didn't hurt that I figured out how to get Word '07 to replicate the Arieki speech. Mucktron fucked around with this message at 01:24 on Dec 15, 2011 |
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Dec 15, 2011 01:21
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Hard Clumping posted:I thought for a second that you meant Spanish Dancer's speech at the very end which, wow, what a thing. The speech in general was really fascinating, too. loving loved Embassytown. I actually used a lot of Spanish Dancer's speech to support my thesis. There was something great about The line "Before the humans came, we didn't speak" going from a lie the Arieki told, to an actual metaphor to show how important the "gift" of lying was. But yeah, I worded it nicer, but a lot of my thesis did come down to metaphors are important and poo poo!!!
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Dec 16, 2011 22:56
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