Perdido Street Station by China Miéville

Miéville's hallucinatory tale is set in the sprawling city-state of New Crobuzon, a massive, thriving, yet decadent and crumbling metropolis populated by humans a bizarre menagerie of other sentient species Miéville never makes clear are alien or not (a good decision on his part, I think) and Remades, hapless victims of the system, criminals and undesirables who have had their bodies gruesomely altered. And though, at over 700 pages, it's a bit sprawling, the book offers a phantasmagoric reading experience you shouldn't miss. It's a hybrid SF/horror/fantasy widescreen epic with soundtrack by Joy Division, not John Williams. Clarke Award and British Fantasy/August Derleth Award. And if you're familiar with that seminal music scene, one can sense much of the same aesthetic in Perdido Street Station, Miéville's second novel and 2001's winner of both the Arthur C.

He looks like some Manchester postpunk rocker on his way to a Ph.D in economics. A photo on the back cover of this book shows him in almost an archetypal young rebel pose, complete with stylishly shaved head and multiple ear piercings. Miéville is a bold young writer destined to carve his own remarkable niche in the field. Daring writers like Philip Pullman, Storm Constantine, and China Miéville are feverishly transforming fantasy, steering it towards darker terrain, without sacrificing - indeed, completely reframing - the genre's sense of wonder.

Tweets by American fantasists are happy to stay, by and large, within the safety zones of tradition, over in England, all bets are off. Book cover artwork is copyrighted by its respective artist and/or publisher. All reviews and site design © by Thomas M.

Perdido Street Station by China Miéville