Book Review
Perdido Street Station
by China Miéville
“Perdido Street Station” begins in the bed of an interracial couple. They live in New Crobuzon, a steampunk city that evokes a late 19th century London.
The man, Isaac, is a scientist disenchanted with academia. One day, a mysterious exile from a foreign country knocks on his door, and commissions him to build a flying machine.
The woman, Lin, is an experimental artist. She fuses modernism with her family culture’s folk art. One day, she’s hired by a violent druglord to create a sculpture in his image.
Oh, and Lin is a Khepri, a creature with a human body and the head of a beetle. (She complains to Isaac that this is the wrong way to describe her; humans have Khepri bodies with the head of a gibbon.) Her drug lord boss is a Remade: his flesh is a cacophony of claws and talons and extra mouths. You see, in this society, cars don’t exist but biology is super-advanced and criminals are punished by having extra body parts grafted onto their bodies. Isaac’s science funding comes from a Garuda, a race of nomadic bird people that distrust police and authority. And their city is a police state run by a mayor who meets with an ambassador from Hell.
Oh! And there’s The Weaver, an extra-dimensional spider god who speaks in a poetry like Tom Bombadil re-imagined by HP Lovecraft.
The first third of the book is a gonzo domestic drama. Isaac and Lin keep their relationship secret from a society that frowns on them. They’re anxious about the criminals that employ them. But they have to earn a living somehow.
Then the slake moths show up. If JK Rowling’s dementors are anthropomorphized depression, then the slake moths are a manifestation of addiction. They suck out your brain until you’re a drooling vegetable. The last two-thirds of the book devolve into a “hunt the monster” procedural. There are elaborate battle plans. There are betrayals. There are misunderstandings that end up in friendly fire. There are last-moment arrivals of the cavalry.
Yes, I appreciate the benefits of writing a book in a standard action/adventure sci-fi mold. It gives the plot a clear direction, with standard story beats. Those beats are comforting. They’re what I expect in a sci-fi book.
But, wow, look at that first third before the book remembers it needs a plot! It’s shaggy and surprising. We get to hang out with some social outcasts from another world and find out how they feel about romance, and power, and justice, and government. That was something that I didn’t expect, and didn’t know I wanted.
Shout out to Alyssa Rosenberg at ThinkProgress, who did a comprehensive Perdido Street Station book club several years ago. Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and End.
