this was a brutal, brutal world! not gory violent, but very barbaric. its the type of sci-fi world that i tend to avoid, except the ideas brought up in this book were very interesting and tantalizing! it touched on speculative science, but also a lot of philosophy, sociology, and art...and....magic?? did i mention there was a drug that lets you dream other people's dreams??

the plot was also a bit chaotic, in a ridiculous way...i had the feeling that the author was throwing everything plus the kitchen sink into the mix...except that the writing did manage to keep it all together...i think. and then the final act tied the loose ends and sub-plots satisfyingly (?) enough that i decided to give it an extra half star.

this story will stay with me for a while. an in spite of my ambivalence, i see how this won awards (including the arthur c. clarke). i'll be reading the second book in the series...but not soon. ( )

Updated review 6/14/23

(This entire review has thematic and plot specific spoilers)

Rating 5 out of 5, rounded up.

I must admit I was a tad bit nervous to reread Perdido Street Station. When I reread books, I rather frequently find that they have lost their luster or are simply less engrossing or polished than I thought they were. Thankfully, this reread didn’t tarnish my love of Perdido Street Station, in fact I liked the book more after I finished. When I read it last year (ok, I listened to it as an audiobook) I was enraptured by New Crobuzon’s depth, Miéville’s vocabulary, the evocative yet repugnant descriptions as well as the complexity of the story’s characters. This go around allowed me to piece together some interesting bits of the story and worldbuilding that I had otherwise overlooked. I also walked away with a better grasp of the characters, and the themes of the story.

Plot: 3.5 out of 5
Setting: 5 out of 5
Characters: 4.5 out of 5
Writing Style: 5 out of 5
Personal Enjoyment: 5 out of 5

Perdido Street Station, and the entire New Crobuzon Trilogy, are greatly underrated in pop culture, that may be due to the denseness of the material, or the mental bandwidth that the books consume, or even that Miéville’s world is impossible to translate to television. However, the most likely explanation is that the trilogy isn’t for everyone, and I just happen to part of the target audience that is ensnared in its wiles.

Let's get my only gripe out of the way first. The plot of this book is the only part that I would consider to be weak. While the characters are well developed, the plot relies rather heavily on coincidences that are improbable. (Lin becoming Motley’s sculptor, who just happens to be the drug boss of dreamshit, which Isaac just happens to accidentally produce, because Lemuel just happened to drop by at the right time). I find coincidences as a plot device to be rather annoying especially when they are relied on heavily. Miéville does a superb job of masking the coincidences, yet they remain.

I forgot how much of a naïve, self-absorbed, research obsessed buffoon Isaac was. The irony in his character is that despite his solipsistic interests, he has a heart of gold and cares deeply about those around him. There is a constant contrast and struggle between his obsessive pursuit of specific areas of knowledge and the damage he does to others. He is usually able to ignore this crisis until an intervention is needed. However, Isaac has a character shift and transformative character arc that I didn’t catch during my first read. He starts out obsessed with research to the exclusion of basically everything else, and by the end of the book, he abandons his magnum opus for morals that he professed not to have.

Yagharek is, in my opinion, Isaac’s dark twin. Like Isaac, he is self-absorbed, obsessed, and at times naive, but unlike Isaac who is able to care about others around him, Yagharek never manages to deviate an iota from his obsession, constantly bringing it to the fore. Yagharek’s central theme is shame, shame at his mutilated existence, but never really expressing remorse for the crime he committed. On the other hand, Isaac becomes the epitome of a remorseful person, handling the consequences of his actions, without a hint of shame at his misdeeds.

At the end of the day, at the end of this engrossing book, it sits high on the top of my favorites list. It is a profound exploration of the warped psyche. Drug lords who destroy their buyers, governments who mutilate their citizens and crush them with mismanagement and corruption, insects who literally extract the dreams from their victims. All three of these antagonists portray the same oppressive ability to leave their victims as shells of their former selves. For all his faults, Isaac is the hero of the story, in the end, he is able to claim a victory (albeit a pyrrhic one) over the three great monsters of New Crobuzon.

--------------------------Original Review 3/8/22---------------------------------
Simply put, this is the weirdest, strangest and simultaneously, one of the best fantasy/science fiction books I have ever read. ( )

Miéville è un genio visionario e il suo stile di scrittura è divino
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Città di merda piena di insetti di merda ( )

Had some high hopes, but in the end steampunk animalmonster fantasy isn't my thing. The story gets off to a slow start, and heats up more grippingly in the latter half. If cactus people, pig-men and giant monkey-moths are your thing, mixed with technomedievalisms ('chymical', 'elyctric', 'thaumaturgic') then you'll enjoy it. ( )

This is a book whose main romantic pairing is between a man and a woman who has a cockroach for a head. The relationship is portrayed more honestly, poignantly, and quite frankly erotically than most fantasy authors can manage between two human protagonists. Any book that pulls this off is getting no fewer then four stars.

This is a noisy, messy, cacophony of a book. Its central idea: what does a city full of truly alien people look like? How do they get along with each other? What are the politics of that city? What are the economics? What is its culture like? Its underground art scene? Its mafia? Its pornography? Miéville for the most part pulls this off believably. Perdido Street Station is not perfect, but a Frankenstein monster such as this one isn't going to be the prettiest or most streamlined book you've ever read. Frankenstien's monster wasn't remarkable because it was pretty, it was remarkable because despite being a hodgepodge creature hastily sewn together it somehow, bafflingly, worked. ( )