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WINNER OF THE AUGUST DERLETH AND ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARDS • A masterpiece brimming with scientific splendor, magical intrigue, and fierce characters, from the author who “has reshaped modern fantasy” ( The Washington Post ) “[China Miéville’s] fantasy novels, including a trilogy set in and around the magical city-state of New Crobuzon, have the refreshing effect of making Middle-earth seem plodding and flat.”— The New York Times The metropolis of New Crobuzon sprawls at the center of the world. Humans and mutants and arcane races brood in the gloom beneath its chimneys, where the river is sluggish with unnatural effluent and foundries pound into the night. For a thousand years, the Parliament and its brutal militias have ruled over a vast economy of workers and artists, spies and soldiers, magicians, crooks, and junkies. Now a stranger has arrived, with a pocketful of gold and an impossible demand. And something unthinkable is released. The city is gripped by an alien terror. The fate of millions lies with a clutch of renegades. A reckoning is due at the city’s heart, in the vast edifice of brick and wood and steel under the vaults of Perdido Street Station. It is too late to escape.… (meer)
souloftherose: Although The Windup Girl is more science fiction than steampunk/fantasy, I felt there were similarities in the exoticness of the world-building and readers who enjoyed Perdido Street Station may also enjoy The Windup Girl.
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. ( )
Perhaps i would have given it twice as many stars if I'd made it to the end instead of half way. I got bored with the overbearing prose that insisted on using as many synonyms of "putrid" as the author could think of. I have no doubt there's a good story in there somewhere, but I've given up struggling through to watch it unfold. ( )
I was incredibly disappointed in this book. Despite Mieville's astonishing imagination, this story could not rise above the pages and pages of relentless detail about so many literally disgusting things. It wasn't just the revulsion, I could have handled that, but it was the endless passages that were so unnecessary and boring, the truly hackneyed writing style, and the lack of any real insight. I would never have guessed that the same author wrote "The City and the City." ( )
'I even gave up, for a while, stopping by the window of the room to look out at the lights and deep, illuminated streets. That's a form of dying, that losing contact with the city like that.'
Philip K. Dick , We Can Build You
Een poos lang kwam ik zelfs niet meer aan het raam van de kamer om naar buiten te kijken, naar de lichtjes en de diepe, verlichte straten. Dat is een vorm van sterven, als je op die manier het contact met de stad verliest.
Philip K. Dick
Opdracht
to Emma
Eerste woorden
Veldt to scrub to fields to farms to these first tumbling houses that rise from the earth.
Van dor grasland naar dwergstruiken naar akkers naar boerderijen naar de eerste huizen die lukraak zich verheffen uit de aarde.
WINNER OF THE AUGUST DERLETH AND ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARDS • A masterpiece brimming with scientific splendor, magical intrigue, and fierce characters, from the author who “has reshaped modern fantasy” ( The Washington Post ) “[China Miéville’s] fantasy novels, including a trilogy set in and around the magical city-state of New Crobuzon, have the refreshing effect of making Middle-earth seem plodding and flat.”— The New York Times The metropolis of New Crobuzon sprawls at the center of the world. Humans and mutants and arcane races brood in the gloom beneath its chimneys, where the river is sluggish with unnatural effluent and foundries pound into the night. For a thousand years, the Parliament and its brutal militias have ruled over a vast economy of workers and artists, spies and soldiers, magicians, crooks, and junkies. Now a stranger has arrived, with a pocketful of gold and an impossible demand. And something unthinkable is released. The city is gripped by an alien terror. The fate of millions lies with a clutch of renegades. A reckoning is due at the city’s heart, in the vast edifice of brick and wood and steel under the vaults of Perdido Street Station. It is too late to escape.
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Nieuw Crobuzon. Een stad zo groot, divers en complex dat het een universum op zichzelf is, rijk van de handel en vol verbazingwekkende architectuur. De bevolking bestaat uit een vreemde mengeling van rassen en volken, arbeiders, spionnen, kunstenaars, hoeren, wetenschappers, revolutionairen en misdadigers, onder het waakzame oog van de Militie, die de orde handhaaft namens het Parlement.
Isaac Dan der Grimnebullin is een getalenteerd en excentriek wetenschapeer die zijn leven gewijd heeft aan de ontoegankelijke wetenschap der Crisis Theorie. Op een dag wordt Isaac benaderd door een Garuda - half vogel, half mens - wiens vleugels door zijn eigen volk als straf zijn verwijderd. Hij wil dat Isaac een manier vindt om hem weer te laten vliegen. Isaac stort zich enthousiast op het onderzoek, dat hem naar onverkende en onvermoede hoeken van de wetenschap en alchemie voert.
Tijdens zijn experimenten stuit hij op een larve van een onbekende soort, die zich voedt met een zeldzaam hallucinogeen. Wat Isaac niet weet is dat deze larve afkomstig is van een geheim overheidsexperiment en gestolen is door een van de machtigste onderwereldfiguren in Nieuw Crobuzon. Het vliegend monster dat uiteindelijk uit de zijden cocon tevoorschijn komt, doet heel Nieuw Crobuzon op zijn grondvesten schudden en brengt een gewelddadige politieke crisis teweeg. Iedereen lijkt nu achter Isaac aan te zitten: de onderwereld, de Militie, de revolutionairen, zelfs het vliegende monster - en dat terwijl zijn vriendin Lin spoorloos is verdwenen...
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