Perdido Street Station

Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville
Rating: 4 out of 5
Reviewer: Neil

Perdido Street Station is an award-winning novel that is hard to put into a specific genre. In a book store, you'll find it in the sci-fi or fantasy section, but a total geek would argue it belongs in the New Weird category, of which H. P. Lovecraft is a pioneer. I would also say it resembles steampunk, although Perdido Street Station is not set in our world.

In this wildly imaginative world without comparison, you'll find magic, steam-power, electrical power, beast races, bird races, insect races, plant races, inter-species romance, bio-engineering, bio-magical-engineering, artificial intelligence, interdimensional predators, drug lords, gun fights, democracy, and mathematicians. Imagination is not lacking. The action is often fast and varied, taking the characters through different locations of the city and pitting them against different factions.

The characters are well written and avoid typical fantasy/sci-fi stereotypes. However, some characters appear at key moments in the story, like redshirts on a Star Trek away mission, only to be killed off shortly after their introduction.

"We need help with this job."
"Ok, here's someone I know from somewhere. Come on let's go."
"Oh no! He got killed!"
"Yeah, that's sad. But hey, we did it!"
"Hurray!"

But that's a minor complaint about an otherwise exciting story.

Throughout the novel is the theme of crime and punishment. Criminals in the novel's city are often punished by having their bodies altered to somehow suit their crimes. These so-called Remade are forever changed in strange and often hideous ways by the government's remakers, forcing criminals to visibly display their punishments for the rest of their lives. One of the main characters is a humanoid bird from outside the city whose wings have been sawed off his back by his tribe as punishment for a crime. He seeks aid to undo this punishment, like a refugee from a foreign country, yet refuses to explain the crime he committed. Similarly, the villains of the story, winged hypnotic predators, bring to mind the story of Lot when his wife turned behind her to look at the punishment that God had dealt to others. The characters and factions in the story make dubious choices, helping to make this a complicated, thought-provoking story.

True to the ideals of New Weird, Perdido Street Station transcends its genre, whatever it may be, and tells a story that is exciting, moving, and thoughtful.