Perdido Street Station by China Miéville

I wasn't sure what to expect from this book; I didn't read much of the blurb and only knew Miéville's name as one that was regularly grouped with the likes of Jeff VanderMeer for being a 'Weird' author. Judging by a quick skim of the reviews I wasn't sure that it would be for me as many people commented on (or complained about) the verbose prose - not typically my cup of tea. I suppose I thought it might be a bit pretentious. But I ended up loving it so much I went out (or rather went online) and bought nearly all of Miéville's other work. The Weird is clearly my thing.

This novel is certainly weird, but also thoughtful and so vividly imagined that you can see the city of New Crobuzon laid out before you. Perhaps most strikingly to me, though, was that it was a lot of fun! I read so little these days which delights in its world quite like this book does, and that made it a real pleasure to read. That isn't to say that this book doesn't get quite dark in places - it certainly does - or that it doesn't have strong philosophical and ideological foundations - which it also does - but that it still seems to revel in the sheer joy of invention which underpins the best fantasy writing.

What is it about, then? We follow a small group of characters as they seek to protect themselves and their city from a terrifying group of creatures - the slake moths. And it isn't as cheesy as that one liner there from me makes it out to be; instead it is gritty, following various plotlines through their twists and turns over the course of its 800 pages. Miéville's imagination is on impressive display here, as he populates his city with all kinds of peoples and ways of being (peoples and ways of being are also kind of my thing - they're what I wrote my Master's dissertation on after all). He successfully integrates lots of interesting philosophical and scientific ideas; his idea of a 'crisis engine' is very successful as one of the foundational concepts of the novel - that 'things are in crisis just as a part of being'.

Then there's that prose. This one will split the crowd I think. Inspired by the likes of H. P. Lovecraft (without the white supremacist overtones…), Miéville's writing here is deliberately over the top. And in the wake of Titus Groan earlier this year, I see the likes of Mervyn Peake's writing echoed in this book, also. In this very interesting interview with Miéville (thank you alumni access), he says the following:

If you look at the way critics describe Lovecraft, for example, they often say he's purple, overwritten, overblown, verbose, but it's unputdownable. There's something about that kind of hallucinatorily intense purple prose which completely breaches all rules of "good writing" but is somehow utterly compulsive and affecting. That pulp aesthetic of language is something very tenuous, which all too easily simply becomes shit, but is fascinating where it works. Though I also love much more minimalist writers, it's that lush approach that I'm drawn to in terms of my own writing, for good and bad. 

For me, his 'pulp aesthetic' absolutely works. It is heavily stylized and dripping in excess, but it creates that hallucinatory vision/version of its world for you, in a way that I haven't experienced in a long time.