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Just bought Kraken (last copy in the shop)  This is going to be good...
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May 8, 2010 16:22
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 01:52 |
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StealthStealth posted:Bellis was a great, atypical protagonist. I rather liked Bellis. Well, 'liked' is stretching it a bit. Meiville created a character there who is cold and selfish but, at the same time, an innocent victim: she's done nothing to deserve the situation that she finds herself in and all her actions stem from her desperate and single-minded urge to preserve her own life and dignity. Finished Kraken, by the way. Was Meiville's purpose in writing this book to out-Gaiman Neil Gaiman, or what? He set himself a really awkward task here: to present a setting that's absolutely been done to death by other writers in a fresh and original way and he pretty much succeeds but, I did feel that he was handicapping himself with his subject matter. His originality and imagination still manage to burn through on every page, to an extent that no other writer in the field could manage. I think though, that the plot could easily have been transferred into a truly original setting of his own creation and this would have made the novel as a whole stand out much more strongly than it does. Have to say, Goss and Subby rule though. Ye gods, what creepy recesses of his mind did they crawl from? Also loved the origami of physical objects, like the cash register. And the Chaos Nazis! Forget Moorcock, blatant WH40K reference there?
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May 14, 2010 21:49
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SaviourX posted:So Babylon 5, really. Well I imagine it'll be more like an Iain Banks novel, except carefully and thoughtfully written and with a genuinely unexpected twist at the end.
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May 21, 2010 19:51
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For better or worse, Mieville is very much a 'London' writer, in the same way that, say, Dickens or Martin Amis are. For writers like these, London looms large in nearly every work that they produce, whether it's included as a conscious decision or not. It's neither a good thing or a bad thing but you can't take London out of their novels without killing them stone-dead. You just have to accept that if you read Meiville, you're going to get London in one disguise or another!
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Apr 18, 2011 06:48
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Hedrigall posted:I think he did a very good job of writing a distinctly not-London city in TC&TC. Yeah, well I ignored that one, because it didn't fit into my neat little theory. Most theories don't quite fit the facts until you've chopped a few bits off of them.
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Apr 18, 2011 19:09
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MikeJF posted:And now, a shiny new short story in the Guardian! Look! Isn't that lovely! Go read it! Nobody but Mieville could pick a concept like that up and run with it.
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Apr 22, 2011 16:34
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Picked my copy up this morning. (£4 off at Waterstones!) I've got to read this slowly and carefully, as I've read everything else that Mieville has published: from now on, I can only read his books as fast as he writes them. Only a few (slow) pages in so far, but the opening chapter rather reminds me of The Fifth Head of Cerberus: on the face of it, the writing is simple and straightforward but you can feel that there's a very complex and carefully crafted structure beginning to unfold beneath. No spaceships, lasers or fiendish alien overlords yet but, hey, it's early days!
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May 7, 2011 13:44
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Pompous Rhombus posted:Whoa, did he actually write an interesting protagonist this time?! She doesn't seem very interesting yet, but I am only a quarter of the way through the book and it sounds like there'll be some fairly epic relevations later on... There's an obvious hint in the protagonist's name: Avice Benner Cho: ABC... which is further endorsed by her personal history: she's literally a simile; a means by which the Hosts interpret and describe their worldview in speech. So Avice is both the narrator of the story and the story herself: she embodies the concepts that Mieville is attempting to communicate through the novel. I'm really interested in seeing where this is going to go from here. Embassytown is as playful as Kraken but much more tightly controlled: with Kraken, you can tell that he was largely writing for the sheer fun of it, with Embassytown, he has a much more definite purpose in mind. How it all eventually pans out, I'll have to read the rest of the book to discover.
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May 8, 2011 18:53
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Paragon8 posted:
It's a very tempting narrative trick for an author: if the protagonist is semi-detached from the society and events that they're witnessing, it's easier to use them to describe what's happening. A character who's already in tune with what's going on doesn't need to have things explained to them in detail or go off on pages of internal exposition about the plot. It's another sign of the confidence that Mieville's displayed in writing this novel that he's dispensed with this 'easy' option.
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May 9, 2011 06:38
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lllllllllllllllllll posted:Hm, just found this thread. I like Iain Banks, another British bloke (Scottish actually), would I like China Miéville? Yes, yes you would. Start with Perdido Street Station and go from there.
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Jun 14, 2011 06:40
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pakman posted:
I thought the bit at the end was great! It puts Issac in an impossible situation with no 'right' answer: does he admit the essential justice in Yagharek's punishment and interfere no further in the situation, or does he close his eyes to the darker side of Yagharek's character, say "gently caress it, this guy's my buddy now" and carry on regardless? Whatever option he chooses, he's going to hurt somebody dreadfully. In fact, the situation strikes me as the sort of thing a sadistic DM would spring on his players: "You've got two lovely choices here but you've got to take one of them!" Did Mieville ever play D&D in the past? I bet he did.
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Jul 13, 2011 22:15
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After reading Railsea, I can say a couple of things about it: It continually shines though in the writing that Mieville had a lot of fun putting this together: in that sense, it's a bit like Kraken for young adults. There are echoes of his earlier books all the way through the novel: in particular, the Bas-Lag trilogy. The action in Railsea is staged on a world that's a strange amalgam of The Scar and Iron Council and the city of Manihiki displays the same cold-blooded pursuit of its own interests as New Crobuzon does. This extends to the characters: when reading about Sham's new friend, the charming but treatcherous pirate Robalson (Rob-all, son?), it's impossible not to think of Silas Fennec and Sham himself bears a certain resemblence to Saul Garamond, the heavyset and rather introverted hero of Mieville's first novel, King Rat. The book does seem to have been edited in a bit of a rush: I kept coming across passages that had been obviously quickly rewritten to maintain the book's internal consistency and the whole book feels as if it was written in something of a hurry. That isn't a complaint, as I thoroughly enjoyed the book and thought it was probably the most engaging thing that he's written since Iron Council. A rapidly executed sketch can be just as expressive as a painstakingly constructed oil painting, if the artist has the skill to carry it off. Mrs. Badcrumble posted:I love the Bas-Lag books, but I'm perfectly happy with ending them on Iron Council and perfectly happy if China never writes another one. Yes, the Bas-Lag books were great, but it's also great that Mieville's moved on from them and has been continually experimenting with different themes and different types of fiction. It would be so easy for him to develop Bas-Lag into a 'brand' and go down the easy route of churning out what experience has proved will sell: "Out next month: Book 19 of the New Crobuzon Saga - 'Dog Fenn regained'! Expect to meet a host of familiar faces, as well as finally discovering the dark secret of New Crobuzons founding etc etc etc." Thank goodness he's had the integrity to spare us that.
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Jun 23, 2012 19:51
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Khizan posted:Orpheus is a fairly well-known figure in Greek mythology, not as well known as Hercules but up there with Perseus and Jason and Theseus and such. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that your readers will have heard of him. Yeah, the story was a fairly light-hearted way to explore 4 possible reasons why Orpheus hosed up right at the mouth of the exit to Hades, when he was just seconds away from victory. I particularly liked the weak, pathetic "what was I supposed to do again?" outcome.
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Aug 13, 2015 10:07
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Notahippie posted:King Rat is legit pretty bad. King Rat was his first novel: he was very much finding his feet with it. I think all the references to jungle music date it beautifully 
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Sep 20, 2015 09:40
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I'd go for a long, scrolling wall of text at the start of the 1st episode, setting out the premise. Then for the rest of the series, you just have half the actors pretend they can't see the other half. Easy!
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Apr 19, 2017 05:51
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I saw all these new posts, thought he must've published something new, then I click on the thread and it's just you fuckers posting 'puissance' over and over again.
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Mar 30, 2021 20:21
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 01:52 |
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Ok, I wasn't expecting that when I checked on this thread.
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Jan 10, 2024 22:48
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