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Hedrigall posted:Well The City & The City comes out this week, in the UK at least. US should get it soon and Australian bookstores will only have the UK imported version until July - so it'll be expensive. I'm going to buy it online myself, it'll be much cheaper. Got a link to that interview (if it was on the web that is)? I think the other book may have been "Kraken"; http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kraken-China-Mieville/dp/0333989511/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242830601&sr=8-8. It's the only book of his that isn't out currently.
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May 20, 2009 15:45
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Ratios and Tendency posted:PSS has literally nothing to do with science fiction why did it win a science fiction award?? (let alone any literary award) You're trolling right? Did you actually read it, because if you did you would have noted that it has many obvious elements that would easily classify it as a work of science fiction?
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Apr 30, 2010 07:21
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Danger posted:After reading some more of his stuff, I kinda feel that this guy isn't that great at writing prose. He has some amazingly creative ideas but the writing itself is for the most part bland and at times downright bad. Some writers are more about ideas than flowery or fluent prose. Philip K Dick was a bit like this too but, in my opinion, a better writer than Miéville who has great ideas, but his prose (Miéville's) can be a bit clunky and awkward at times and he's not very good at writing characters. His characters tend to be spokespeople for his ideas rather than catalysts of his story's plot. But, all those criticisms aside, he's probably the most original fantasy author writing just now. And he seems to be pretty prolific too. Varicose Brains fucked around with this message at 16:43 on Jun 16, 2010 |
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Jun 16, 2010 16:40
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Levitate posted:I just started reading Perdido Street Station this weekend. It seems like a lot of the beginning of the book is just world building for the city and world he has created, is that about right? In fact it seems like most of the book will really be just about this weird world he's created and the stuff that goes on in it, rather than having a big plot idea driving the whole thing. Then again I haven't gotten to whatever this giant moth monster actually does yet The plot takes a long time to build up pace in Perdido but once it does it speeds up significantly. There is a lot of world building though, and that continues right through the book; but this is the main attraction of Miéville's books. His imagination is brimming with ideas and his inventiveness is immense. After reading stodgy kitchen-boy-becomes-king fantasy novels for years I found Miéville to be a breath of life on a tired genre.
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Jun 28, 2010 14:24
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Pompous Rhombus posted:The city really is a character unto itself in PSS. The plot takes a while to get moving and still meanders around with some less-than-essential subplots; there's definitely some stuff that could have been cut but I guess Mieville has a pretty generous editor. I still really enjoyed the book, but I don't get all huffy if other people say they didn't. I can't remember now where I read it (I think it may have been on Brandon Sanderson's blog), but fantasy/sci-fi publishers tend to like larger manuscripts. Have you ever noticed that you don't see many slim fantasy novels on the shelves these days? Fantasy and sci-fi readers tend to prefer larger, epic, stories, which is why wordy manuscripts aren't slim down when they get the OK from the editor. Not only this but the publishers can sell them for a higher price. I'll have to try and dig that article out sometime.
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Jun 28, 2010 16:15
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