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RoboCicero posted:By the way, for those of you who had read Finch -- Do you get the feeling that it was a really good book that was only marred by the fact that it was set in Ambergris? I talked with some of my friends and we all agree that the fact that the grey-caps were an alien race devoid of motive contributed a lot to the atmosphere. The fact that they started interacting with Finch on a human-like level was a fairly big departure from Ambergris in the first two books, and I don't know how I feel about it Personally, it annoyed the hell out of me. I still really enjoyed the book, but I felt like it just sort of destroyed the aura of impenetrable menace the grey caps had going, which was what made them so effective in the first place. They went from unfathomably alien to completely generic; it was a literary TMI. Which sorts of leads into my next on-topic point... I think part of why all the Bas-Lag stuff is so interesting is because we know so very little about it. As a reader, you naturally want to know everything there is to know about what you're reading, and Mieville deliberately witholds this information to keep you guessing- and keep you reading. The books are riddled with a thousand tantalizing hints about this or that bizarre person/place/thing/event that is never fully revealed. It hints at a huge and intricate world behind everything you are told, and it does it fairly naturally, so that you're never ripped out of your immersion by a 6-page exposition. If nothing else, Mieville is a fantastic worldbuilder. Speaking of Mieville dropping hints, does anybody else think that the man who killed Jack Half-A-Prayer before he could be publicly executed might actually be Isaac? He has a habit of doing this kind of thing, I think. In his short story collection, there's a very traditional, very non-fantasy ghost story that is probably one of the best ghost stories I have ever read- and this is from someone who's a fanatic for the genre and will obsessively track down and read even obscure and justly-forgotten pieces of poo poo published in The Strand for a penny-a-line about a million and a half years ago. Part of the reason I felt the story was so effective and so creepy was because absolutely none of it is ever explained. The threat comes out of nowhere, entirely unexpectedly, as just some hosed up terrifying thing that happens to ordinary people for incomprehensible reasons. There are hints, here and there, that something more is going on, that if you could just see a little farther, or figure out some crucial piece of information, it would all make sense suddenly, it could all be understood and predicted and counteracted. But that clarity never comes, and so the story stays with you because you wonder if, unprepared as you are, just maybe it could happen to you. All that up there is actually the reason why I didn't particularly care for The City & The City. It was well done and had a fascinating premise, but the end just felt so off to me. It felt like watching an M. Night Shyamalan movie where the big twist is that he couldn't actually think of a twist and just went with whatever retarded idea occurred to him 24 hours before the outline was due. We were told too much, and knowing the secret destroyed the very thing that made it so fascinating in the first place.
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Dec 29, 2009 19:41
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Hallucinogenic Toreador posted:I am certain that it's Yagharek. The description of the man as "heavily pocked" matches with him plucking all his feathers at the end of Perdido Street Station, his mouth and nose are covered to hide his beak, his voice is described as harsh because it wasn't a human voice. He even picks up the overseers whip, a weapon that Yagharek was expert with but would have been useless to Isaac. Ohhh man, I did not even think of that, but it makes perfect sense! I thought it was Isaac because it mentions at one point that Isaac has a pock marked face too, and because Isaac owed Jack big for saving his rear end, so I figured he came back do him a solid in the form of a mercy kill, and wouldn't really care about the repercussions of maybe being caught, because Lin was FUBAR. But your idea is definitely better- I didn't even consider the whip or the harsh voice. Good eye! Ballsworthy" posted:Was this the one about the stained-glass window? Because yeah that loving owned. Yeah, that one was great, but I was referring to "The Ballroom". Honestly, all his short stories are pretty awesome. Another creepy unexplained one was about the woman in the white-painted room that the narrator has to bring a bowl of pudding to every day.
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Dec 29, 2009 21:27
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quote:The Scar spoilers: This, definitely, but with some more thrown in: I figured he was up to something through most of the book, but the big reveal at the end where it's implied that he planned and orchestrated the entire loving thing down to the last detail drove me nuts. Don't even get me started on the OMG SWORD PROWESS WITH BULLSHIT MAGIC SWORD! crap. He is basically the Bas-Lag equivalent of some compensating loving nerd's D&D character, and this bothers me. To be fair, we have what is basically a very biased and probably unreliable narrator in this story, and she even says that she's got no idea if Doul truly set it all up or he's just stumbling from one unforeseen crisis to the next yet somehow always making the most appropriate game-saving throw. Either way, the whole concept annoys me. Doul sems so weirdly un-China to me as well. I guess it's because in most of Mieville's stories, he's not afraid to show that characters' dumb decision have some utterly horrendous consequences, and that no one is immune to making dumb decisions. Except Doul, apparently, because he's just so gosh darned special. The Brucolac was a million times cooler, since I felt like he legitimately just wanted what was best for Armada and wasn't being such a puppetmastering douche about it. Also, I really wish he would have loving killed Doul when he had the chance. (Sorry for wall o' black bars.)
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Oct 27, 2010 06:14
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Mucktron posted:My argument was always, while I feel that we're suppose to be amazed at what a bad-rear end Doul is. Gotta agree on this. Bellis is a terrible person, but it can be argued she becomes slightly less terrible by the end as a result of her experiences. I would say though, that at least to me it feels like this is a big theme in most of Mieville's Bas-Lag books: that the majority of the characters you encounter are unlikable because they're monstrously selfish, and it's their selfish actions which lead to ruination for everyone involved. (Feel free to extrapolate this into some overarching theory of capitalist self-interest vs. collectivism in light of Mieville's own political beliefs, I guess.) At any rate: Perdido Street Station has Isaac as a protagonist, who is actually kind of an rear end in a top hat if you look a little closer at his motives. He helps Yagharek because it interests him to do so and because it's lucrative. In the course of doing this, he inadvertantly releases the slakemoths which terrorize the city and lead to hundreds dead or vegetized, and he can do this because he entirely fails to perceive how his actions might have consequences for anyone save himself. Lin is less culpable in that regard, but in choosing self-interest in her decision to work for Motley, she ultimately pays the highest price. After the reveal, Isaac next chooses to adandon Yagharek even though, in spite of his past, Yagharek is actually the most self-sacrificing person in the novel, choosing to put himself at great risk to help the gang fight the moths when he could very well have just found himself another scientist. The Scar: is more openly about people behaving like selfish goddamned monsters. Bellis just wants to get out of New Crobuzon, and *then* just wants to get the hell out of Armada no matter the cost, regardless of what consequences this has for anyone else. The Lovers et. al are willing to put everyone at massive risk with their plans, and are only foiled by someone who have orchestrated a massive ruse that sacrifices hundreds in order to ensure its (his) success. Tanner Sack once again represents the most self-sacrificing character here, and yet he too suffers what may be book's highest price when he loses Shekel. Iron Council: Judah Low is a goddamn terrible human being. Within the novel's first pages we are told, over and over, that many people are convinced he's wonderful and are willing to put themselves to terrible risk for his sake. We're shown throughout the novel instances of his good works. And yet all of them come to absolutely nothing and especially his final act in the book, permanently stopping the train in time solely because *he* can't bear to see it defeated. Toro is another great example, and the most obvious on this theme, when it's revealed that she doesn't give a gently caress about the city, she just wanted revenge, and didn't care how many got killed because of her actions. All of Mieville's books are full of terrible people doing terrible selfish things; you're not supposed to like any of them. Although some are admittedly more sympathetic than others, and often, oddly, it's the ones who most obviously transgress. What, exactly, if anything, Mieville is trying to say with all this is up for debate, but I at least contend that it is deliberate.
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Oct 28, 2010 00:43
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Bellis is obviously written intentionally to be unlikable, which as someone else pointed out, is pretty normal of how Mieville writes his protagonists for the Bas-Lag books.
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Captain_Indigo posted:I know this was mentioned pretty far back, but at the time I hadn't read the begining of IC and so I didn't really read much of it, but I take it that in the puppet show that shows what happened to Jack half-a-prayer, we are to presume that the pock-faced figure is Yag? And if so I like to imagine that his miraculous escape is down to finding someone else to teach him to fly! Stupid lying bird bitch, she definitely wanted it. Ye, it is supposed to be Yagharek.. I actually thought it was supposed to be Isaac for some reason, but this thread set me right on that. Although I don't think he ever learned to fly again, but I don't remember exactly what happened in the puppet show, so maybe. I thought the point of the puppet show was that the Militia baasically got 'cheated' out of executing Jack because he was mercy-killed by Yag, and that was his true escape in typically brutal Mieville fashion. This story was suppressed because, well, it's the Militia, although again I don't really remember.
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Nov 12, 2010 22:04
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