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Hedrigall posted:Are you motherfuckers ready for a blurb? Hell yeah! I was sort of disappointed when, in The City and The City, Orciny didn't show up, so I'm ready for some Dark Magic and Terrifying Machinations. I recall vaguely that he mentioned how he wanted to do a different genre with each successive book -- what's this one going to be?
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# ¿ Oct 27, 2009 08:17 |
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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 06:38 |
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Hedrigall posted:Lovecraftian horror by the sound of it! Oh my god! I can't believe I didn't pick up on that right away. I'm even more excited for this book. In Perdido and The Scar we had flashes of terror, but I always got the impression (from Looking For Jake) that if Mieville really put his mind to it he'd make a book that would melt your face off. Vandermeer (if you haven't read Ambergris, do it! The books are top notch and really does a lot with the shift to 'fungus punk') does it really well with the machine passage and the pervading sense of alien-ness. I don't know! This is going to be a good year.
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# ¿ Oct 29, 2009 08:19 |
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I would absolutely recommend Shriek: An Afterword. If you want to learn everything about Ambergris and Vandermeer's neat blend of fungus-punk I'd suggest moving on to Cities of Saints and Madman, and then onto Finch. 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
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# ¿ Dec 29, 2009 18:22 |
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I am positively giddy. Sounds like a return to the "olde-style" type of books -- though that's not surprising, since I think I read in this thread that he wrote The City and The City for his dying mother. 480 pages of Mieville-style horror
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# ¿ Feb 12, 2010 10:00 |
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I just ordered the UK edition from Amazon -- hopefully it ships early! I am way too impatient to wait another month for it to become locally available, and I like the UK covers better. Anyway, why do they have different release dates between British and American versions? We both speak English
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# ¿ May 6, 2010 17:48 |
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Truly Atwood was onto something when she said that science fiction was just talking squids in space.
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# ¿ May 13, 2010 21:21 |
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It's a lot like Neverwhere, but, aside from publications dates, I could see Neil Gaiman and China Mieville being handed the assignment of "make a gritty Urban Fantasy about London" simultaneously. Not sure if it's my favorite, though I'll have to read it again. Ending spiolers -- The ending sort of chafes though. The 'amnesia/removed from history' ending is sort of frustrating to me. While we have seen all this development in the characters, they forget all about it and just stand around being confused when the kraken is burnt out from reality. I wanted some tangible ramifications of the story other than people going "well, I've really matured, but I can't remember why" stupid ugly retard posted:were those quotes seriously in it? Yes, but one of them leads to the Trekkie becoming possessed by dozens of ghosts of himself because each time he beams himself down to a new place he (in essence) kills himself and forms a new him at the end location, so it's okay. One thing I really liked about Kraken is how China explains everything in this book. Sure, it sometimes slows down the pace of the narrative, and blah blah, but it's great to read something like EVEN THE CHAOS NAZIS WERE THERE and later on get a run down of what they actually do.
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# ¿ May 27, 2010 09:41 |
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God drat! gently caress you and your drexel-looking dorm room! Are the edges really navy blue like that and are they releasing paperbacks at the same time as hardcovers? That would be a really awesome choice.
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# ¿ Mar 2, 2011 08:07 |
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Ah, that's awesome! I think the colored edges will really give it an great feel when you flip through it, much like those old-timey bibles. You're right about the hardcovers, but they've been sub 20 dollars (unless I get the hot off the press copy from London) generally, so I can't complain. Drexel is a small college that's in the center of Philadelpha that has dorm rooms that look the same as yours, little compartment above the closet and all. It was the most benign insult I could think of!
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# ¿ Mar 2, 2011 08:13 |
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The cocktail will be 2 parts vodka, 1 part molasses, heated up and with just enough motor oil to give it that glossy sheen.
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# ¿ Apr 4, 2011 21:14 |
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Man, I really hate how it comes out almost three weeks ahead in the UK! Well -- at least I can pre-order it for 15 bucks on amazon. I definitely remember getting both The City and The City and Kraken from the UK at a much lower premium than 10 dollars + 3-7 weeks shipping though.
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# ¿ Apr 26, 2011 17:24 |
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withak posted:Doesn't it turn out that there is nothing at all supernatural about the situation? I agree -- the way I read it implied that there's nothing at all about shifted realities, it's just a big clusterfuck of "this is how things are done", with the Breach making sure that it remains that way.
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# ¿ Jul 7, 2011 02:00 |
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A novel about the Cacotopic Stain probably wouldn't work because of how illogical and terrifying it is, but I'd give up a good percentage of my blood to read a short story / novella that centered around a group of people attempting to reach the center of the Stain for untold riches.
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# ¿ May 2, 2012 08:36 |
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I really do love Dial H. The pacing is a bit weird over the first arc, but I love the disgruntled Canadian government and the dude with time powers who decides to name himself Centipede. I'm seriously expecting them to start losing their minds, especially since Nelson is addicted to dialing but they don't have time to address it, while Roxie can't dial again without a mask. I expect right now Centipede is seeing what happens when a dial user completely loses control of their own mind? I'm not completely sure what his agenda towards the end of the most recent issue was -- one of the dangers of reading a comic once a month I suppose
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# ¿ Feb 13, 2013 06:59 |
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I read Railsea and I actually found myself enjoying it tremendously. It's striking to me because it ends up being significantly funnier than Kraken without sacrificing urgency like his other YA book (Un Lun Dun).Hedrigall posted:Greg Bear wrote a trilogy of Halo books that were pretty well received.
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# ¿ May 17, 2013 04:34 |
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China Mieville tackles every goon's favorite subject seasteading, probably because he's pissed that such a cool idea ended up so boring.quote:It is a libertarian dream. Hexagonal neighborhoods of square apartments bob sedately by tiny coiffed parks and tastefully featureless marinas, an Orange County of the soul. It is the ultimate gated community, designed not by the very rich and certainly not by the very powerful, but by the middlingly so. As a utopia, the Atlantis Project is pitiful. Beyond the single one-trick fact of its watery location, it is tragically non-ambitious, crippled with class anxiety, nostalgic not for mythic glory but for the anonymous sanctimony of an invented 1950s. This is no ruling class vision: it is the plaintive daydream of a petty bourgeoisie, whose sulky solution to perceived social problems is to run away–set sail into a tax-free sunset.
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# ¿ Jul 27, 2013 20:14 |
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bring back yGudluh This isn't a knock against Mieville, but while he's a decent illustrator, I wouldn't say he's as good as a professional illustrator. Also, dang, the Vandermeers really are into growing and cultivating New Weird aren't they? I feel like virtually every single collection of the strange has one or the other appearing in some capacity.
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# ¿ Oct 10, 2014 07:55 |
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June can't come soon enough!
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# ¿ Jan 6, 2015 05:46 |
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Christ, that looks incredible. So much more evocative than the bland-as-hell twilight cover we got.
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# ¿ Jun 10, 2015 17:24 |
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It's funny, when I first saw that book I was like "no way that Mieville doesn't have a story in this", got to the end, wondered where he was, then re-read it and of course he's the one with the invisible letter. I also actually like the UK cover art a bit more, since the limited edition one feels a bit...disjointed? for lack of a better word.
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# ¿ Dec 3, 2015 22:39 |
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Decent! I'm not sure when it's from, but it reminds me a bit of that one story in Three Moments of an Explosion about the New Dead. Less creepy and more him taking an idea (animals comprised of 'nothing') and having some fun with it. Written in the same considered, faux-academic style as that, as well as Buscard's Murrain and Second Slice Manifesto, but a lot less creepy than the latter two. One of his stories that make you go "huh, weird" and sit for a little bit considering the implications.
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# ¿ Dec 4, 2015 01:58 |
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I'm excited for Last Days of New Paris, though his most recent stuff has me worried that it trails off rather than finishing the main arc out. Sounds like Life And Times In The Cacotopic Stain.
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# ¿ Mar 5, 2016 05:55 |
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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 06:38 |
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I did! Posted about it in the other thread but forgot to cross post it here. Only my own opinion, and would like to hear what other people think.RoboCicero posted:I recently read This Census Taker (wasn't it 'The Census Taker' a while ago?) and quite enjoyed it, even if it's not in the same vein as many of his other books. If Mieville is trying to write a book in a different genre each time, he's certainly succeeding. A slower, more unresolved story about a boy who lives on a mountain with his father that focuses on atmosphere more than it does on concrete explanations. I enjoyed how everything in the world is just slightly askew, from the fact the narrator tells us the book isn't written in his first language, to how the seasons are named differently, to the fact that when you hear guns in the distance there is a sound for hunting, and a sound for killing.
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# ¿ Mar 5, 2016 20:00 |