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The City and The City has a very strange beginning. To me it's as if Mieville wanted to distance himself not only from writing fantasy, but his writing style in general. What we get here reminds me very much of Kafka's The Castle.
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Jun 1, 2009 11:50
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nixar55 posted:Yeah, those are the cities. I'll post actual dates once I get them from his publicist, hopefully next week, but I already know he'll be in NYC June 1st. It's a ticketed event sponsored by WORD bookstore. Thanks for the heads-up on this. I might try to check this out if I can make it out of work and run up to Brooklyn in time.
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Apr 11, 2011 19:48
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Just to take the conversation back to Kraken for a second, I'm abut 90 pages away from the end and I see myself giving this book a poor review. For a book that is supposed to Mieville's "fun" novel, boy what a slog it's been. It barely has a plot. At the point when they retrieve the stolen giant squid, there isn't even any tension going on, other than "oooh the end of the world by fire is coming and we don't know why." Billy, who I suppose is a protagonist, is so utterly boring, and the "occult police" characters are a waste of time. Meh, very disappointed. I almost gave up on this book but I decided I was too far in...and I'm regretting it.
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May 10, 2011 20:49
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Paragon8 posted:I liked the promise of Kraken much more than the actual content. Would have loved a different novel set in that London with a different protagonist. Agreed. The setting is very interesting, it's just the characters are completely shallow and boring.
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May 11, 2011 13:55
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Mrs. Badcrumble posted:Christ, it'll be a crime if ADWD beats Embassytown. Neither book should win. Embassytown was atrocious and didn't deserve to be nominated, in my opinion. ADWD suffered from bloat and a weak ending but was still a good read, but Embassytown is a total mess.
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Apr 25, 2012 16:06
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AcidCat posted:Well, I just finished Embassytown and really liked it. That was his third strike for me. I found TC&TC to be propped up on an annoying and flimsy narrative gimmick; Kraken was Mieville channeling Gaiman to terrible effect; and Embassytown was a decent idea that went completely off the rails and then wallowed in its own poo poo for about 200 pages. Normally I wouldn't have bothered to read three mediocre-to-terrible books by the same author, but such was the equity Mieville built with his Bas Lag books.
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Apr 26, 2012 02:11
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BigSkillet posted:That's really reminiscent of Zdzislaw Beksinski's work, who seems to be a regular feature in the PYF creepy pictures thread, and often has elements of... I guess "discomforting citiness" in his paintings. Definitely an appropriate artist to borrow cues from: Sad trivia: Beksinski was stabbed to death in his Warsaw apartment at age 75 by the young son of his longtime caretaker. Apparently he had refused to loan the youth a few hundred zloty (about $100). This is about 15 years after his son killed himself.
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Jun 23, 2014 00:10
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