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I've now clocked the three Bas-Lag novels and TC&TC. I think Iron Council is probably his best written work, but the other two Bas-Lag novels had far more interesting settings so overall I found it a bit of a struggle. At the same time, I felt there were a lot of clever little crossovers between the books that I wouldn't pick up until I reread them. There was a point in the middle of Iron Council where my brain said "this feels like Deadhouse Gates but I don't care about any of the characters", which probably didn't help either. But yeah, China's power seems to be in making really fascinating settings, and as soon as he reuses one the magic dies a little.
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Oct 9, 2009 05:15
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In the last month I've read Embassytown and Snow Crash, and watched the film Pontypool with no idea what any of them were about, having just heard that they were good. How the hell did I manage to read/watch three stories about language-diseases in a row? It can't be a common plot point. Weird. I liked the sneaky George Romero reference in Embassytown. That came out of nowhere.
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Mar 16, 2012 22:35
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Something like that, and the Scar was caused by the arrival of the Ghosthead empire, who travelled around with probability-based technology.
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Apr 28, 2012 01:30
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I was enjoying Perdido Street Station, but the brutal ending is what made me love it. There was some stupid deus ex machina towards the end, and I was a bit mad about it, and I was starting to feel like it was just a formulaic adventure story in a weird setting. But that ending made it feel a bit more real. Forced happy endings are like, what is the point of reading a story if you know everything will get wrapped up cleanly and all the bad guys will suffer and all the good guys will live happily ever after? You know how it'll end right from the start. I can't feel any sort of tension at anything that happens. The hero is being attacked by bears? Who gives a gently caress, the hero cannot die. Basically the happier the ending of a book is, the harder it is for me to believe, and the harder it is for me to feel anything while I read it.
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Sep 24, 2012 23:31
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Whenever I read Stephenson, I can't stop imagining a LARP guy swishing swords around and making little 'whoosh' noises with his mouth while he sits at his writing desk. Not that I dislike his writing or anything.
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Jun 21, 2013 04:34
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 04:53 |
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Does China Mieville do any martial arts? I really want to fight him. He looks kind of like a pierced dick.
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Jan 26, 2016 04:42
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