Special Offers see all
More at Powell'sRecently Viewed clear list
Interviews | September 19, 2013
0 comments
|
 
$5.50
List price:
Used Mass Market
Ships in 1 to 3 days
More copies of this ISBNThis title in other editionsPerdido Street Stationby China Mieville
Staff Pick
Perdido Street Station is an excellent tale. The characters are realistic, as is the city they live in (even though it is a far-fetched fantasy land). The story is well paced and carries the reader forward — it will keep your interest piqued till the very end. Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:Beneath the towering bleached ribs of a dead, ancient beast lies New Crobuzon, a squalid city where humans, Re-mades, and arcane races live in perpetual fear of Parliament and its brutal militia. The air and rivers are thick with factory pollutants and the strange effluents of alchemy, and the ghettos contain a vast mix of workers, artists, spies, junkies, and whores. In New Crobuzon, the unsavory deal is stranger to none — not even to Isaac, a brilliant scientist with a penchant for Crisis Theory.
Isaac has spent a lifetime quietly carrying out his unique research. But when a half-bird, half-human creature known as the Garuda comes to him from afar, Isaac is faced with challenges he has never before fathomed. Though the Garuda's request is scientifically daunting, Isaac is sparked by his own curiosity and an uncanny reverence for this curious stranger. While Isaac's experiments for the Garuda turn into an obsession, one of his lab specimens demands attention: a brilliantly colored caterpillar that feeds on nothing but a hallucinatory drug and grows larger — and more consuming — by the day. What finally emerges from the silken cocoon will permeate every fiber of New Crobuzon — and not even the Ambassador of Hell will challenge the malignant terror it invokes... A magnificent fantasy rife with scientific splendor, magical intrigue, and wonderfully realized characters, told in a storytelling style in which Charles Dickens meets Neal Stephenson, Perdido Street Station offers an eerie, voluptuously crafted world that will plumb the depths of every reader's imagination. Review:"Earthy, sometimes outright disgusting — imagine finding your toilet blocked up by diamonds — but, amazingly in a book of this length, flawlessly plotted and relentlessly,stunningly inventive: a conceptual breakthrough of the highest order." Kirkus Reviews
Review:"The most exciting, enthralling novel I have read in a long time. It is about everything important — love, work, hope, worlds we knew were out there but needed a writer like Miéville to show them to us. His imagination is vast, his talent volcanic. Read this book. It just might be a masterpiece." Jonathon Carroll
Review:"More world building than storytelling, the yarn at least suggests that the author of King Rat is marching forward in his fantasy-writing career." Booklist
Review:"It is the best streampunk novel since Gibson and Sterling's." John Clute
Review:"[A] phantasmagoric masterpiece...The book left me breathless with admiration." Brian Stableford
Review:"This science fiction novel rocked my world. Sex with giant insects. Dream-sucking slake moths. An action-packed thriller with high literary production values. A sprawling, vastly ambitious, exquisitely executed science fiction fantasy with the best possible ending: You want more, more, more." Andrew Leonard, Salon.com
Review:"Miéville's canvas is so breathtakingly broad that the details of individual subplots and characters sometimes lose their definition. But it is also generous enough to accommodate large dollops of aesthetics, scientific discussion, and quest fantasy in an impressive and ultimately pleasing epic." Publishers Weekly
Review:"China Miéville's cool style has conjured up a triumphantly macabre technoslip metropolis with a unique atmosphere of horror and fascination." Peter Hamilton
Synopsis:In the sprawling gothic city of New Crobuzon, a stranger requests the services of Isaac, an overweight and slightly eccentric scientist. But it is an impossible request — that of flight — and in the end Isaac's attempts will only succeed in unleashing a dark force upon the city.
About the AuthorChina Miéville is currently reading for his Ph.D. at the London School of Economics. His first novel, King Rat, was published in 1998. He lives in England.
What Our Readers Are SayingAdd a comment for a chance to win!Average customer rating based on 7 comments:
View all 7 commentsProduct Details
Other books you might likeRelated Subjects
Fiction and Poetry » Science Fiction and Fantasy » A to Z
|
|||||||||
|
|
||||||||||
|
Follow us on...
|
||||||||||
