Customer Reviews

The Scar (New Crobuzon)

5 star:		(66)
4 star:		(31)
3 star:		(20)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

In "The Scar" China Mieville has proven that "Perdido Street Station" was no fluke, he is a force to be reckoned with in the literary world. Once again he returns to the world of Bas Lag, although this time he journeys outside the confines of the city of New Crobuzon. In fact, his characters travel the length and breadth of Bas Lag, as they are the occupants (willing and unwilling) of the floating pirate city, Armada.

It would be nearly impossible to recount the plot here, both because of its complexity, and the risk of spoiling it. However, there are a few general points that I think bear mentioning. First, while this is not a sequel to "Perdido Street Station" it does reference events in that book; there are no common characters, but the protagonist, Bellis Coldwine, is fleeing the city as a direct result of the happenings in the prior novel. While one could easily read "The Scar" without any knowledge of "Perdido Street Station" I would still recommend reading it first, as your appreciation of "The Scar" will be greatly enriched as a result.

Second, "The Scar" is a darker, more ambiguous novel than its predecessor (which was by no means cheery to begin with). It is not an easy beach read for the summer; while it is immensely entertaining, it is also monstrously complex and intensely thoughtful. This is really a novel that needs to be read without distractions and with a great deal of thought as to what is going on. There are a lot of subtle themes and messages in this book, and it needs to be approached in a manner more befitting "literature" rather than your average "sci-fi" (I use quotes because SF can obviously be literature, I'm just speaking in stereotypical terms).

Which brings me to the writing; anyone who read "Perdido Street Station" would have to agree that Mieville is a master of his craft. There are few writers today who have the same grasp of the English language; Mieville absolutely revels in the descriptive abilities of the written word. I would read an atlas if Mieville wrote it just to see how he described the landforms contained therein.

He is also intensely interested in exploring human nature across its entire spectrum. From compassion to cruelty, Mieville is fascinated by our motivations. If one reads an interview with him, it becomes obvious that Mieville wouldn't mind being cast as the anti-Tolkien. While giving a nod to Tolkien's creation of an entire world down to the smallest details, Mieville revels in his characters' moral ambiguity and indecision, as opposed to Tolkien's characters who always know where they stand. Furthermore, while Tolkien used his races to highlight different ideals, Mieville uses his vast panoply of creatures to highlight the absurdities of racism and the nature of "humanity".

Finally, Mieville is a master of the metaphor. I can say, without, giving anything away, that the Scar, of the book's title, is an actual place, but also a recurring theme throughout the novel. All of the characters (which are so diverse and beautifully realized it is nothing short of breathtaking) have scars, physical and mental. Some rise above them, some never come to grips with them, and some are brought low by them. In the end, the Scar is, at its most simple level, a double entendre. It is the heart of darkness of the world of Bas Lag, but it is also that heart of darkness within the primary characters that draws them to their destiny. In the end, some of the characters refuse to have their future dictated by the scars of their past, while others wallow in their pain and meet their end.

I could go on indefinitely, and not even scratch the surface of the message in this book. However, I have covered the key elements I took away from the novel; I'll leave it for others better versed than I to continue the discussion. Ultimately, "The Scar" is a novel of immense emotional depth. The characters are brilliantly written and act upon a world stage that is breathtaking in its scope. It is a highly entertaining adventure in the finest nautical tradition, but it is so much more. It is an exploration of the depths of our ambition and the foundations of our humanity. Do yourself a favor and read this novel (and carefully), it will not disappoint and it will leave you thinking for a long time to come.

Jake Mohlman

For anyone who spent days in the nightmarish thrall of Perdido Street Station, China Mieville's breathtakingly literate and imaginative monstravaganza, the first question about The Scar must be, was he able do it again? The answer is no, but this turns out to be a good thing.

Particularly in its opening, this sea quest tale disappoints in relation to Perdido Street: though the floating city of Aramada is a marvelous creation, it lacks the incredible density of detail and heights of grotesquerie of New Crobuzon, which here plays a supporting, offstage role. One appreciates Armada without loving and fearing it like New Crobuzon.

Yet as the novel picks up steam we find these feelings precisely mirrored in perfectly named protagonist Bellis Coldwine. As the wickedly sharp plot begins to twist and turn, Mieville again conjures tales of wonder from the far corners of Bas-Lag, provides us with lovingly bizarre set-pieces and characters, and his story begins to fascinate.

The Scar isn't the once in a lifetime book of nightmares Perdido Street Station was, but it is a better novel. The characters are far stronger: Coldwine, Uther Doul, Tanner Sack, Sheckel and Angevine, drive the story rather than vanishing beneath it. The narrative is purposeful, surprising and satisfying. Mieville has taken his protean talents of worldbuilding and description and harnessed them to a serious, adult story.

Perdido Street, for all its genre-blending, was a horror story at heart. The Scar is less gruesome and nihlistic, though still refreshingly far from sentimental. It's palette and worldview are broader, its characters its heart. One could argue that among its few flaws, the book is too brief -- I could have gladly learned more of The Lovers, the Brucolac.

With this intelligent, exhilarating adventure story, Mieville stakes his claim as a first rate novelist -- no apologizing for genre -- he's the real thing.

THE SCAR is even more original and twice as artful as Mieville's previous PERDIDO STREET STATION. If you like great writing, get it. If you like wondrous, original, vivid imaginary worlds, get it. I haven't seen such a marvelous imaginary world in years.

However, if you like characters who set out to make a positive difference in their world and succeed, don't get this book. Mieville likes to write about good guys who aren't really good and who lose even when they win. If he had to do a Churchill biography he'd write about everything except World War II. If he had to do a Presidential biography he'd choose Clinton over Lincoln or Washington every time.

I think he prefers to close his eyes to heroes.

But the world he creates in THE SCAR is gorgeous. It's wonderful. A floating city, a whale as a steed, two different kinds of underwater civilizations, battles with magic and ironclads and airships, an isle of mosquito people, catcus pirates, a magic based on probability theory and oil drilling as a means of magical power--there's just so much stuff in this book. If you want a world you haven't seen before, one wonderfully written, full of life, completely different and completely believable--this is for you.

It's got drama, too, plenty of it, even if Mieville likes to put lots of depressing bits in alongside the successes. There's heroism and war and titan-scale engineering and mysterious magic.

Did I mention that this book is packed full of stuff? And that the world is wonderfully original?

THE SCAR is set in the same universe as PERDIDO STREET STATION, but it goes leagues beyond that in quality. It's the tale, more or less, of a woman who gets hijacked to a fantastic city whose rulers are embarked on an even more fantastic quest, a quest she gets caught up in and that puts half the rest of the world at war with the city -- not to mention the battles within the city itself...

If you want a book that'll leave you smiling, go find some other book. Mieville's too in love with misfortune. His main characters are pretty ordinary people, and even if he lets the good guys more or less win, he leaves you feeling that the characters you were reading about have been left used and broken and mostly defeated. He can't stand to imagine triumph as a good thing. But if you want a world that will absolutely blow your mind and plenty of scenes to leave you breathless, get THE SCAR.

China Miéville proved himself a master of atmospheric dark fiction with his previous two novels, and the award-winning British author just keeps getting better. THE SCAR, set in the same world as PERDIDO STREET STATION, introduces the coolest setting ever--the floating, libertarian city of Armada. New Crobuzoners Bellis Coldwine and Tanner Sack--two of the best antiheroes in modern fantasy--are pressganged by Armadan pirates and put to work on a strange plan that forces them to confront terrifying mosquito-people, delve into thaumaturgical secrets, and parlay with a deadly killer wielding a sort of quantum sword. Miéville reveals the whole truth of what's going on with Armada achingly slowly, letting the reader soak luxuriously in a bath of grotesque detail and internecine intrigue as vast as the ocean. The book's titular theme--scars--is woven throughout, in character, setting, and plot, with a subtle touch. Miéville perfectly blends material horror, complex characters, and a delicious steampunk milieu to create another brilliant novel.

I was glad to see a return to the Bas Lag world. _The Scar_ is not a sequel to _Perdido Street Station_ but picks up tangentially where the first book left off.

Instead of setting the action again in New Crobuzon, Mieville instead turns his attention to the great oceans that surround the city. When linguist Bellis Coldwine decides that pressure from the authorities necessitates an extended trip to the colonies, she doesn't expect exactly how extended it's going to be.

I was not expecting to love _The Scar_ as much as I did. I had problem with the first novel in that while I found the imagination to be masterful I found the plotting less satisfying. This book corrects any deficiencies that the first book might have had and then some. I was fascinated by the details of Armada, found the characters more than clever gimmicks, and simply could not stop reading to find out what was going to happen.

Great book. Recommended.

The Scar is another massive work of contemporary urban baroque fantasy by the extraorinarily talented if rather undisciplined China Mieville.

Set in the same world as Perdido Street Station, the protagonist, Bella Coldwine, is captured whilst fleeing the great city of New Crobuzon by sea, and made an unwilling citizen of the legendary floating pirate city of Armada. This extraordinary place is made up of the remains of captured ships lashed together into a fantastically varied marine metropolis, each district built around a particular large vessel, which seems to lend its character to the government and culture of the district. And what variations they are! From democracies through dictatorships to an area that voluntarily pays for its security in blood to its vampire master, the variety of political systems is both crucial to the plot and provides rich and complex lessons for our own societies.

The whole ungainly melange is given some sense of unity through the ultimate leadership of the enigmatic 'Lovers' - whose strange hold on the city is combined with a publically visible sado-masochistic scaring. The mysterious plans of the Lovers for Armada involving the harnessing of a mythical transdimensional Leviathan form the basis for the plot, along with Bellis' own attempts to escape the flottila. In this she becomes involved with the machinations of underground politics and espionage and inevitably strays way beyond her depth.

As in Perdido Street Station, the sheer inventivenes of Mieville is crazed and marvellous: an island of mosquito people whose mindless thirst for human nourishment sometimes outweighs their rationality; humans 'remade' to work underwater; terrifying leech-like beings from other dimensions who can 'swim' through air... and above all the great ramshackle mass of Armada itself, a city even more edgy and dangerous than New Crobuzon.

Mieville's writing is rich and luscious, and the breadth of his invention is matched by the depth of his intelligence. As previous reviewers have pointed out, this book is saturated in metaphors of scars, and the characters are diverse, dangerous and flawed with wonderfully evocative names that echo the melodrama of Dickens and the eccentricity of Mervyn Peake.

So what's wrong with it?

The ending. The same thing that marred Perdido Street Station. It is almost as if Mieville charges headlong through his plot with invention scattering in his path and then... he just stops. This could be conceived of as subverting traditional fantasty plot structures, but I think he just can't think of satisfactory ways to resolve a narrative yet. Still, a brave and magnificent book.

_The Scar_ has a lot in common with Mieville's previous novel, _Perdido Street Station_. It's set in the same world, Bas Lag, where science and magic are inexorably intertwined and while it's not a sequel to _PSS_ it does allude to certain events from that novel. It's got the same richly descriptive style that fills out every dark corner in incredible detail, yet retains a level of readability that I associate with lighter, less "literary" books. It's thick, but at the same time it flies by far more quickly than an 800-page book should. It demands your full attention - skim it and you'll become hopelessly lost in the seemingly never-ending series of twists and reversals on which the plot hangs.

The characters also share a certain ambiguity, where the good guys do bad things, and the bad guys turn out to be...well, you get the picture. However, unlike _PSS_ there's no attempt to portray the central character as a hero (albeit a hero who is hopelessly flawed). The protagonist, Bella Coldwine, is unlikable from the very start - it's almost her chief characteristic - and her morals center entirely on her own well-being. She's not good, she's not evil, she's just herself. She's also one of only a handful of characters whose personalities and motivations you're made fully aware of - many of the characters (some fairly major) remain ciphers throughout, others are wrapped in so many layers of intrigue you can never be quite sure if you've reached the center.

If _The Scar_ has a weakness it's the rather anti-climactic ending, which is unsatisfying compared to its predecessor. However, getting to that ending is sufficiently fascinating in itself, as Mieville fills out the bizarre and unique world he first showed us a small corner of in _PSS_, that this almost doesn't matter. An unsatisfying ending, perhaps, but the book as a whole is a very satisfying read.

For those who've read neither _The Scar_ or _Perdido Street Station_ and are warily eyeing reviews that mention "SF" and "magic", it's worth mentioning that the world Mieville portrays is completely unlike anything else I've encountered, and completely free of wizards, hobbits, spaceships, and so forth. There's also no attempt to portray Bas Lag as an alternate reality where X is real, or Y did or didn't happen, it's a completely different reality where some of the people just happen to look vaguely familiar, and some of the people just happen to act in familiar ways (and the two don't necessarily overlap). The plots themselves revolve around character and circumstance, and for the most part the strangeness of the universe adds texture and color but doesn't drive the story. It's not too hard to re-imagine a contemporary, "real world" version of these books that would be readable and entertaining. However, while the plots and characters are capable of standing outside of Mieville's universe, it's such a well-imagined and vividly described world, it'd be a crying shame to do so.

Mieville has done it again. In `Perdido Street Station', China Mieville wrote a piece of literary artwork, and The Scar carries on his tradition of excellence and distinctiveness, trudging far ahead of traditional Science Fiction, Fantasy, Cyberpunk, or Horror. Unique is too simple a word to describe the lushness of Mieville's works.

With `Perdido Street Station', we plunged deep into the heart of the teeming city of New Crobuzon, following a scientist named Isaac through a deadly and startling discovery. The Scar takes place years later, following a former lover of Isaac's named Bellis Coldwine as she flees New Crobuzon and its militia.

Taking passage on the ship Terpsichoria as a linguist/translator, hoping to find a new life in the distant colony of Nova Esperium, she is horrified when the pirates of the floating city of Armada overtake the Terpsichoria and kill all the ranking officers. The passengers, along with the hold filled with Remade prisoners, are taken to Armada and forced to make a new life on the strange conglomeration of lashed together ships turned into a makeshift city.

Bellis is homeless and friendless, and deeply resentful of Armada for forcing her to live out her life in Armada. Out of the handful of people she knows, Uther Doul, a strange and forbidding warrior, Johannes Tearfly, a naturalist, and Silas Fennec, a shady man with a shady past and shady plans. The vast flotilla is divided into districts, one of which is run by The Brucolac, a Vampir, one of my favorite characters. We will also follow the life of Tanner Sack, one of the Remade prisoners that had been aboard the Terpsichoria with Bellis, who finds his life on Armada much better than what awaited him in Nova Esperium.

In the high district of Garwater are The Lovers, a male and female who run Armada together in public, and in private scar themselves with mirror image patterns. The Lovers have conceived the idea of harnessing an avanc, a monster of the sea, and use its power to travel to The Scar, a place where the world of Bas Lag was ruptured long ago.

With The Scar, as it was with `Perdido Street Station', the city of Armada becomes a character as much as the people and Remade that populate it. Mieville writes so well that you can smell and taste and feel the city, its beauty and its corruption, and will find yourself as drawn into its journey as if you yourself lived there.

One of the absolute high points that must be mentioned is Armada's journey to a strange island where the mosquito people called Anophelii live. Only a prodigious and fecund mind could come up with such an astonishing creature, the males gentle and intelligent and the females ravenously dangerous.

There is simply too much in this book to even begin to describe its depth and vision, it is simply a book that you must pick up and read thoroughly. It has tension, adventure, splendor, mythological vision, action, betrayal, twists, and a vivid depth that few authors have ever been capable of achieving. The Scar is not a beach or travel read, this is a book that deserves the armchair, a piece of chocolate cheesecake, a rich ruby port, and a cup of aromatic coffee. If you purchase one book this year, make it The Scar, it is absolutely worth the long savoring it deserves. Enjoy!

This new novel is set in the same world as Perdido Street Station, Bas Lag, and as such fits loosely into that vague subgenre sometimes called "Science Fantasy". The Scar opens with mysterious doings in the ocean, and then we meet the noted linguist Bellis Coldwine, who is fleeing New Crobuzon to the colony city of Nova Esperancia.

The ship carrying Bellis Coldwine (as well as ocean biologist Johannes Tearfly and a group of Remade prisoners including a man named Tanner Sack) does not get very far, though, before it is overtaken by pirates from the mysterious floating city Armada. Bellis, Johannes, and the other passengers and prisoners are taken to Armada, where they are informed they will live the rest of their lives. They cannot leave the floating city, but they will otherwise be allowed full citizenship. Tanner Sack and Johannes accept fairly eagerly, but Bellis is desperate to have a chance to return to her beloved home city. Soon she falls into league with the mysterious Silas Fennec, a spy from New Crobuzon who is as desperate as she to return home, in his case because he has information of a coming attack on their city. It becomes clear that the leaders of Armada are engaged in a mysterious project, and Bellis becomes a key figure when she finds a crucial book in a language that she is a leading expert in. She learns that Armada is planning to harness a huge sea creature called an avanc, and to have the avanc tow the floating city to the dangerous rift in reality called the Scar, where it might be possible to do "Probability Mining". More importantly to her and Fennec, her new influence gives her the chance to get a message Fennec has prepared back to New Crobuzon.

The story takes further twists and turns from there -- it's very intelligently plotted, with the motivations of the characters well portrayed, and with plot elements that seem weak later revealed, after a twist or two, to make much more sense. But it's not the plot that is the key to enjoying the book. The characters are also fascinating. Besides Bellis and Tanner and Fennec, there are such Armadan figures as the symetrically scarred Lovers; Uther Doul, their dour and enigmatic bodyguard; and the Brucolac, a vampir, and a fairly conventional one, but still strikingly portrayed. As in Perdido Street Station, Mieville invents fascinating part-human species, hybrids of humans and other forms, in this book most strikingly the anophelii, mosquito men, and, more scarily and affectingly, mosquito women.

In the end it is Mieville's fervent, sometimes overheated, imagination, that drives the book. His descriptions of cruel and dirty places, and odd creatures, are endless intriguing. Yes, he sometimes luxuriates overmuch in grotesquerie, but I suspect any application of discipline to his imagination would lose us more neat visions than we might gain by avoiding the occasional silliness or vulgarness. The book is also a bit too long -- some of this is the author's delight in showing us this or that cool gross notion he has had, but also I think his sense of pace is weak. The other weakness is one fairly common in certain fantasy: when so many weird magical things are allowed, on occasion it seems that things happen, or characters gain powers, for reasons of the plot only. But though the book is a bit overlong, it remains compelling reading, and though the magical happenings aren't always fully consistent, they really don't strain suspension of disbelief too much: on the whole, this is another outstanding effort from Mieville. I'd rank it about even with Perdido Street Station, and perhaps slightly better on the grounds that the plot really is worked out quite well, with plenty of surprises and an honest, satisfying, resolution.

I really wanted to love this book.

However, I did not.

The process of reading it was one of frustration and irritation, because the author is so obviously capable of writing better than this. At least, I hope so, for he is a wordsmith of fantastic ability, whose sentences thrum with surreal vision and passion.

The descriptive passages were thrillingly vivid and entrancing. The setting of Bas-lag is minutely rendered in sense-stirring detail, though the marriage of science fiction and fantasy elements was a bit heavy-handed and less than deftly done. (I had to keep telling myself, in the case of the mosquito women that this was -not- science fiction, so that I could quiet my mind which kept screaming: "But they shouldn't be able to fly! Exsanguinated pigs do not look like that! ARGH!")

The main reason I give this book only three stars, (and considered giving it two stars) was because I found the characters to be dull and one-dimensional and the plot to be ludicrous, trite and ponderously slow-moving. Bellis Coldwater has to be the least likeable protagonist I have been faced with recently, and her entire story is one of incapability, manipulation and quite frankly, stupidity. She had absolutely no likeable qualities, so I never could connect with her in the slightest. The most likeable character was killed, for no good purpose, except to torture the second most likeable character a bit more; I felt that was a cheap shot for an author whose description leads me to believe that he is more emotionally sensitive than that.

Finally, the plot, which is full of senseless violence and gore, is one where, in the end, nothing really happens. No one really changes or is changed by this plot, no epiphanies are made, no life lessons learned. Just a quick jaunt to the end of the universe to turn around and go home again, and return to the status quo. What in the name of Theodore Sturgeon was that about?

Basically, this book is not about people, it is about themes, and a beautifully rendered setting. Which, as far as I am concerned, does not a fine novel make.

The masters of science fiction, such as Asimov, Bradbury, leGuin and Sturgeon, all stated (in one way or another) that the purpose of science fiction and fantasy literature isn't to tell stories about fantastical worlds, robots and crazy adventures. The purpose of this literature is to tell stories about people, real people, and to ask questions that cannot be asked in a historical or modern setting.

Unfortunately, "The Scar" tells no story, has no interesting people, and asks few fascinating questions.

I really hope the author keeps writing, though. Because when his prose is that gorgeous, I know that eventually he is going to tell me a magnificent story one day.