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China Miéville

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The Scar (Bas-Lag) Paperback – June 25, 2002

by China Miéville (Author)

4.5 1,771 ratings

Book 2 of 3: Bas-Lag

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A mythmaker of the highest order, China Miéville has emblazoned the fantasy novel with fresh language, startling images, and stunning originality. Set in the same sprawling world of Miéville’s Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning novel, Perdido Street Station, this latest epic introduces a whole new cast of intriguing characters and dazzling creations.

Aboard a vast seafaring vessel, a band of prisoners and slaves, their bodies remade into grotesque biological oddities, is being transported to the fledgling colony of New Crobuzon. But the journey is not theirs alone. They are joined by a handful of travelers, each with a reason for fleeing the city. Among them is Bellis Coldwine, a renowned linguist whose services as an interpreter grant her passage—and escape from horrific punishment. For she is linked to Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, the brilliant renegade scientist who has unwittingly unleashed a nightmare upon New Crobuzon.

For Bellis, the plan is clear: live among the new frontiersmen of the colony until it is safe to return home. But when the ship is besieged by pirates on the Swollen Ocean, the senior officers are summarily executed. The surviving passengers are brought to Armada, a city constructed from the hulls of pirated ships, a floating, landless mass ruled by the bizarre duality called the Lovers. On Armada, everyone is given work, and even Remades live as equals to humans, Cactae, and Cray. Yet no one may ever leave.

Lonely and embittered in her captivity, Bellis knows that to show dissent is a death sentence. Instead, she must furtively seek information about Armada’s agenda. The answer lies in the dark, amorphous shapes that float undetected miles below the waters—terrifying entities with a singular, chilling mission. . . .

China Miéville is a writer for a new era—and The Scar is a luminous, brilliantly imagined novel that is nothing short of spectacular.

Book 2 of 3

Bas-Lag
Print length

656 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Del Rey
Publication date

June 25, 2002
Dimensions

6.13 x 1.44 x 9.23 inches
ISBN-10

0345444388
ISBN-13

978-0345444387
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this stand-alone novel set in the same monster-haunted universe as last year's much-praised Perdido Street Station, British author Mieville, one of the most talented new writers in the field, takes us on a gripping hunt to capture a magical sea-creature so large that it could snack on Moby Dick, and that's just for starters. Armada, a floating city made up of the hulls of thousands of captured vessels, travels slowly across the world of Bas-Lag, sending out its pirate ships to prey on the unwary, gradually assembling the supplies and captive personnel it needs to create a stupendous work of dark magic. Bellis Coldwine, an embittered, lonely woman, exiled from the great city of New Crobuzon, is merely one of a host of people accidentally trapped in Armada's far-flung net, but she soon finds herself playing a vital role in the byzantine plans of the city's half-mad rulers. The author creates a marvelously detailed floating civilization filled with dark, eccentric characters worthy of Mervyn Peake or Charles Dickens, including the aptly named Coldwine, a translator who has devoted much of her life to dead languages; Uther Doul, the superhuman soldier/scholar who refuses to do anything more than follow orders; and Silas Fennec, the secret agent whose perverse magic has made him something more and less than human. Together they sail through treacherous, magic-ridden seas, on a quest for the Scar, a place where reality mutates and all things become possible. This is state-of-the-art dark fantasy and a likely candidate for any number of award nominations. (July 2). Forecast: Perdido Street Station won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the British Fantasy Award. A major publicity push including a six-city author tour should help win new readers in the U.S.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School-Even better than the author's Perdido Street Station (Del Rey, 2001), The Scar is also set in the alternate world of Bas-Lag, where linguist Bellis Coldwine is fleeing the city of New Crobuzon. On her journey, pirates capture her ship, and she and the slaves onboard are taken to the floating city of Armada, ruled by the twisted Lovers. The Lovers have a plan that will change the lives of more than the inhabitants of Armada forever, and the quest to find the mysterious reality-shifting place called the Scar begins. The world of Bas-Lag is dark and dangerous and its odd and macabre inhabitants are fully formed, however alien they seem. But even if the noir story and characters were merely ordinary, Mieville's writing would set this book apart. If poetry can have internal rhymes, the prose has an internal structure that uses sound and syllable repetitions, resulting in brilliant and biting word combinations that produce a style more analogous to music than to writing. The author's technique is something akin to Lewis Carroll's use of portmanteau. Sophisticated readers will be engrossed not only by the story but also by the very words used to detail the plot, and they will never think of the fantasy genre, or fantasy authors, in quite the same way again.
Jane Halsall, McHenry Public Library District, IL
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

A ship bearing prisoners and several persons fleeing New Crobuzon for their own dire reasons stops to pick up a mysterious figure, who has the course altered to return to New Crobuzon. Later, Bellis Coldwine is writing a letter, and in the holds, prisoner Tanner Sack is telling a cabin boy stories, when the ship is overtaken and captured by pirates from the great, cobbled-together floating city of Armada. Only the fleeing passengers and the prisoners are spared, on the assumption that they have no lingering loyalty to New Crobuzon. Wrong supposition about Bellis, who can't be reconciled to life in Armada, which, when the sinister plans of the scarred Lovers, who lead the greater part of the place, start coming to light, just gets stranger and more dangerous. This complicated fantasy seemingly could go in any number of directions and doesn't end up in quite the places a reader expects it to. Armada, a vibrant creation, with the uncertainties of its press-ganged residents and the machinations of its politics, makes this compelling reading. Regina Schroeder
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From the Inside Flap

A mythmaker of the highest order, China Miéville has emblazoned the fantasy novel with fresh language, startling images, and stunning originality. Set in the same sprawling world of Miéville's Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning novel, Perdido Street Station, this latest epic introduces a whole new cast of intriguing characters and dazzling creations.

Aboard a vast seafaring vessel, a band of prisoners and slaves, their bodies remade into grotesque biological oddities, is being transported to the fledgling colony of New Crobuzon. But the journey is not theirs alone. They are joined by a handful of travelers, each with a reason for fleeing the city. Among them is Bellis Coldwine, a renowned linguist whose services as an interpreter grant her passage—and escape from horrific punishment. For she is linked to Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, the brilliant renegade scientist who has unwittingly unleashed a nightmare upon New Crobuzon.

For Bellis, the plan is clear: live among the new frontiersmen of the colony until it is safe to return home. But when the ship is besieged by pirates on the Swollen Ocean, the senior officers are summarily executed. The surviving passengers are brought to Armada, a city constructed from the hulls of pirated ships, a floating, landless mass ruled by the bizarre duality called the Lovers. On Armada, everyone is given work, and even Remades live as equals to humans, Cactae, and Cray. Yet no one may ever leave.

Lonely and embittered in her captivity, Bellis knows that to show dissent is a death sentence. Instead, she must furtively seek information about Armada's agenda. The answer lies in the dark, amorphous shapes that float undetected miles below the waters—terrifying entities with a singular, chilling mission. . . .

China Miéville is a writer for a new era—and The Scar is a luminous, brilliantly imagined novel that is nothing short of spectacular.

From the Back Cover

of the highest order, China Miéville has emblazoned the fantasy novel with fresh language, startling images, and stunning originality. Set in the same sprawling world of Miéville’s Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning novel, Perdido Street Station, this latest epic introduces a whole new cast of intriguing characters and dazzling creations.

Aboard a vast seafaring vessel, a band of prisoners and slaves, their bodies remade into grotesque biological oddities, is being transported to the fledgling colony of New Crobuzon. But the journey is not theirs alone. They are joined by a handful of travelers, each with a reason for fleeing the city. Among them is Bellis Coldwine, a renowned linguist whose services as an interpreter grant her passage—and escape from horrific punishment. For she is linked to Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, the brilliant renegade scientist who has unwittingly unleashed a nightmare upon New Crobuzon.

For Bellis, the plan is clear: li

About the Author

China Miéville was born in London in 1972. When he was eighteen, he lived and taught English in Egypt, where he developed an interest in Arab culture and Middle Eastern politics. Miéville has a B.A. in social anthropology from Cambridge and a master’s with distinction from the London School of Economics. His first novel, King Rat, was nominated for both an International Horror Guild Award and the Bram Stoker Prize. Perdido Street Station won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and was nominated for a British Science Fiction Association Award. He lives in England.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

It is only ten miles beyond the city that the river loses its momentum, drooling into the brackish estuary that feeds Iron Bay.

The boats that make the eastward journey out of New Crobuzon enter a lower landscape. To the south there are huts and rotten little jetties, from where rural laborers fish to supplement monotonous diets. Their children wave at travelers, warily. Occasionally there is a knoll of rock or a small copse of darkwood trees, places that defy cultivation, but mostly the land is clear of stones.

From the decks, sailors can see over the fringe of hedgerow and trees and bramble to a tract of fields. This is the stubby end of the Grain Spiral, the long curl of farmland that feeds the city. Men and women can be seen among the crops, or plowing the black earth, or burning the stubble—depending on the season. Barges putter weirdly between fields, on canals hidden by banks of earth and vegetation. They go endlessly between the metropolis and the estates. They bring chymicals and fuel, stone and cement and luxuries to the country. They return to the city past acres of cultivation studded with hamlets, great houses, and mills, with sack upon sack of grain and meat.

The transport never stops. New Crobuzon is insatiable.

The north bank of the Gross Tar is wilder.

It is a long expanse of scrub and marsh. It stretches out for more than eighty miles, till the foothills and low mountains that creep at it from the west cover it completely. Ringed by the river, the mountains, and the sea, the rocky scrubland is an empty place. If there are inhabitants other than the birds, they stay out of sight.

Bellis Coldwine took her passage on an east-bound boat in the last quarter of the year, at a time of constant rain. The fields she saw were cold mud. The half-bare trees dripped. Their silhouettes looked wetly inked onto the clouds.

Later, when she thought back to that miserable time, Bellis was shaken by the detail of her memories. She could recall the formation of a flock of geese that passed over the boat, barking; the stench of sap and earth; the slate shade of the sky. She remembered searching the hedgerow with her eyes but seeing no one. Only threads of woodsmoke in the soaking air, and squat houses shuttered against weather.

The subdued movement of greenery in the wind.

She had stood on the deck enveloped in her shawl and watched and listened for children’s games or anglers, or for someone tending one of the battered kitchen gardens she saw. But she heard only feral birds. The only human forms she saw were scarecrows, their rudimentary features impassive.

It had not been a long journey, but the memory of it filled her like infection. She had felt tethered by time to the city behind her, so that the minutes stretched out taut as she moved away, and slowed the farther she got, dragging out her little voyage.

And then they had snapped, and she had found herself catapulted here, now, alone and away from home.

Much later, when she was miles from everything she knew, Bellis would wake, astonished that it was not the city itself, her home for more than forty years, that she dreamed of. It was that little stretch of river, that weatherbeaten corridor of country that had surrounded her for less than half a day.

In a quiet stretch of water, a few hundred feet from the rocky shore of Iron Bay, three decrepit ships were moored. Their anchors were rooted deep in silt. The chains that attached them were scabbed with years of barnacles.

They were unseaworthy, smeared bitumen-black, with big wooden structures built precariously at the stern and bow. Their masts were stumps. Their chimneys were cold and crusted with old guano.

The ships were close together. They were ringed with buoys strung together with barbed chain, above and below the water. The three old vessels were enclosed in their own patch of sea, unmoved by any currents.

They drew the eye. They were watched.

In another ship some distance away, Bellis raised herself to her porthole and looked out at them, as she had done several times over the previous hours. She folded her arms tight below her breasts and bent forward toward the glass.

Her berth seemed quite still. The movement of the sea beneath her was slow and slight enough to be imperceptible.

The sky was flint-grey and sodden. The shoreline and the rock hills that ringed Iron Bay looked worn and very cold, patched with crabgrass and pale saline ferns.

Those wooden hulks on the water were the darkest things visible.

Bellis sat slowly back on her bunk and picked up her letter. It was written like a diary; lines or paragraphs separated by dates. As she read over what she had last written she opened a tin box of prerolled cigarillos and matches. She lit up and inhaled deeply, pulling a fountain pen from her pocket and adding several words in a terse hand before she breathed the smoke away.

Skullday 26th Rinden 1779. Aboard the Terpsichoria It is nearly a week since we left the mooring in Tarmuth, and I am glad to have gone. It is an ugly, violent town.

I spent my nights in my lodgings, as advised, but my days were my own. I saw what there was to the place. It is ribbon-thin, a strip of industry that juts a mile or so north and south of the estuary, split by the water. Every day, the few thousand residents are joined by huge numbers who come from the city at dawn, making their way from New Crobuzon in boat- and cartloads to work. Every night the bars and bordellos are full of foreign sailors on brief shore leave.

Most reputable ships, I am told, travel the extra miles to New Crobuzon itself, to unload in the Kelltree docks. Tarmuth docks have not worked at more than half-capacity for two hundred years. It is only tramp steamers and freebooters that unload there—their cargoes will end up in the city just the same, but they have neither the time nor the money for the extra miles and the higher duty imposed by official channels.

There are always ships. Iron Bay is full of ships—breaking off from long journeys, sheltering from the sea. Merchant boats from Gnurr Kett and Khadoh and Shankell, on their way to or from New Crobuzon, moored near enough Tarmuth for their crews to relax. Sometimes, far out in the middle of the bay, I saw seawyrms released from the bridles of chariot-ships, playing and hunting.

The economy of Tarmuth is more than prostitution and piracy. The town is full of industrial yards and sidings. It lives as it has for centuries, on the building of ships. The shoreline is punctuated with scores of shipyards, building slipways like weird forests of vertical girders. In some loom ghostly half-completed vessels. The work is ceaseless, loud, and filthy.

The streets are crisscrossed with little private railways that take timber or fuel or whatever from one side of Tarmuth to the other. Each different company has built its own line to link its various concerns, and each is jealously guarded. The town is an idiotic tangle of railways, all replicating each other’s journeys.

I don’t know if you know this. I don’t know if you have visited this town.

The people here have an ambivalent relationship with New Crobuzon. Tarmuth could not exist a solitary day without the patronage of the capital. They know it and resent it. Their surly independence is an affectation.

I had to stay there almost three weeks. The captain of the Terpsichoria was shocked when I told him I would join him in Tarmuth itself, rather than sailing with him from New Crobuzon, but I insisted, as I had to. My position on this ship was conditional on a knowledge of Salkrikaltor Cray, which I falsely claimed. I had less than a month until we sailed, to make my lie a truth.

I made arrangements. I spent my days in Tarmuth in the company of one Marikkatch, an elderly he-cray who had agreed to act as my tutor. Every day I would walk to the salt canals of the cray quarter. I would sit on the low balcony that circled his room, and he would settle his armored underbody on some submerged furnishing and scratch and twitch his scrawny human chest, haranguing me from the water.

It was hard. He does not read. He is not a trained teacher. He stays in the town only because some accident or predator has maimed him, tearing off all but one leg from his left side, so that he can no longer hunt even the sluggish fish of Iron Bay. It might make a better story to claim that I had affection for him, that he is a lovable, cantankerous old gentleman, but he is a shit and a bore. I could make no complaints, however. I had no choice but to concentrate, to effect a few focus hexes, will myself into the language trance (and oh! how hard that was! I have left it so long my mind has grown fat and disgusting!) and drink in every word he gave me.

It was hurried and unsystematic—it was a mess, a bloody mess—but by the time the Terpsichoria tied up in the harbor I had a working understanding of his clicking tongue.

I left the embittered old bastard to his stagnant water, quit my lodgings there, and came to my cabin—this cabin from where I write.

We sailed away from Tarmuth port on the morning of Dustday, heading slowly toward the deserted southern shores of Iron Bay, twenty miles from town. In careful formation at strategic points around the edge of the bay, in quiet spots by rugged land and pine forests, I spotted ships. No one will speak of them. I know they are the ships of the New Crobuzon government. Privateers and others.

It is now Skullday.

On Chainday I was able to persuade the captain to let me disembark, and I spent the morning on the shore. Iron Bay is drab, but anything is better than the damned ship. I am beginning to doubt that it is an improvement on Tarmuth. I am driven to bedlam by the incessant, moronic slap of waves.

Two taciturn crewmen rowed me ashore, watching without pity as I stepped over the edge of the little boat and walked the last few feet through freezing surf. My boots are still stiff and salt-stained.

I sat on the pebbles and threw stones into the water. I read some of the long, bad novel I found on board. I watched the ship. It is moored close to the prisons, so that our captain can easily entertain and converse with the lieutenant-gaolers. I watched the prison-ships themselves. There was no movement from their decks, from behind their portholes. There is never any movement.

I swear, I do not know if I can do this. I miss you, and New Crobuzon.

I remember my journey.

It is hard to believe that it is only ten miles from the city to the godsforsaken sea.

There was a knocking at the door of the tiny cabin. Bellis’ lips pursed, and she waved her sheaf of paper to dry it. Unhurriedly she folded it and replaced it in the chest containing her belongings. She drew her knees up a little higher and played with her pen, watching as the door opened.

A nun stood in the threshold, her arms braced at either side of the doorway.

“Miss Coldwine,” she said uncertainly. “May I come in?”

“It’s your cabin too, Sister,” said Bellis quietly. Her pen spun over and around her thumb. It was a neurotic little trick she had perfected at university.

Sister Meriope shuffled forward a little and sat on the solitary chair. She smoothed her dark russet habit around her, fiddled with her wimple.

“It has been some days now since we became cabin-mates, Miss Coldwine,” Sister Meriope began, “and I do not feel . . . as if I yet know you at all. And this is not a situation I would wish to continue. As we are to be traveling and living together for many weeks . . . some companionship, some closeness, could only make those days easier . . .” Her voice failed, and she knotted her hands.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Del Rey (June 25, 2002)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 656 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0345444388
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0345444387
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.6 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.13 x 1.44 x 9.23 inches

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China Miéville

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China Miéville lives and works in London. He is three-time winner of the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award (Perdido Street Station, Iron Council and The City & The City) and has also won the British Fantasy Award twice (Perdido Street Station and The Scar). The City & The City, an existential thriller, was published in 2009 to dazzling critical acclaim and drew comparison with the works of Kafka and Orwell (The Times) and Philip K. Dick (Guardian).

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Brian Driver

THE SCAR Will Leave Its Mark Upon You

Reviewed in the United States on May 12, 2013

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THERE ARE NO SPOILERS WITHIN!

This is a book like no other...and forgive me for "going on" a bit with my honorifics.

Indeed, China Mieville is unlike any other author I have ever read. He writes with the ease of a bird in flight, conveying the remarkable verbal agility of a high wire act. Reading a book by him is like taking a trip that somehow involves senses you never knew you had, going places and meeting beings you never even imagined existed. He is a wordsmith who has both an immense vocabulary and a slipstream ease at creating terms that suit his characters and their actions.

THE SCAR is a wonder; in it you will meet characters who will crawl under your skin and live inside. It is a book that takes some time to tell its tale, but it does so with uncanny poise and beauty. In Bas-Lag he has created an immense and preternaturally "living" world within the text of three novels - the first was Perdido Street Station , this is the second, and the third is Iron Council - yet one does not depend upon the other. While THE SCAR does refer to some events and one character within PERDIDO, it is merely for a motivation; it is only briefly referred to, and no knowledge of that text is necessary. All can be loosely qualified as steampunk, but Mieville really belongs to his own category. Perhaps his closest peer is Jeff VanderMeer, of City of Saints and Madmen .

To try to condense the events within this novel into a couple of sentences is nearly impossible, so I will do what I can to simply touch upon a few of the myriad events that occur within. For reasons that will be explained later within your reading of the novel, Bellis Coldwine is running from the city of New Crobuzon (an amazingly complex and beautiful city that lives and breathes more fully in PERDIDO), and has signed on aboard the merchant ship Terpsichoria as its official interpreter. Yet her world is suddenly thrown into a maelstrom when the Terpsichoria is captured by pirates and she and her fellow passengers are transported to the city of Armada, a gigantic floating city of ships acquired by piracy over the course of the last millennium, a city so large that it spans more than a mile in any direction. With a population of over 100 thousand it is not only home to a menagerie of diverse races and beings, it is ruled upon by two strange, scarred people known as the Lovers, and enforced by a brutal, unfathomable man named Uther Doul. As attempting to escape carries a death sentence, Bellis soon realizes this is very likely where she will live forever more.

Yet her new life is complicated when the city's leaders discover her talent as an interpreter, and she is once more pressed into service. In this manner, she (and we) will soon discover what those who lead Armada have in mind for their city...their plans are so big, so bizarre, that they will need half of the book and all the scientists and conjurers and exotic substances they can muster just to BEGIN to accomplish it. After that, their journey will take them to a place so strange, so hostile, that it could very well mean the death of their entire population.

Yet Mieville is one of those authors whose books are as much about the journey as they are the destination. Even if one were able to fully describe the plot of the story it would tell no more of the story than pointing at a map would serve as the description of an expedition there. This author is one of the very few I have ever read who can pack a universe of meaning into a sentence, an author whose writing is of a caliber that I have rarely seen. He has an uncanny ability to reference places and people and races and events so meticulously you will believe these places actually exist, and that Mieville has lived there. And his imagination is staggering: his world is one of not only human, but khepri (a people with human bodies, insect heads), cactacae (a race of sentient, spiny, thick skinned cacti), cray (a race of people with exoskeletons and pincher arms), scabmettlers (a race whose blood coagulates so fast and dense that it becomes their armor), the remade (a class of people, usually the unwilling, who are deliberately mutilated or "re-made" to suit some punitive whim of their punishers, and even the ab-dead (otherwise known as vampirs or, as the author puts it, those with "photophobic haemophagy"). There are many others - in fact, I've STILL left OUT three races who impact the citizens of Armada - and this book - in extremely dynamic ways.

But know this: Mieville reads best if you don't try to speed-read...if you want to experience language used by a master, a man who will take his time to build tension, to create suspense and mood and atmosphere so dense you will feel it coalesce against your skin. But one thing Mieville will not do is waste your time: every word is carefully picked, used, and built upon...and they will sing to those willing to listen. Be aware, also, that his book does not shy away from things that are unpleasant; his books are not specifically violent, but violence happens often within them. They are not, however, salacious; any descriptions within are as fully actualized and "true" in and of themselves as can be...if that includes violence, so be it. But oddly enough Mieville does not really write "sex" scenes...it is one of the few areas he alludes to but leaves to the imagination of the reader.

THE SCAR is wonderful fiction. Is it as good as PERDIDO? I'm willing to say yes, though in different ways. If you are reading Mieville (as I was) because you love the author, YES, this book is every bit as good; he creates characters who live as fully as they do. Bellis is a wonderful creation, and is well named: she is fetching, but hard, even cold to those who displease her. And much displeases her - she is not shy when it comes to stating what she wants, nor shy about getting it. But what is best for us the reader is that she is unsparingly honest in her narration...she is no femme fatale affecting the capricious whimsy of her gentler gender to get her way. No, she is a strong, vital character who fights for herself and takes her lumps along with the men. She is a hell of a woman, and a good role model to follow. I think Mieville has excelled with her creation, and she is a good deal of the reason THE SCAR is so good. Though there is one specific "Scar" to which the title refers, there are many more smaller scars that will be worn by characters within this work, but I'll not spoil anything by detailing them. Read and discover them for yourself...it's a wonderful book.
Enjoy.

(NOTE for anyone who wants to give a negative review: please leave a comment to help me do better next time.)

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J. W. Kennedy

Another Fine Adventure

Reviewed in the United States on February 28, 2011

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I'm torn, deciding how many stars to award this one. The plot is brilliantly constructed. Though not a sequel to _Perdido Street Station_, (completely different cast of characters) it does briefly mention the events of the earlier book having happened less than a year previously. _The Scar_ is more focused and the characters are more developed than in _Perdido Street Station_, but the prose is not as carefully polished and the story does not rocket along with such unrelenting intensity. _The Scar_ has plenty of tension, but it is intermittent; I didn't feel like I needed to hang on with both hands the whole time. Giving the characters more emotional depth means the reader can connect with them better, but there is also more opportunity to be maudlin. The ending is sweetly & perfectly poignant, but the climax (a scant 10 pages earlier) is labored & drawn out with dialogue that seems forced and artificial. There were some sex scenes, a few of which bordered on the gratuitous. Plenty of vulgar language and some thoroughly gruesome violence. My biggest problem was the setting: The floating city of Armada, made of lashed-together ships accumulated from the world's navies over centuries of piracy ... it's inherently unbelievable. I realize it is a fantasist's job to make the absurd seem plausible - something which I KNOW China Mieville can do - but when Armada was introduced I felt it was forced upon me without adequate rationalization. The book doesn't have as much nautical lore as I would expect in a story that takes place almost ENTIRELY at sea, which gives the impression that Mieville didn't do a whole lot of research. (Maybe he did, but it doesn't show.) So instead of accepting the premise along with the thousand other impossible things in the book, the concept of the floating city really stuck in my craw.

Once you get past that, it's a really great story with lots of action, violence, steampunk and magic, a cast of interesting characters and an elaborate plot that will keep you engaged right up to the end. It just isn't _perfect_. So, 4 stars.

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Krishna

Only for completists (like me)

Reviewed in India on March 29, 2023

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I'm reading the Bas-Lag series because it is on the schedule of a book club.

I am continuing it despite pretty much hating China Mieville's writing style and the genre being "weird" because I want to understand why his writing is special.

At the end of the second book of the series, I can safely say that I haven't found anything yet. This is more of a disappointment than Perdido Street Station.

I like some of the concepts. But that's it. I wish someone else would have written these concepts into better books. Sigh.

'Kindle Customer'

China Meiville's best-seller.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 13, 2023

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Excellent beginning, under the sea with the spirits of pirates beautifully written. The writer's angst at turning the short story into a novel in company with the story -Excellent middle. Journal of real life getting in the way then - A best selling novel is born. He set a trend with this one.

Rubén

A book

Reviewed in Spain on February 7, 2018

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The book can be read. I dont know what else to write, is a book, not a programmer development kit :S

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sarah

I love this series

Reviewed in Australia on July 30, 2018

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I love this series. I have read the series before with books borrowed from the library. Love them so much I wanted to have my own copies.

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Tanabrus

Una splendida avventura weird in mezzo alle acque

Reviewed in Italy on June 15, 2014

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E’ passato qualche anno (era il settembre del 2010) da quando ho letto il mio primo libro di Miéville.
Si trattava di Perdido Street Station, e per quanto mi fosse piaciuto l’avevo trovato un poco… caotico.
L’autore sembrava quasi perdersi, a tratti, nel mondo fantastico che aveva creato. Si perdeva dietro a descrizioni di creature assurde, strane, folli. Si perdeva dietro alla sua immaginazione, portandoci quasi a fare un giro turistico di New Crozubon, la più grande città di Bas-Lag, senza quasi una meta.

Così è passato un po’ di tempo prima che tornassi su questo mondo, con un libro uscito due anni dopo il primo.
Un libro nettamente migliore, contenendo la stessa prorompente fantasia del primo, ma questa volta l’immaginazione è imbrigliata, sempre funzionale allo scopo, mai lasciata libera di andare per la sua strada.
Il risultato è questo The Scar, una splendida avventura tra pirati e scienziati, una sorta di novello Ventimila leghe sotto i mari dove il Nautilus è Armada, e invece di essere un sottomarino si tratta di una città galleggiante fatta di un’infinità di navi legate insieme.

Armada è una città segreta, in pochi sanno della sua esistenza e ovviamente nessuno la può trovare (anche se un qualche metodo esiste, ovviamente, visto che le navi pirata che partono per le loro missioni riescono sempre a tornare a casa). E’ una città di rifugiati e reietti, un melting-pot culturale che assorbe gli equipaggi delle navi catturate, o almeno le persone di cui si riesce a rompere la lealtà con il loro passato. Le altre, troppo pericolose quindi per la salvezza della città, sono imprigionate.
Armada è una città pirata, divisa in distretti in base alle sue navi principali.
Armada è governata da un consiglio dei capi dei pochi distretti che la costituiscono, tutti molto diversi tra loro: da quello più intellettuale a quello governato dal vampiro Brucolac e dal suo cadre. Fino ad arrivare a Garwater, il distretto più potente, quello più attivo sul fronte della pirateria, dotato del grande dirigibile che funge da vedetta per la città e che vede come suo campione la creatura più potente di tutta Armada, Doul, un misterioso guerriero\prete\studioso imbattibile, armato di una splendida spada di ceramica. Doul è la guardia del corpo della misteriosa coppia che guida Garwater, gli Amanti, i cui corpi sono ricoperti di cicatrici identiche e simmetriche. Masochisti follemente innamorati, legati a tradizioni antiche e assurde di dominio sull’altra persona, desiderosi di unirsi fino a diventare letteralmente una cosa sola.

Armada che naviga nel meraviglioso oceano di Bas-Lag, popolato da creatura affascinanti e stupende, ma anche da insidie misteriose provenienti dalle più profonde oscurità oceaniche.

Arriviamo su Armada quasi subito, dopo pochi capitoli che ci mostrano Bellis Coldwine in fuga da New Crobuzon e diretta a una nuova colonia. Il motivo della fuga è una vecchia storia d’amore con Isaac, il protagonista di Perdido Street Station, in seguito ai cui eventi la milizia cittadina sta braccando, interrogando e probabilmente eliminando tutti coloro che hanno avuto a che fare con lo scienziato. E Bellis non intende venire uccisa per colpa del suo vecchio fidanzato, quindi la fuga.
Sulla nave con lei ci sono altri due protagonisti della storia: Tanner si trova nella stiva, è un Remade incatenato come tutti gli altri, parte del carico umano di prigionieri spediti dalla città nella colonia. Silas viene caricato a bordo durante una sosta, è un personaggio misterioso e pieno di risorse, in possesso di documenti che lo pongono al di sopra del comandante della nave obbligandolo a fare inversione di rotta per tornare a casa: è di vitale importanza per la nazione che lui arrivi quanto prima in patria.

Ovviamente ciò non avverrà, la nave sarà assalita dai pirati e tutti tranne gli ufficiali di grado più alto (che saranno giustiziati sul posto) verranno portati ad Armada. A farsi una nuova vita.

Bellis però non riesce, non vuole adattarsi a questa vita. Sa che a casa stava fuggendo, sa che la città è malata, sa che c’è del marcio. Ma ama New Crobuzon, vuole tornarci. Passa il tempo a pensare a come fare, disdegnando la compagnia di chi invece, catturato con lei, si è già integrato. Come Johannes, uno studioso che risulta essere il motivo per cui la nave è stata abbordata. O come Tanner, che da prigioniero condannato a una condizione di emarginazione a vita è diventato un uomo libero, devoto ad Armada al punto da sottoporsi volontariamente a un nuovo processo di Remade per diventare una creatura totalmente acquatica, in grado quindi di lavorare meglio per la città.

Solo Silas sembra condividere le sue necessità. I due si incontrano spesso, si parlano. E lei scopre che l’uomo è un mercante che agisce da agente per New Crobuzon. E che nella sua ultima missione ha scoperto che un misterioso e terribile popolo acquatico pianifica un’invasione della città. Nei suoi appunti ci sono mappe del loro territorio, indicazioni sulle forze militari, sulle armi, sulle strategie utilizzate. Insieme decidono di fare qualunque cosa per mandare quei piani, quell’avviso alla loro patria.
E sfrutteranno il piano segreto degli Amanti, che Bellis ha scoperto grazie al suo lavoro di bibliotecaria e alla sua amicizia con Johannes: vogliono evocare un Avanc, una creatura mastodontica marina, da un altro piano. E imbrigliarla, controllarla, usarla come mezzo di locomozione per la città.

Ma il gioco è molto più complesso di come sembri. Ognuno ha i suoi scopi segreti. Silas, Doul, gli Amanti, il Broculac, le misteriose creature che dalle profondità marine compaiono sempre più spesso dando la caccia a qualcosa, a qualcuno.

E la Cicatrice del titolo compare di continuo, con più significati.
Il più ovvio lo capiamo verso la fine del libro, quando si viene a conoscenza della Cicatrice nel tessuto della realtà, da cui gli antichi Ghosthead traevano il loro potere di manipolazione delle possibilità, un potere enorme che anche adesso Doul utilizza e altri cercano di ottenere.
Ma ci sono anche altre cicatrici.
Le cicatrici spirituali che legano Bellis e Tanner a New Crobuzon; le cicatrici lasciate nei vivi da chi invece è morto.
Le cicatrici fisiche, malate e folli, degli Amanti; la cicatrice che non guarisce e che rallenta l’Avanc; le cicatrici sulla schiena di Bellis che la portano a chiudere i conti col passato e a poter andare avanti, allo stadio successivo, comprendendo il suo ruolo nello schema delle cose (ed è buffo che tutto ciò che vuole arrivi solo dopo che smette di cercarlo, dopo che le ferite invisibili che da sempre l’attanagliavano sono guarite lasciando cicatrici di entrambi i tipi).

Sarà merito dell’ambientazione ristretta quasi esclusivamente ad Armada, che ha limitato le sortite dell’immaginazione di China alla popolazione della città, alla città stessa, ai Ghosthead, a Doul, ai Cray, agli uomini mosca, ai misteriosi cacciatori.
Sarà merito di una storia più compatta, per quanto quasi ogni personaggio importante avesse i propri fini.
Sarà merito del fatto che nessun personaggio ha goduto di trattamenti speciali occupando più scena del dovuto, ma tutti erano puramente utilizzati al fine della trama (praticamente non sappiamo niente del passato di Tanner e di cosa abbia fatto per finire in galera; né sappiamo niente di Bellis a parte l’escamotage usato per legarla al primo libro e innescare il secondo).
Sarà che mi è piaciuto il finale, dove non viene nemmeno data una vera spiegazione su quale sia la verità, se ci fosse la cascata o se fosse una farsa, se fosse un trucco o se fosse una possibilità evocata con la musica.

Ma mi è piaciuto enormemente questo libro, un libro di avventura con ambientazione weird che sa cosa vuole raccontare e procede a ritmo serrato sui suoi binari, senza divagazioni e senza allungamenti inutili.
Mi è piaciuto molto più che non il libro precedente.

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