Updated review 6/14/23

(This entire review has thematic and plot specific spoilers)

Rating 5 out of 5, rounded up.

I must admit I was a tad bit nervous to reread Perdido Street Station. When I reread books, I rather frequently find that they have lost their luster or are simply less engrossing or polished than I thought they were. Thankfully, this reread didn’t tarnish my love of Perdido Street Station, in fact I liked the book more after I finished. When I read it last year (ok, I listened to it as an audiobook) I was enraptured by New Crobuzon’s depth, Miéville’s vocabulary, the evocative yet repugnant descriptions as well as the complexity of the story’s characters. This go around allowed me to piece together some interesting bits of the story and worldbuilding that I had otherwise overlooked. I also walked away with a better grasp of the characters, and the themes of the story.

Plot: 3.5 out of 5
Setting: 5 out of 5
Characters: 4.5 out of 5
Writing Style: 5 out of 5
Personal Enjoyment: 5 out of 5

Perdido Street Station, and the entire New Crobuzon Trilogy, are greatly underrated in pop culture, that may be due to the denseness of the material, or the mental bandwidth that the books consume, or even that Miéville’s world is impossible to translate to television. However, the most likely explanation is that the trilogy isn’t for everyone, and I just happen to part of the _target audience that is ensnared in its wiles.

Let's get my only gripe out of the way first. The plot of this book is the only part that I would consider to be weak. While the characters are well developed, the plot relies rather heavily on coincidences that are improbable. (Lin becoming Motley’s sculptor, who just happens to be the drug boss of dreamshit, which Isaac just happens to accidentally produce, because Lemuel just happened to drop by at the right time). I find coincidences as a plot device to be rather annoying especially when they are relied on heavily. Miéville does a superb job of masking the coincidences, yet they remain.

I forgot how much of a naïve, self-absorbed, research obsessed buffoon Isaac was. The irony in his character is that despite his solipsistic interests, he has a heart of gold and cares deeply about those around him. There is a constant contrast and struggle between his obsessive pursuit of specific areas of knowledge and the damage he does to others. He is usually able to ignore this crisis until an intervention is needed. However, Isaac has a character shift and transformative character arc that I didn’t catch during my first read. He starts out obsessed with research to the exclusion of basically everything else, and by the end of the book, he abandons his magnum opus for morals that he professed not to have.

Yagharek is, in my opinion, Isaac’s dark twin. Like Isaac, he is self-absorbed, obsessed, and at times naive, but unlike Isaac who is able to care about others around him, Yagharek never manages to deviate an iota from his obsession, constantly bringing it to the fore. Yagharek’s central theme is shame, shame at his mutilated existence, but never really expressing remorse for the crime he committed. On the other hand, Isaac becomes the epitome of a remorseful person, handling the consequences of his actions, without a hint of shame at his misdeeds.

At the end of the day, at the end of this engrossing book, it sits high on the top of my favorites list. It is a profound exploration of the warped psyche. Drug lords who destroy their buyers, governments who mutilate their citizens and crush them with mismanagement and corruption, insects who literally extract the dreams from their victims. All three of these antagonists portray the same oppressive ability to leave their victims as shells of their former selves. For all his faults, Isaac is the hero of the story, in the end, he is able to claim a victory (albeit a pyrrhic one) over the three great monsters of New Crobuzon.

--------------------------Original Review 3/8/22---------------------------------
Simply put, this is the weirdest, strangest and simultaneously, one of the best fantasy/science fiction books I have ever read. ( )

So far I'm having a hard time getting into it. The writing style is hard to follow. ( )

It isn't like this novel is missing reviews. But if I am going to give it five stars, I feel like I should throw my opinion in the pot. I would have enjoyed this book even more had it been edited with an energetic red pen. I found some of the description mind numbing: boring and dragging the action (which it is supposedly describing) to a slow motion pace that didn't heighten suspense, just outright killed it. Definitely glad I chose to read this rather than listen to it because it is far easier to skip over print.

There is no doubt that the author deserves high praise for the world created. I docked a star for two reasons: the aforementioned pacing and the fact that, in the end, it felt like a bit of an intellectual exercise rather than a novel. I did not feel for any of the major characters (indeed, as I summarized the book as I went along for my 13 year old his final reaction was "he should have let the moths win". Can't say I disagree). I don't mind if my characters have defects and I don't care if there are characters that I don't take a shine to. But there has to be at least one person in the novel that makes me get behind them. It is true that I took a liking to one of the very minor characters at the end but honestly with a book this length given when she appeared and the role she played it just wasn't enough. I don't care if Mr. Meiville has a vast vocabulary or exquisite attention to detail but in the end I felt he was unable to suppress them to allow character and plot development. If he could reach inside and find a human lodestone rather than another ten dollar word it might serve him well. ( )

Most books create a world for the benefit of the plot. This book only seems to have a plot as an excuse to be able to create a world. ( )

This almost gets 5 stars for the sheer expansiveness and oddity of the world. It is a strange and foreign world, a mix of steampunk and fantasy, something that I've never really dug into (steampunk that is). But then again, that would be shoehorning the novel and I'm not sure that there is another book quite like this one.

My only gripe is that Mieville loves to describe everything to the most minute detail. Often, this paints a clear and vivid picture. Occasionally, it results in rambling and makes the story drag.

Great novel. Looking forward to reading the next in the series. ( )