Klaus
I really loved “Perdido Street Station”, so I was going into this expecting a deeper dive into New Crobuzon. After all it is a very interesting city and I feel there are many stories that can still be told about it.
Only this book is not at all about New Crobuzon.
After a longish introduction, where the main character is introduced, and a first dramatic event, we are introduced to the main location for the rest of the book: Armada, the floating pirate city.
The concept behind it is quite interesting and ingenious (as you would expect from China Mieville), though I had some troubling picturing the whole thing in my head. But I think that is mostly on me, not the author l, who indeed is very thorough and describes its architecture and inhabitants well.
My main problem is that a lot of time is spent in this part, without yet knowing what the point of the whole thing is. As soon as the story and motivation start getting clear, the book really improves and takes you on a ride, with the most interesting characters showing up: Uther Doul, The Brucolac (though in my opinion underused), Tanner Sack, The Lovers... The main character Bellis never really shines (though that may be intentional) and is mostly used as a bystander to events.
The later parts (The Moby-Dick-like hunt for the Avanc, the anophelii island, the Grindylow-Silas Fennec conflict, the internal political conflict on Armada) thankfully made the book grow on me and made me forget the first part, which I honestly found a little boring.
The final chapters merit a special mention , since they introduce you to the titular Scar, which brings with it the concept of possibility, which is really interesting and should have been used more throughout the story.
Overall, while for me it doesn't measure up to the first novel, I still enjoyed this sea-centric chapter of the Bas-Lag series and highly recommend it!
The story of Big Black and the events at Attica is really interesting and deserves a good book. Unfortunately this is not really it. The writing is all over the place and I got lost various times trying to figure out what happened between panels and/or chapters. The art is good enough, though at times not really fitting the story.
