About this title: The metropolis of New Crobuzon sprawls at the centre of its own bewildering world. Humans and mutants and arcane races throng the gloom beneath its chimneys, where the rivers are sluggish with unnatural effluent, and factories and foundries pound into the night. For more than a thousand years, the parliament and its brutal militia have ruled over a vast array of workers and artists, spies, magicians, junkies and whores. Now a stranger has come, with a pocketful of gold and an impossible demand, and inadvertently something unthinkable is released. Soon the city is gripped by an alien terror - ...
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Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Del Rey
Date Published: 2001-02-27
ISBN-13:9780345443021ISBN:0345443020
Description: New. Brand New. Gift condition. Free tracking # included! International buyers are welcome. We ship every business day. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed! read more
Edition: First American Edition; First Printing
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Del Rey, New York
Date Published: 2001
ISBN-13:9780345443021ISBN:0345443020
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Del Rey Books
Date Published: 2003
ISBN-13:9780345459404ISBN:0345459407
Description: Fine. No dust jacket as issued. No apparent flaws or marks. Appears as new. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 623 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. read more
Edition: Illustrated.
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Del Rey Books
Date Published: 2001
ISBN-13:9780345443021ISBN:0345443020
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 720 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. Like new, slight shelf wear. Slight stain on edge. Never read. read more
Description: Very Good. 0345459407 Mass Market Paperback, Condition: Very Good; this book is in very good condition with light curve to the spine / light reading creases to the covers. read more
Edition: First American Edition; Third Printing.
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Del Rey Books
Date Published: 2001
ISBN-13:9780345443021ISBN:0345443020
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Faint reading creases on spine. Ffep is missing. Otherwise, near fine. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 720 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Del Rey
Date Published: 2003
ISBN-13:9780345459404ISBN:0345459407
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Edition: First Edition
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Del Rey, Westminster, Maryland, U.S.A.
Date Published: 2001
ISBN-13:9780345443021ISBN:0345443020
Description: Near Fine. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. 710 pages; First American Edition in Wraps; First printing; Textblock is tight and clean with no internal markings and no names; Fore-edge is rough trimmed; Bright pictorial cover with no tears and no creasing to the spine; Has minimal shelf and edge wear; (Here likes New Crobuzon, a city where humans, re-mades, and arcane races live in fear of Parliament and its brutal militia. A novel with scientific wonder, intrigue and realized characters. ) read more
Description: Acceptable. Bumping to edges. Curling to corners Extensively read Internally Clean A usable copy. Please note that this book will show signs of wear and will have been extensively read but all pages will be in tact with it's binding secure unless stated. read more
Description: Acceptable. **SHIPPED FROM UK** We believe you will be completely satisfied with our quick and reliable service. All orders are dispatched as swiftly as possible! Buy with confidence! read more
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Del Rey Books, New York
Date Published: 2003
ISBN-13:9780345459404ISBN:0345459407
Description: Fair. No dust jacket as issued. Signed by author. SIGNED by author on title page (signature only). 1st mass market paperback edition, 1st printing, complete number line. The cover is worn and the edges are rumpled. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 623 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. There is a tear at the back hinge. The edges of the page block are tanned. read more
Description: Good. **SHIPPED FROM UK** We believe you will be completely satisfied with our quick and reliable service. All orders are dispatched as swiftly as possible! Buy with confidence! read more
Edition: First Edition
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Ballantine Books Del Rey, New York, New York, U.S.A.
Date Published: 2003
ISBN-13:9780345459404ISBN:0345459407
Description: Fine. No Jacket. New, unread condition mass market paperback. Scan available. read more
"It is clear that China Miéville is an exceptionally inventive writer. The steam-punk/fantasy world of the city-state New Crobuzon is an extraordinary creation. The world is populated with many sentient species and ethnicities-each with different needs and agendas-all enduring the dominance of a corrupt and incompetent human police state that oppresses and exploits most of even the human population. The varieties of creatures, monsters, and technologies are fascinating. The plot twists and character descriptions rival Dickens. And for these reasons alone this book is worth your time.
New Crobuzon is a dark dystopian city that is cruel, grimy, polluted, crime-ridden, loaded with slums, deteriorating, and seems a blight upon its world. It is labyrinthian and architecturally grotesque, and occasionally appalling and awe inspiring.
Into this dark environment Miéville introduces unique and memorable protagonists who become wrapped up in a plot that promises depth and complexity but devolves into a hunt for monsters. And for a while this hunt deteriorates into a horror novel. Admittedly, this plot is occasionally elevated by a crafty and enjoyable pseudo-science that seems to recall the best pulp novels and comic books, but with better pseudo-science and cooler steam-punk gadgets.
But it is amazing to me that Miéville can so well develop the emotional workings of his major protagonists, but not give the appearance that he cares much for them. The dark, demeaning, and exhausting trials these characters are put through seems to assume a very bleak ontology. This was one of Miéville's favorite words-it means "the nature of existence".
******* SPOILER*******
And the eventual final plot development eventually so rests upon the concept of betrayal that, for me, this was a depressing and demoralizing experience that I have not yet digested.
Four stars for talent and invention. One star left off because I feel so crummy after reading this. Maybe a month from now I will feel different."
I have a very ambiguous feeling about PSS. I loved the book and hated the ending.
The book: An incredible story! Mieville's imagination blows you away. There are a lot of absolutely new things introduced in the book, races, monsters, engines, contraptions, ideas ...they are so fresh, new, interesting. The story is like a fantasy thriller. When you read the book you cannot help but immerse into the new world. Just when you thought, you know everything, he throws a new race at you, a race unlike any other you have ever read about before. The book is superb from the very start to...the end or almost to the end.
The ending: ... is terrible. Only some issues are being resolved at the end of the story. There are a lot of cliff-hangers left. The story is just being cut-off in the middle? ¾? 99.9% into the story? We don't know. Most of protagonists who managed to stay alive move on to another story? But there is none. And probably will never be. It is rather frustrating. You spend so much time with characters, you want to know more about them about their life but you are denied the knowledge. (Please, don't confuse me being upset with having no ending and having not a happy ending. I didn't expect a happy ending, but I did expect the end of the story, which I never received)
Some people believe that the journey is more important than a final destination. If I belonged to this category, I would love the book. But I am not. For me the ending is as equally important(if not more important) as the journey. So, I am not happy with PSS. Unfortunately, hatred outweighs love.
I am not sure I am going to read The Scar in the near future... if ever"
"This is a very enjoyable book, however don't expect a fairy tale ending. Honestly, it left me with a slightly nauseous feeling at the end. If it weren't for that feeling, I would have given the book 5 stars. The extraordinary creativity framed by this book made it worth it for me, but others might not feel the same.
The world that China Mieville creates is unlike anything else I have encountered in scifi or fantasy. It's a blend of industrial age technology and magic. There are creatures inhabiting his book completely unlike anything else I've seen in fantastic fiction, there's nothing like a hobbit in his world.
The city where the action takes place is wonderful, strange, and extremely corrupt. He models the city after London, but it's a far cry from the London of today. Politicians don't think twice about committing horrific acts to get what they need or want.
The book is well paced, and that made it difficult for me to put it down. I'm looking forward to reading "The Scar.""
"This has not been the most enjoyable fantasy novel I've read, but I think it might be the most compelling. From the beginning, I was in awe of how language was used to create a city teeming with life.
In New Crobuzon, humans are a minority among the sentient beings. Isaac, a human, is a renegade scientist. He accepts infrequent jobs from the university he used to teach at so he can still have access to their equipment and libraries. He is in an illicit relationship with the Khepri artist Lin. (The khepri have some human and some bug features. An open cross-species relationship would hurt Isaac's standing in the stuffy scientific community. He still needs to publish to be able to continue his research.) Isaac shares a lab with two other scientists. One day, the garuda Yagharak (part-human, part hawk, and rare in the civilized portions of New Crobuzon) approaches Isaac. He has had his wings physically removed by his clan, for a crime he will not discuss. He commissions Isaac to help him restore his ability to fly.
While researching flight, and the creatures that fly, Isaac unleashes some terrible predators on the city. With a small group of unlikely allies, Isaac struggles to defeat the evil creatures he has unintentionally freed.
Much of the city is bleak, corrupt, and harsh. The idea of the remade is repugnant. It is reminiscent of societies that cut off a hand as punishment for theft - only instead of a hand, you could lose almost any body part AND have it be replaced by part of a machine. The author didn't really explore the psyche of the remade in this book - they were mainly secondary characters, pawns to be used by those in power. The ultimate outcasts.
I found the author's use of technology for his world to be somewhat arbitrary. Obviously, some electrical capabilities exist, but steam is used as a driving force for most of the equipment. Punch cards are used to provide inputs to the steam driven systems, mostly known as constructs. The programming of the construct is sophisticated enough for the development of a spark of intelligence. Mostly, the stages of development in the various technologies just did not seem to match. A world that can successfully remake such a large portion of it's population should have some type of functioning communication system.
This arbitrary borrowing of technology didn't really bother me too much. It actually made me think about the ideas quite a bit. Are new products developed and refined to become the best possible product? Or by choosing to refine one product, do we hamper development of another product? Would the second product eventually be superior to the first, if it received the same research and development attention?
In addition to thinking of evolution in a technological sense, this book also made me think of evolution in a biological sense. New Crobuzon is full of many different forms of sentient life who are able to communicate with each other. Why didn't our world develop that way? Was it a possibility at some remote point in the past? Plus, the idea of cactus youth punks, hanging out on street corners and self-mutilating for the scars, was one of the many highlights of the book for me.
Another interesting concept in this book is the idea of crises energy, and related to that, the torque. Crises energy is kind of like the search for a perpetual motion machine. Isaac initially hopes to use it to help Yagharak fly, but it ends up central to the resolution of the main plot. The torque is much more dangerous; it is described as rogue energy. The results are unpredictable. The discussion between Yagharak and Isaac about the torque reminded me of descriptions of the use of atomic bombs in WWII.
The ending is not exactly happy; I don't want to give it away in the review so I won't say anything more. The crime of choice-theft of the garuda is an interesting concept. When the crime is translated to a near-human equivalent at the end of the book, I felt that the punishment was perhaps too harsh for the crime.
I was absorbed in this world, and I liked the characters well enough to want to know what happens next. I'm so glad that the authors are in charge of ending their books - I always have a hard time letting go."
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