Review: Perdido Street Station by China Mieville

Mieville's curse is that he thinks deeply about how the world shapes the trajectories of our lives and how we relate to each other, is aware of all the ways the world falls short of fostering human flourishing, and then is too scared to say anything political about it. The world of New Crobuzon is rich: the city feels like a living and breathing organism that developed over centuries, the non-human races are both distinctly non-human but also not caricatures of aspects of human souls. The resolution is bleak: the world is not really changeable, no matter how hard you try. 

The City and the City , published nearly a decade later, suffered from a similar problem. Both had a fascinating premise for a city and a mystery, explored through the eyes of someone who has to navigate their world both legally and illicitly, who sacrifices much and in the end goes unthanked, the system chugging on unchanged. 

Mieville’s later book is well-paced, for all I found the ending disappointing. Perdido Street Station needs an editor. The first third of the novel sets up themes of the limits of justice and liberty and community, and of how these values shift across cultural lines. The last tenth of the novel resolves these questions beautifully — even heart-breakingly. The book was ahead of its time in dealing with questions of consent and sexual abusers; I’m surprised I didn’t hear its name come up more frequently in conversations about #MeToo. The middle of the book is a tiresome Kill The Dragon romp with what little momentum it manages to build continuously dashed by inconsequential world-building.

The shelf of literary yet political fantasy is unfortunately slim. Mieville’s fun prose and thoughtful world-building justify his inclusion on that shelf. I’ll probably return to his novels again, but perhaps to some of his more mature works.