Perdido Street Station by China Mieville (2000)

1st Edition

Wow! A lot to unpack here…hold on tight…

A vast, complex, weird and creepy reading experience, Perdido Street Station is quite difficult to summarize. The station mentioned in the title is the railway and skyrail hub in the city of New Crobuzon, in the world of Bas-Lag. It is a symbol of the heart of the city, a giant, filthy metropolis where fantastical races coexist and their lives intertwine. There’s magic (thaumaturgy), weird steampunk elements, human/machine hybrids, animal/machine hybrids, government officials who summon demons, the list goes on. Here’s some of the players:

-A human scientist, Isaac Dan der Grimnebulim, whose last name never gets easier to pronounce for the entire book!

-His girlfriend Lin, a Khepri, half insect half woman known for making beautiful sculptures by molding regurgitated berries.

-Yarek, a Garuda, a half man half bird who has been punished by having his wings violently sawed off.

-A drug lord kingpin, Motley, dealing in hallucinogenic dreamshit, whose physical makeup is a grotesque amalgam of body parts both human and animal.

-Slake Moths, giant winged creatures terrorizing the city of New Crobuzon, sucking the life and dreams from them by sticking their tongues down their throats.

-The Vodyanoi, toad-like creatures who can manipulate water to hold its form outside of a container with the help of an undine.

-Flying gargoyle-ish creatures called wyrman who can be hired to run errands for you whilst defecating in the skies.

-A giant spider with human hands who is a multi-dimensional being that weaves in and out of the fabric of reality.

-PAUSE-

I warned you, there’s a lot to unpack…that’s only the beginning so we’ll stop there.

Isaac is hired by Yagarek to help him grow his wings back and through his research he accidentally unleashes a soul sucking creature that frees others just like it causing havoc throughout the city, leaving the population comatose and haunting their dreams. Perdido Street Station is about the journey Isaac and his accomplices take to defeat these creatures, the Slake Moths.

Mieville’s detail in the city is top notch world building, his gnarly descriptions of seemingly every nook and cranny make you feel like there’s a gross and foreign layer of dirt on your skin. A great map is included to navigate the frequent mention of landmarks, bridges, rivers, etc. and imagining this city is like navigating a Middle Earth that has been condensed into a filthy metropolis with 3 million inhabitants. A reading experience so dense that the world of Bas-Lag even has its on Wiki page:

https://baslag.fandom.com/wiki/New_Crobuzon

I especially enjoyed the chapters that read like a diary from Yagarek, at times grotesquely poetic in his reflections on the city:

“We have seen the city’s night-porters fish the dead from the rivers. Dark-suited militia tugging with hooks and poles at bloated bodies with eyes ripped from their heads, the blood set and gelatinous in their sockets. We have watched mutant creatures crawl from sewers into cold flat starlight and whisper shyly to each other, drawing maps and messages in the fecal mud.”

It’s so absurd that it works, the imagination and addition of new characters and creatures never stops and it’s hard to look away, even when the book clocks in at around 700 pages. Perdido Street Station’s success and praise are warranted because Mieville has created a fantasy utterly unique and equally as bizarre.

China Mieville