Occasionally, I come across a novel where the world building is so exquisite that I’m perfectly content to soak in countless pages of atmosphere with little need for plot to push me along. I don’t think there’s any one genre that excels at this magic trick over the rest. I’m just as content on the desert planet of Arrakis as the mountains of Middle Earth or the surreal dreamscape of Joyce’s Dublin.
New Crobuzon, the setting to China Miéville’s epic novel, Perdido Street Station, is certainly an impressive piece of world building. The filth and squalor of the city streets and alleys overflow with glimpses of a dizzying array of life. There are demonic bureaucrats, mutated criminals, an omnipotent pile of trash, a giant interdimensional spider. Miéville seems to have an endless imagination for inventing characters and settings, and this wealth of ideas alone makes Perdido Street Station worth the price of admission.
Yet, despite the exoticism of New Crobuzon’s citizenry, it’s the mundane flats, urban decay, and over populated ghettos these creatures inhabit that provide footing in familiar territory for we earthly readers, giving Miéville’s city the texture and bustle of Charles Dickens’ London.
This whirlwind of detail is wonderfully paired with Miéville’s writing style. Often florid and baroque, Miéville uses a mix of arcane English and invented words, piling it all up in dizzying threads of purple prose that are the electric jolt which brings life to this monster of a story.
The novel is often described as an example of the subgenre of New Weird for its echoes of the pulp horror tradition the of early 20th century. And while Perdido Street Station certainly possesses elements of HP Lovecraft’s cosmic horror, it’s the effluviant prose that most reminded me of those old-time masters of horror, albeit handled with the surer hand of a genuine wordsmith.
I could easily have spent all seven hundred pages of Perdido Street Station exploring back alleys and meeting the endless panorama of New Crobuzon’s inhabitants. The novel’s first half has a decidedly baggy plotline which follows a brilliant but awkward scientist and the forbidden love he shares with his humanoid insect girlfriend. There’s are also plot threads involving a mysterious bird man who seeks out our protagonist so as to regain the ability to fly, an unusual caterpillar that eats the dreams of those under the influence of a new drug, a mysterious force called crisis energy that our scientist protagonist wishes to harness. Honestly, nothing would have left me more satisfied than if Perdido Street Station had been little more than an enormous pile of red herrings wrapped together in beautiful prose.
Instead, I was shocked to find my enthusiasm for the Perdido Street Station evaporate as the plot streamlined in its second half. For a book dripping with so much originality, the plot devolves into a surprisingly clunky by the numbers race to destroy a pack of monsters who lack the depth and personality of almost any of the innumerable nefarious minor characters we meet in this read.
Worse, as the story progressed it became clear that there were no rules guiding the world of New Crobuzon. Whenever our protagonists find themselves in a difficult situation a random solution presents itself from left field, draining any sense of urgency and defanging much of the sinister effect created by the story’s setting and character development.
As the story droned on, Miéville’s generous imagination wore out its welcome. I became suspicious that the book was something of a dumping ground for a backlog of character sketches and scene concepts the author had been accumulating for some time, which might have been fine had it not felt like the book had been front-loaded with all its best ideas. More than once I found myself wishing for a series of shorter novels based in New Crobuzon, maybe a collection of short stories, or even a postmodern avalanche of vignettes and sketches.
Defenders of this book far outweigh the critics, and it’s easy to understand why. Perdido Street Station showcases Miéville’s unique prose and vivid imagination in a truly original world. But the more time I spent in New Crobuzon the less alive it felt.
In all the best examples of world building it’s as much about the details left out as what is revealed. After all, it’s the gaps my imagination has to fill in when encountering some dark corner of a ruined landscape or an allusion to some lost history that really breathes life into a fictional world and fills me with the wonder of encountering an unknowable mystery.
The problem with Perdido Street Station is that it’s just too much of a good thing – like meeting a loquacious stranger who talks and talks until all their mystique has evaporated. Perhaps, Miéville would have better served his novel if he had reigned in some of his incredible imagination just enough to let the reader’s really take flight.
Surf Sound 