Perdido Street Station

By: China Mieville

Narrated by: John Lee

Length: 24 hrs and 21 mins

Publisher's summary

Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award

The metropolis of New Crobuzon sprawls at the center of the world. Humans and mutants and arcane races brood in the gloom beneath its chimneys, where the river is sluggish with unnatural effluent and foundries pound into the night. For a thousand years, the Parliament and its brutal militias have ruled over a vast economy of workers and artists, spies and soldiers, magicians, crooks, and junkies.

Now a stranger has arrived, with a pocketful of gold and an impossible demand. And something unthinkable is released.

The city is gripped by an alien terror. The fate of millions lies with a clutch of renegades. A reckoning is due at the city’s heart, in the vast edifice of brick and wood and steel under the vaults of Perdido Street Station.

It is too late to escape.

©2003 China Mieville (P)2009 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

Winner of the August Derleth Award

"Primal awe and erudite references have always mingled in Miéville’s work—along with a healthy dose of pulp playfulness.”—The New Yorker

“Flawlessly plotted and relentlessly, stunningly inventive: a conceptual breakthrough of the highest order.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Perdido Street Station is brimming with enchantment. Written in intense, evocative prose, set in Dickensian New Crobuzon, peopled with characters of Boschian demeanor and diversity . . . the book flourishes and shuffles the conventions of science fiction, fantasy, and horror.”—Tordotcom

Wildly Imaginative

I don't think I have ever read a book so densely packed with thoroughly well-thought out ideas as Perdido Street Station. I find myself thinking about so many aspects of this book even weeks after listening to it.

Stick with it

Rarely have I been so disgusted with a book in the first three chapters. *I wanted to stop listening and if I had it would have been a terrible mistake.* I don't want to give spoilers so I will not say why I wanted to stop. I will say that I kept with it mainly since I had spent a credit and didn't have anymore and could not cope with not having an audiobook to listen to. The book is wonderful and rich with imagery and is a very imaginitive take on society, government, criminal underworld, corruption, and how a blend of science and technology can change everything. John Lee's performance was wonderful and has led me to see what else he has read on audible. This is the first China Mieville book I have read and intend to read more. I would say, however, you truelly have to accept that this is fantasy, this world is not your world, and you can not judge it based off of our societal norms. It is absolutely worth reading.

Almost brilliant

Mieville is a literate, imaginative writer and creator of alternate worlds. Picture a baroque, stylized blend of fantasy, steampunk, and dystopian sci-fi, the sort of work that might result if Charles Dickens, Neal Stephenson, Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, and Guillermo del Toro decided to collaborate. Mievelle's New Crobuzon is sprawling, grimy city reminiscent of London circa 1890, populated with all kinds of strange races (in addition to humans), each with its own unique physiology, culture, and way of reacting to the techno-magical "modern" world.

Mieville's universe is colorful, messy, and grotesque (if you're weirded out by the human-non-human romance described early on, stop reading), but has a seriousness that makes it engrossing. Characters struggle with relationships, careers, politics, racism, and moral dilemmas, even as they face conspiracies, extra-dimensional monsters, crime bosses, and a police state government. Thrown in are musings on scientific/magic philosophy and machine sentience (though the latter has been handled more interestingly by other authors). There's a lot going on in this book, to say the least. Fans of Neal Stephenson will appreciate all the meta-reflection.

Unfortunately, there's a little too much going on. Towards the end, the intricate plot snowballs under its own momentum, and both characters and themes get buried in the tumult. The last third races through battles and some grandiose, technobabble-heavy confrontations between higher-order beings, before arriving at an oddly deflating epilogue. I can't help but think that Mieville, with a little more editing, might have come up with a last act as involving as the first one, and completed his characters' personal journeys in a more memorable way.

Still, it's an impressive novel, and one that a lot of speculative fiction readers will enjoy for its writing, imagination, and audacious scope.

Amazing story, fantastically read.

What made the experience of listening to Perdido Street Station the most enjoyable?

John Lee's reading was terrific and I'm a bit of taken back by many of the bad reviews of his performance. Born and raised in CA, USA I found I had no issue understanding John's British accent. If anything, I felt that it added a welcomed appeal to Mieville's world which ultimately gave the story authenticity and 'life' when read aloud. His stylizing between the different characters worked well for me and eventually they became instantly recognizable through John's voice. His reading gave credibility which matched the book's tone perfectly. I can't imaging the reading performed by an American voice, it would have fallen short. Of the seven titles purchased so far on Audible, John Lee's narration is by far the best. I'm a serious person, I like my literature read with passion, intelligence and sincerity. If you're looking for 'light weight', teen fiction, this might not be for you- the story alone requires you to think, Lee's reading just enhances Mieville's detailed and realized writing. If it helps any, I purchased Hugh Howey's Wool read by Minnie Goode and I couldn't get further than 20 minutes into it due to what I felt was a poor narration full of childish character accents.

What did you like best about this story?

Inventiveness and intelligence woven together in an intriguing story which was masterfully crafted. The world of Bas-Lag is so well developed and fully realized, it's staggering. Mieville makes the fantastic and surreal so believable through superb writing. The richness of his vocabulary and story telling reminds me a lot of early Clive Barker.

Have you listened to any of John Lee’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

Not yet, but I just purchased The Kraken and can't wait to dive in.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Anytime Yagharek spoke, specifically the epiphanous last chapter.

Any additional comments?

I'm embarrassed to say that I have had Perdido Street Station sitting on my bookshelf since 2003 and it took me this long to finally get to it via Audible. It's an incredible book, hands down which will stay with you for days after your finished with it. I'm looking forward to reading all 3 of the Bas-Lag novels now. China is truly a gifted writer. If you haven't read him and are a fan of "intelligent" sci-fil/horror/fantasy (or New Weird) you owe it to yourself to check him out.

Hard to get into story; Not John Lee's best work.

I can't tell if it is the narrator's tendency to pause between sentences and then speed through the sentences (if you graphed it by speed it would be a long series of humps), or whether this book is just dreadfully boring, but find myself dreading putting in the earphones. The pace keeps making me think of other things or even nod off, so I keep having to jump back to figure out what's going on.

I like the idea of an interspecies relationship between a human and an insect-like creature, but I'm on chapter 13 and I can't quite figure out what the heck is going on or why I should care.

Too much work.

At little too far...

Someone once said that in sci-fi or fantasy your audience can accept one or two completely unbelievable things in any scene as long as everything else is done as realistically as possible.

Peridod's problem is that ever scene has about sixteen unbelievable things it. If they where the same things from chapter to chapter you could eventually get used to them but nearly every chapter introduces a brand new bizarre concept that you have to learn and remember.

All are well done and interesting on there own but they are never on their own, they are always just one piece of a wild picture.

After a while I just got overloaded with strangeness and mostly disengaged from the characters and plot. I think perhaps if 3/4 of the characters hadn't been animal human hybrids or even if they had just been the same kind of hybrid I would have been okay but their are literally thirteen different races in this story all with major parts.

I am a huge fan of sci-fi and fantasy and have no problem with outlandish worlds filled with alien races and magical machines but in most books they stop through new things at you at some point and let you settle down and enjoy the story. Peridido never does that, right up until the end you are being introduced to new races and technologies at a pace that I found to be always just a little to far ahead of what I could relate to.

Not a bad book by any means but I was never able to fully connect with it and by the end I was forcing myself to go on listening.

Dense, complicated, and unapologetic.

This isn't an easy listen, but it's worth the slog. The narrator gives a stellar performance and the world created by the author is very complex so if you're looking for something different, you've found it.

Best Writer Ever

Perdido Street Station is vulgar and profane. It also happens to be the most exquisite prose I have ever read in my life. It is filled with the most glorious descriptions of the most vile, beautiful, and even sometimes mundane things. It manages to be the most original story I’ve ever read while incorporating a pantheon of existing mythologies. It’s a putrid stew of wonderfulness. China Mieville, like George R. R. Martin and Donna Tartt, is another one of those intimidatingly good authors. Like Sam Harris his vocabulary is beyond reckoning, and he is not afraid to use every word of it. He may be the best writer I’ve ever read. I am humbled by his work. Perdido Street Station will immerse you in a seedy world of urban noir steampunk mystery sci-fi and fantasy horror. It is a book written for bibliophiles, lovers of the english language and the written word. It’s a real treat. Treat yourself to it.

Never disappointed.

This is my third China Mieville book and I'm yet to be disappointed. In the beginning I had now idea where this story was going, mot as it unfold and the ship got real I must say I was mighty impressed. I think this is my favorite thus far! Thank you so much for a great experience. Worth every penny!

Amazing!

This is the most creative book I've heard in years. Very well written. Often it's like listening to poetry.