The Fantasy book of the month for August 2008 is “Perdido Street Station” by China Miéville (first published in 2000).
Content
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 – and the fate of millions depends on a clutch of outcasts on the run from lawmakers and crime-lords alike. The urban nightscape becomes a hunting ground as battles rage in the shadows of bizarre buildings. And a reckoning is due at the city’s heart, in the vast edifice of Perdido Street Station. It is too late to escape.
About the book
Wikipedia has some information about the author and the book. It’s China Miéville’s second book and won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the British Fantasy Society’s August Derleth Award in 2001 as well as the Premio Ignotus (2002) and the Kurd Laßwitz (2003) Best Foreign Novel Awards.
Where to get the book
You can get it at Amazon (look out for deals on the marketplace) in at least two different paperback editions (Tor; New Ed edition 2001, Del Rey Books 2003) and in more or less every other book shop. If you buy it at Waterstone’s in Cardiff (2a The Hayes), they’ll give a 10% discount if you mention the reading group.
Other suggested books
The short list for this month was:
- “The Blade Itself” by Joe Abercrombie
- “Perdido Street Station” by China Miéville
- something to do with dragons (sorry, we didn’t write it down — was it “Temeraire” by Naomi Novik?)
- Honorary Mention: “The Steel Remains” by Richard Morgan (suggested, but only available as hardcover so far)
Just found out a nice detail: China Miéville drew heavy inspiration for the khepri from the Egyptian god Khepri. Quote: “Khepri was principally depicted as a whole scarab beetle, though in some tomb paintings and funerary papyri he is represented as a human male with a scarab as a head.”
And just now I see that the Garuda are also based on earthly myth: “The Garuda is a large mythical bird or bird-like creature that appears in both Hindu and Buddhist mythology.”
While we’re at it, the name of the Vodyanoi is also borrowed from myth: “In Slavic mythology, vodyanoy is a male water spirit.”