The Scar (Bas-Lag Book 2)

Great book. China is the king of world building.

The Scar picks up (kinda) where Perdido Street Station lets off. Brilliant set up, rich characters, amazing creatures. The world created by CHINA MIEVILLE is an immediate Sci-Fi classic, right up there with Dune and The Ring World (only better, IMHO). Run, dont walk, to the nearest book store and indulge.

An excellent book on its own and as a follow-up to Perdido Street Station, which avoids the usual Sequel traps of the genre. Many of the previous reviewers have done a great job itemizing why this is such a great novel. Id just like to add that, maybe due to my personality,but my enjoyment of the book would have been doubled by the inclusion of maps of the Bas-Lag oceans that the Armada/Trident sails, as well as a map of the Armada itself. Given the detail of the story, Miéville MUST have maps of these locations to keep them all straight, and hes said as much in a interview on Science Fiction Weekly. God knows if he or his publishers read these reviews by us proles but thats my fervent recommendation. Maps maps maps maps!

I enjoyed this book. It starts off a bit slow, but quickly picks up the pace. At first I wasnt a fan of the main character, Belis. But by the end of the book I felt like I understood her. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone wanting something different in their fantasy reading.

Couldnt put this book down. While I personally prefer Perdido Street Station, The Scar is a tighter, better-paced story and probably an easier starting point depending on your taste.

China Mieville is a master. His characters are complex and real. The scale of their emotions and interactions as gigantic and imaginative as the worlds in which he puts them. The creatures brought to life here are a testament to that fact. It is hard for me to find anything here to criticize, so I will leave that to others. This is a great read, youll not be sorry once you have finished it.

As per my title, at nearly 800 pages long, this book is a significant investment in time and although I read it from cover to cover, Im just not entirely sure that it really earned its keep in my library. The author has a curious habit of suddenly using a word for an entirely new concept without any description of what it is, as if the reader should have been aware of it in their daily life. The only trouble is that its words like Cray Catacae, Brucolac, Thaumaturgic and Riding, some of these are inventions and others are obscure real words. I dont pretend to be a master wordsmith, but my vocabulary is probably better than average. Using words like this is just irritating and makes me think that someone should tell the author to stop showing off and then take their thesaurus away. Pace wise, the book is ponderous with lots of twists, turns and dead ends - it is virtually impossible to predict what direction the story will lurch to next - which may be a good thing or maybe not. You dont even discover what the Scar is until at least 2/3 of the way through the book... come to think of it, it may not even be mentioned until 2/3 of the way through it. The books evil forces are mysteriously unidentified until 3/4 of the way though the book, have no connection whatsoever with the Scar and even have two names that are entirely unrelated for some reason. A map in the first pages would have also been appreciated so that I didnt need to attempt to follow a paragraph of detailed description of where something was. It concludes in a sort of unsatisfying fashion, with the last few pages meaning being completely impenetrable to me. On the positive side, the imagination of the author is commendable, even though some of the ideas are improbable and sort of silly if you think to much about them.

Just finished The Scar yesterday...simply stated, its a hypnotic read that combines a gripping action/adventure motiff with nicely understated character psychologies and recurring story metaphors. Although not as wildly ambitious as Perdido Street Station, its a great novel, and certainly the best I have read so far this year. Wow.

Hugely creative, breahtaking prose, frequently grotesque, always captivating.

First of all, I found this book to be vivid and engaging. I love the story and characters, and the picture Mieville paints of this world is just gorgeous. However, I find his writing to be alternately beautiful and amatuerish. Some passages are virtually poetic and some are plain ridiculous. And really, how many times can one author use the words puissant, and juddering in one book? Apparently an infinite, exhausting, countless number of times. My point is, he strives to employ unusual descriptives and then just beats them to death. If the story wasnt so good, it would have been laughable. So, yes, I am torn--is The Scar a veritable work of art or a pretentious, overwrought vocabulary exercise? Maybe its both, which is why I found myself re-reading particularly beautiful passages for the sheer enjoyment and then finding myself snickering and rolling my eyes.