#perdidostreetstation

[redtreetattoogallery]

#Artist @jordanrookustattoo

Check out a sleeve I put together for Michael. He wanted a geometric sleeve with a central spider representing #PerdidoStreetStation, his favorite book. It was an honor to create this and really fun piecing together so many of my favorite patterns. ⁠

@redtreetattoo⁠

@hell_city⁠

@truetubes⁠

@truetattoosupply

#GeometricTattooArtist #ColumbusTattooArtist #BlackAndGrayArtist #MandalaTattoo #Spiders #Tessellation #ColumbusArtist #TattooSleeve #ArmSleeve #columbustattooers #columbusohio #jordanrookustattoo #jordanrookus #tattoostvle #tattooshop #inked

[heartyearning]

whoever got the railsea & perdidostreetstation urls and isnt using them. bitch. whoever got their ass deleted as embassytown fuck youuuuuuuuu why cant i use that url now

[majorshatterandhare]

[ID: three screencaps of tweets on mobile. It is primarily white text, although the hashtags are blue, all on a black background.

All of the visible tweets are from @/Gunpowder_Tim (Tim Ledsam), his name is listed as “put trains in space.” The tweets are from 2/6/2020. His icon is a cartoony drawing of Gunpowder Tim.

First Image:

Tweet One reads: “‘China Mieville novels ranked by if there are trains in them’, by Tim, age 28”

Tweet Two reads: “#KingRat - 2/10 Some subway references. Bismirches trains with a bit of murder. Poor start, but it'll get better, I promise.”

Tweet Three reads: “#PerdidoStreetStation - 5/10 Pains taken to detail robust fantasy rail network. Unfortunately, the trains are rarely involved in major plot arcs. Points docked for leading me on with a title referencing a train station.”

Second Image:

Tweet Four reads: “#TheScar - 0/10 No trains. Just boats, boats, boats. And a balloon. Rubbish. This thankfully doesn't happen again, or I'd be done with this author.”

Tweet Five reads: “#IronCouncil - 10/10 Entire book is about one specific train. Most scenes take place in or adjacent to that train. Few books love trains as much as this. More than makes up for The Scar, and brings me right back in.”

Tweet Six reads: “#UnLunDun - 2/10 Trains go between "abcities", but barely feature. Mieville spends much more time on busses. A disappointing read.”

Tweet Seven reads: “#TheCityAndTheCity - 4/10 Uses rail networks as a tool to help describe breach between cities. Main character describes trains wistfully. Decent effort.”

Tweet Eight begins on this image but is cut off. The whole thing is in the Third Image.

Third Image:

Tweet Eight reads: “#Kraken - 3/10 Starts in a train. Loses steam from there. Nothing to write home about.”

Tweet Nine reads: “#EmbassyTown - 7/10 Discusses how the rail network functions despite it serving basically zero narrative purpose. I am IN”

Tweet Ten reads: “#Railsea - 🚂 [steam locomotive emoji]/10 About nothing but trains. Starts on a train. Plot revolves around trains. Main characters all love trains. Major side plot detailing the lives of train captains. Might secretly be Thomas the Tank Engine fanfiction. If there's a more train book, I've not read it.”

Tweet Eleven reads: “#TheLastDaysOfNewParis - 7/10 Sacre Coeur full of runaway trains. A train makes its way into a beard. What a great book.”

Tweet Twelve reads:

“This has been Trains. Thanks for listening.”

End ID]

tim talking about train focus in china mieville books

[mccallcompany]

Finished rebind of the @subpress editions of China Miéville’s Bas-Lag trilogy. These things are massive! . . . #McCallCo #bookbinding #lostarts #goldtooling #finebinding #booklust #lovebooks #bookstagram #bibliophile #bookworm #booklover #bookporn #journal #baslag #chinamieville #fantasy #fantasybooks #perdidostreetstation #thescar #ironcouncil https://www.instagram.com/p/CQoImiJrLJs/?utm_medium=tumblr

[rrqueensworld]

Slowly working my way through Perdido Street Station. It's remarkably good but potty training puppies is a bit distracting. #chinamieville #perdidostreetstation #bookwormstruggles https://www.instagram.com/p/CItmtgcrcCq/?igshid=1erd9kzrfsrg5

[tcodee]

Real short read. It was good but not as good as China Mielvilles earlier work. His Bas Lag books are still his best read #justfinished #bookstagram #books #newwierd #scifi #chinamiellville #thelastdaysofnewparis #reading #perdidostreetstation #paris https://www.instagram.com/p/B4ADT1wFeEI/?igshid=2a3qrmqgzfyy

[sognotrailibri-blog]

[jpcokes]

Vodyanoi character design and model....#movember #tinderprofilepic #conceptart #3dmodel #blender3d #poliigon #perdidostreetstation #characterdesign #chinamieville #vodyanoi #weirdfiction #steampunk (at Brooklyn, New York)

[inguzanve]

Сбылась #мечтаидиота! #вокзалпотерянныхснов снова начали издавать. Только зацените толщину книжки! #чайнамьевиль Woo-hoo! #perdidostreetstation is being published again! Just check this out - what a thick book it is! #chinamieville

[bruninhuuu]

New crobuzon - Perdido Street Station - China Miéville... #chinamieville #newcrobuzon #perdidostreetstation (em São Paulo, Brazil)

[mccallcompany]

Was just remembering how pleasant these spines are to look at . . . #McCallCo #bookbinding #lostarts #goldtooling #finebinding #booklust #lovebooks #leatherjournal #bookstagram #bibliophile #bookworm #booklover #bookporn #journal #chinameiville #perdidostreetstation #ironcouncil #thescar #baslag https://www.instagram.com/p/CTC-BHdBpma/?utm_medium=tumblr

[wordsfromastone]

Perdido Street Station

Ok, first things first: I didn't like this book. I'll enumerate the goods and bads momentarily, but I want to put that fact right out where everyone can see it. At no point in this book did I laugh, cry, get upset, or feel anything more stirring than a passive sense of, 'oh, that's interesting.' If that's all you needed to read, well... the rest is for the other person reading this. 

What probably bothered me the most was how Mieville seemed oddly fixated on comparing so much in his world to shit. I understand why a Crapsack World setting can be compelling, but there's a point where things are taken too literally. Now, I'm not offended by the analogies, I'm offended because they seem to be placed in such a way that they break the flow of the narrative. There's some very good writing, verging on poetic, and then he mentions 'excremental mud' or 'reeking effluvia' and I just sigh, roll my eyes, and check to see how much longer I must endure this to get to a part that my friend assures me I will like, wondering, not for the first time, if he meant the end and my release from this drab purgatory.

Almost equally disappointing to me was how I honestly didn't like and couldn't bring myself to care about any of the characters. Part of this lay in how I don't think the author thought very highly of them, either. He doesn't really give them enough dialogue to flesh them out. Instead, he devotes roughly the first third of the book to summarizing their skills, interests, and lives up to this point, which is a shame, because the exchanges between characters that are written out are wonderfully illuminating and show that he really does have the chops to manage it.

Perdido Street has some very good elements, stuff I really liked. If the world hadn't been so joyless and destitute, I think I would really have dug into the bizarre, diesel punk-ish setting. The different races that inhabit New Crobuzon have unique cultural elements. Several of the more exotic creatures are fascinating. Clearly, Mieville is no stranger to stretching his imagination. He just seems reluctant to trust me to use mine.

As I mentioned, there are good parts. The sections told from Yagharek's perspective are great, and a few of them provided me with food for thought and genuine introspection. I was always glad to see the Weaver appear, with his almost metafictional awareness, since his dialogue was a treat to read. The handlingers seemed cool, I would have liked to know more about them. And... hm.

I think a large part of the trouble lies in the fact that a great deal of the fantastic elements of the book seem to mostly be there for the sake of the spectacle rather than stemming from some integral world-building. Perhaps I'm simply desensitized to a lot of the more shocking bits. Some of the descriptions of the Remade are well into Body Horror territory, but it just doesn't register as being particularly noteworthy in a story where there are monsters that steal your capacity for conscious thought if you so much as look at them. Although, having read rather extensively from H.P. Lovecraft's literature, I will admit that I tend to prefer my Nightmare Fuel straight from the bottle.

So, those are the salient parts. I never felt compelled to identify with or invest myself in any of the characters. I didn't think, 'man, I wish I was in this story.' Too much of the Purple Prose was devoted to extraneous details of the environment and, while the tale is character driven, the characters don't get enough interaction early on to make them endearing. Far, far too many comparisons to fecal matter for anyone who isn't already an enthusiast.