Perdido Street Station

What to say? This book is a mess. A big, dirty, corrupt, slime-infested, seedy, corpulent, bloated and wonderful mess. After a bit of a slow start, I thoroughly enjoyed it! The slake-moths are some of the most unique monsters ever conceived. The Construct Council with its meat minions was another very cool concept. I don't see how this could ever be turned into a film but, if anyone were to attempt it, I think Terry Gilliam would have the best chance of adapting the world of New Crobuzon to a visual medium.

I do have two fairly major complaints about the book:

1. There is just too much going on. Aliens, magic, steampunk, metaphysics, remade, AIs, monsters, clockworks, dystopian/totalitarian politics, dirigibles, mafia-esque gangsters, etc, etc... the book is a real 'Kitchen Sink' of tropes and themes. Some of it seemed superfluous to the main plot(s) and could easily have been discarded. A few of the side characters too. It felt as though the author had a cool idea, began working on it, then had another cool idea, then another, followed by another, which leads us to point #2...
2. The lack of a substantive ending. After hundreds of pages, the book just sort of peters out with several story threads essentially left laying about.

Despite these issues, the book contains wondrous adventures aplenty. Mi?ville is quite a writer. I will definitely be reading more of his Bas-Lag/New Crobuzon books in the near future.