Sunday 3 February 2013

The Scar

By China Mieville
Only the second CM I've read (more will follow) and sadly not quite as mindblowing as Perdido Street Station. But still pretty damn good.
Linguist Bellis Coldwine is fleeing from New Crozubon, having been somewhere on the edges of PSS and having seen those closer to the action rounded up and arrested, which isn't all that surprising given the problems they caused.
Sailing rather reluctantly to a new land is further spoilt by her ship's capture by the pirate city of Armada  a mobile conurbation assembled from the thousands of vessels seized over the centuries. She doesn't like being impressed, even if it is to serve as a librarian rather than, as she expected, a deck hand, not terribly surprising, and spends much of the book plotting an escape, or rather being manipulated by a Crozubonite spy captured with her, as Armada procedes on a reckless course seeking to achieve vast power by capturing an avanc, a primordial sea monster and using it as an outboard motor.
All reasonably fun and there are plenty of adventures along the way, perilous journeys onto the island of the dreaded mosquito women and into forbidden oceans while fighting off attacks from the navy and vampiric uprisings, but it never struck me as having as much to say as it's predecessor. An Amiable enough fantasy-pirate romp I suppose, but I can't see myself re-reading it. 



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