Review: Perdido Street Station

Perdido Street Station by China Miéville
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Enjoyable, but ultimately TOO DAMN LONG. This could have been edited down to around 600 pages and it would have prevented it from becoming a tedious slog. A nice selection of characters, good world building but too much description for my liking, and not in a beautiful wordy purple prose-esque style just lots of description of action and characters exploring their settings.

I felt this could have been more complex, the plot was essentially fairly cliche stuff (outsiders set against the government and attempt to overthrow/rescue friends and family from impending doom and persecution), where Mieville does excel however is at his creation of fantasy creatures: the Weaver as a gigantic arachnid force who travels between the worlds weaving and repairing the web of life, the gigantic construct who lurks in the junk yard reminded me of Ted Hughes' 'Iron Man', and of course the Slake Moths themselves, gigantic and lethal moths with wings of hallucinogenic and hypnotic swirling patterns.

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Review: Beowulf

Beowulf by Unknown
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A quick and enjoyable read. I can't comment on Heaney's transation compared to the original as I haven't read it, but I did find myself thinking of 'Farmer Giles of Ham' during the latter part of the book when Beowulf is fighting the dragon who is plaguing the land, I'm sure Tolkien was inspired by this tale; as he himself wrote about Beowulf. I have also read John Gardner's 'Grendel', a retelling of Beowulf from the perspective of the monster Grendel which was fantastic, so was vaguely familiar with the plot.

It was worth reading the introduction afterwards as well (I always avoid introductions before reading the text like the plague) it set the story in a historical setting, addressing themes which permeate the text such as the onset of Christianity, the dragon, the changing worth of gold, the history of the text itself.

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