The Scar (Bas-Lag Book 2)

I picked up China Mievilles Perdido Street Station on a whim. It was wonderful. The Scar is better. I like the idea that the protagonist is smart, but not smarter than everyone around her. She is brave but not to any greater degree than others around her. She is a compelling parallel with the protagonist in Perdido Street Station: moody, dark, cold, but fiercely loyal to who and what she cares about. Nontypical characters appeal to me, and these make it hard to go back to other fiction writers who make a habit of making their characters superhuman, supergeniuses, or supermoral. Even though the setting to this novel is fantastical, Bellis Coldwine is simply a flawed human. In terms of the imagery that Mieville paints, it is remarkable. His use of language to describe utterly incredible events just makes me jealous. There is a quote in the book that (paraphrased) says ...his voice resonated at the frequency of her fear. Little quotes like this make me smile in a way that is not dissimilar to my reaction to Cormac McCarthy. I have read probably 200 authors or more in my lifetime and this guy beats them all in terms of imagination per page. I cannot imagine anyone being disappointed with this book.

Perdido was an excellent book in its own right, yet I was impressed by how much better The Scar was. Mieville has an excellent ability to make you want more by throwing out snippets of descriptions of people and places and civilizations inhabitaing bas-Lag that invariably made me want to learn more. One of the creepiest and most striking images from the book was Douls description of his home city of High Chromlech, with its quiet streets full of shuffling high-caste dead, with their lips sewn together. Only a fine writer could pack so much imagination and imagery into a few short pages, and The Scar is full of this, Its part Dickensian (though less so than Perdido), part Lovecraftian, part Moorock, but transcends all those sources. As others have mentioned, the main character is a bit of a dud (the supporting characters are far more interesting), and the ending fizzles just a little, but the ride getting there justifies the trip. Youll enjoy the characters and places you visit on the way.

China Mieville is one of the very few writers I have come across whose work can not be compared to that of others creating novels. His work may be placed in genres that attempt to define what he and other writers are offering readers, but so far they are just attempts. Neil Stephensons work in, Snowcrash, is brilliant, Neil Gaiman, and Richard Powers also have truly unique and inventive writing styles. I would still say that Mieville creates the most fantastic and unique worlds that have as little in common with more traditional fictionally constructed places in time than other writers. I say this not to diminish the work of others, rather to express how hard Mieville works to create a world that has as few easily recognizable reference points, and by so doing comes as close to creating a truly unique world without leaving readers completely lost. His reading is incredibly detailed and dense without becoming frivolous. He takes you to his imagined events far from where you have ever been, but he never loses the reader, and his creations are plausible in the sense they can be followed. Complex has nothing to do with the poor excuse for talent that requires smoke and mirrors and surreal writing, not because the author is a master of it, rather he needs to hide what is essentially weak writing. I believe readers should enjoy, Perdido Street Station, prior to taking on, The Scar. Mieville does not write any detail he does not need, and there are enough references in this new book to, Perdido, that enhance the reading of, The Scar. I also found this new book more complex than the previous adventures in New Crobuzon. When it comes to naming his characters he is the 21st century Dickens, The Brucoloc, Ab-Men, and Vampir, riverthing, Waterman from The Cold Claw Sea, and Hedrigall who speaks in Sunglari-accented Salt, and my favorite Uther Doul. A plan becomes a chain of whispers, a chain of meaning, whose links will lead to the Truth. In, Perdido, the concept of choice-theft was introduced, and the authors presentation was brilliant. In, The Scar, the concept starts with the blade, the sword that Uther Doul wields. It is known simply as the Mighty Blade to the ignorant or perhaps a blade from the Ghosthead techniques, but it is so much more. Those who know a bit more call it the Mightblade, not in an effort to describe its lethality, rather its potentiality. Uther knows what his blade is; it is a, Possible Sword. A coin that falls on either its head or tail or even on edge is a, Fact Coin. But what of all the possibilities not accounted for? When they are included there are an infinite number of outcomes, or what the author terms, a possibility circuit. A simple sword is directed by he who wields it; the mind makes the decision, a planner. But the Possible Sword turns the planner in to an opportunist, a person who fights from the heart not the mind, a swordsman that can exploit all possibilities with speed approaching the simultaneous. Utilizing multiple dimensions at the same time, if you will, the swordsman is infinitely capable and lethal. This one idea I found fascinating is a very small portion of this work. Uther Doul is one of dozens upon dozens of wildly creative characters. If you have not read this mans work, you have not read anything like it, perhaps something that approaches or approximates his work. But you never have actually experienced his unique talents.

Wow. This ranks up there with Perdido Street Station. Vivid, imaginative, amazing. A little depressing, mind you, but great read. Just be warned that not all of China Mievilles writing is up to this standard.

This new novel is set in the same world as Perdido Street Station, Bas Lag, and as such fits loosely into that vague subgenre sometimes called Science Fantasy. The Scar opens with mysterious doings in the ocean, and then we meet the noted linguist Bellis Coldwine, who is fleeing New Crobuzon to the colony city of Nova Esperancia. The ship carrying Bellis Coldwine (as well as ocean biologist Johannes Tearfly and a group of Remade prisoners including a man named Tanner Sack) does not get very far, though, before it is overtaken by pirates from the mysterious floating city Armada. Bellis, Johannes, and the other passengers and prisoners are taken to Armada, where they are informed they will live the rest of their lives. They cannot leave the floating city, but they will otherwise be allowed full citizenship. Tanner Sack and Johannes accept fairly eagerly, but Bellis is desperate to have a chance to return to her beloved home city. Soon she falls into league with the mysterious Silas Fennec, a spy from New Crobuzon who is as desperate as she to return home, in his case because he has information of a coming attack on their city. It becomes clear that the leaders of Armada are engaged in a mysterious project, and Bellis becomes a key figure when she finds a crucial book in a language that she is a leading expert in. She learns that Armada is planning to harness a huge sea creature called an avanc, and to have the avanc tow the floating city to the dangerous rift in reality called the Scar, where it might be possible to do Probability Mining. More importantly to her and Fennec, her new influence gives her the chance to get a message Fennec has prepared back to New Crobuzon. The story takes further twists and turns from there -- its very intelligently plotted, with the motivations of the characters well portrayed, and with plot elements that seem weak later revealed, after a twist or two, to make much more sense. But its not the plot that is the key to enjoying the book. The characters are also fascinating. Besides Bellis and Tanner and Fennec, there are such Armadan figures as the symetrically scarred Lovers; Uther Doul, their dour and enigmatic bodyguard; and the Brucolac, a vampir, and a fairly conventional one, but still strikingly portrayed. As in Perdido Street Station, Mieville invents fascinating part-human species, hybrids of humans and other forms, in this book most strikingly the anophelii, mosquito men, and, more scarily and affectingly, mosquito women. In the end it is Mievilles fervent, sometimes overheated, imagination, that drives the book. His descriptions of cruel and dirty places, and odd creatures, are endless intriguing. Yes, he sometimes luxuriates overmuch in grotesquerie, but I suspect any application of discipline to his imagination would lose us more neat visions than we might gain by avoiding the occasional silliness or vulgarness. The book is also a bit too long -- some of this is the authors delight in showing us this or that cool gross notion he has had, but also I think his sense of pace is weak. The other weakness is one fairly common in certain fantasy: when so many weird magical things are allowed, on occasion it seems that things happen, or characters gain powers, for reasons of the plot only. But though the book is a bit overlong, it remains compelling reading, and though the magical happenings arent always fully consistent, they really dont strain suspension of disbelief too much: on the whole, this is another outstanding effort from Mieville. Id rank it about even with Perdido Street Station, and perhaps slightly better on the grounds that the plot really is worked out quite well, with plenty of surprises and an honest, satisfying, resolution.

This book is basically second in the trilogy of <b>Bas Lag</b> and if you were amazed by <b>Perdido street station</b>, I think you will love this book too.This book basically takes place on a convoy of ships known as <b>Armada</b>. <img src=http://www.curufea.com/games/crobuzon/scar.jpg height=233px width=357px alt=Armada></img> But the Armada is definitely more than just rag tag convoy of assembled ships.It is basically a flourishing city like <b>New Corbuzon</b> where engineers,shopkeepers, doctors and costermongers(can help using this word :P) go to work everyday.It is divided into district of ships like Garwarter,Dry Fall,Curshouse and Shaddler and each of these districts have their unique set of rulers and unique set of taxes. The most powerful of districts is basically the Garwarter district and it is basically ruled <b>The Lovers</b> who love to have symmetrical cuts on each other faces and get some kind of orgasmic high from that.The district which is in direct opposition to Garwarter is basically the Dry fall which is basically ruled by Vampir yes you heard me right there are Vampires on these convoy of ships too known as Brucolac. The book basically starts with Bellis Coldwine who is basically a linguist and she is running away from <b>New corbuzon</b> as she is being hunted by the militia as she was an ex lover of <b>Issac</b> our renegade scientist from first book.On this ship she meets a host of characters like <b>Johannes Tearfly</b> and <b>Silas Fennec</b> also unknown to her who will play a larger part in the story are sailor <b>Shekel</b> and a remade <b>Tanner Sack</b>, out of them Tanner Sack is being escorted to Nova esperium so that he can spend rest of his life as slave. <img src=http://outtherebooks.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/tanner_sack_by_trabbold.jpg height=500px width=500px alt=Tanner sack></img> But unfortunately their ship gets hijacked and they are thrown into the new world of <b>Armada</b>,but although it is a pirate city but the city does not your average Captain Jack Sparrow like pirates but there is a structure to the society of Armada where in each member of the hijacked ship gets pressganged i.e. adopts to the culture of Armada and starts contributing to the city in one way or another.Th difference between personalities starts popping up as soon as this takes place because <b>Bellis</b> tries in vain to continuously struggle against the situation in which she is put and starts getting involved in murkier plots by <b>Silas Fennec</b> who has his own agenda to follow while the other people like <b>Tanner Sack</b> who is an engineer by profession adopts smoothly to the Armada culture, even the young boy <b>Shekel</b> manages to learn a lot of new things on Armada. Also Armada has its own story where the lovers are doing something without taking their fellow rulers in consideration, we get a lot of murkier politics in the plot which is very fascinating to read, and finally we come to understand who is playing whom.And standing in the middle of these power games is powerful fighter known as <b>Uthar doul</b> who can change the rules of the game due to the possibility sword which he is using. I think Mieville has outdone himself in <b>The scar</b>, his imagination has no boundaries.I think if he wouldnt have been an author then he would surely have become some kind of mad scientist, because the way he manages to walk the fine line between sci-fi and fantasy and mutation is simply mesmerizing.for me this book is 5/5 stars.

(more accurately 2 and a half) The second book in the Bas-Lag series, “The Scar”, is a steampunk fantasy weird fiction novel. While it is a sequel, there are not much strict ties to the original Perdido street station, except for lore and the mentioning of a few characters. This is utilized as a benefit as it removes any restrictions that the old setting (New Crobuzon) had, and allows Miéville keep the locations fresh in interesting. He succeeds in this by placing most of the book in the city of Armada, made completely of ships tied and build together at sea. It is here where most of the characters interact and the story unfolds. This, however, is possibly the only most interesting thing the book has to offer, as it only goes downhill in terms of originality from there. Once again the characters are weakest part of the story, and unlike the first book, the set up is more focus on one character named Bellis Coldwine (while it does still switch perspectives, it mostly stays on her). Unfortunately she is by far the least interesting major character in the entire book. This is because of her extremely lifeless personality of submissiveness and ignorance. This is not to say that it is bad writing to have characters with such traits, but it is a poor choice to make such characters the center stage. Quite literally she does 3-4 actions of important consequence throughout the whole book, all of which was either following the orders of another character directly or being manipulated by another character. Everything else she does is local and either does not, or very indirectly effects the main plot. This is because the main plot is focused on the city reaching an illusive and legendary destination called the Scar, and the characters like Uther doul, The lovers, and the Brucolac are all very experienced and knowledgeable in the matter, while Bellis simply happened to be unlucky enough to be on the ship that the city took over in hopes of finding an important person (Johanas). so she has no information of the major factors at play here, and no means to achieve said information, as she is written as weak in physical and mental capabilities (relative to the other major characters). At points it seems almost comedic how useless she is, as 2 of the few major actions she takes (which was being hyped up as major) turns out to be completely nullified in the next second when a character says “oh, we already knew that” (paraphrasing). The other characters even acknowledged this as they either ignore her existence since she’s so minor, or they easily manipulate her into doing what they want her to. Its baffling why she was chosen as the protagonist when she’s so clearly a side, static character. At times the book describes Uther doul much like it would an actual conventional protagonist, hinting at his far more interesting background and his extreme skill in fighting, and most importantly, an actual meaningful place in the plot. While making him the main character the main one would improve the book, it wouldnt do so by much, as he too is banal in practice (just not as much as Bellis). This is because he’s far too conventional, thousands of characters exist just like him, the “skill swordsman that serves as the royalty’s guard, only he has a secretive upbringing”. While the secretive upbringing part is alluring, it is not suffice to block how he is in the present, which is just another cliché overpowered swordsman. He never loses a single fight ever in the story, which might sound compelling at first glance, in reality it means there’s never any risk or chance of failure in a battle, so you stop caring about said battle at all. This could be possible solved had the book been told through his prospective, creating the possibility of a more 3 dimensionally deeper character, as it is conceivable that the reason for his apparent mundanity is because the reader only sees him through Bellis’s eyes, which are unrefined and incapable of picking up minor details due to her lacking any major place of importance. This fault is repeated several times over by any character who’s remotely exotic at first glance as well In the previous book, the lack of quality characters was at least partially made up by the creative and skillful world building/lore, which for whatever reason is lacking in this installment. Several new beings and aspects of life are introduced, the major of which being (minor spoiler alert) the Anvic. It any many other things like it fall back on the already used by the weaver and Moths in Perdido Street Stations ability to shift between realities. While new and intriguing previously, now it is stale and evidence of a lack on creativity. Not only does the Anvic posses it, but so does the Gringis and even Uther doul’s sword (though in that case its through another technique, but pragmatically its the same end product), meaning its effect of awe is severely lessened. That is not the only reason why the Anvic is a disappointment, no, its greatest offence is the fact that is was being build up as legendary, massive, and literally beyond this world, and the ready never even sees it besides descriptions of it being massive upfront (too much so to see its shape) and indescribable later on. The intended effect was to let the reader’s mind go wild with speculation, but because its only used by the city is to move slightly faster than before, and they were able to harness its power by essentially putting a carrot on a line on a stick, doesn’t help the reader imagine anything that impressive. By the end of the book (which will not be told in detail here due to major spoilers) nothing of major consequence has happened, for the “thing” that the whole book was leading to, never occurs, and everyone just goes home (essentially). Characters claimed that they’ve changed, but this is at the end of the book so the reader has no evidence of this. Though not so horrible as to warrant not finishing the book, it certainly wasnt something to remember

Theres a lot of enthusiasm for this book and this author; Mievilles previous novel was even nominated for Hugo in 2002. However, I found the book very irritating to read. The book seems to take itself very seriously, but the ideas presented are either clichéd and uninspired, or not explored in depth. Its a shotgun approach to fantasy, and one that I did not enjoy. Ive certainly read worse books, though. I thought that maybe I just didnt understand the world well, so I bought Perdido Street Station. The first few pages were so pretentious I couldnt put up with any more of it. I guess Ill never find out if that was the problem.

If you think about it, Mievilles THE SCAR is a modern-day 20,000 Leagues tale. Both start off with the ship and crew going to some distant location, only to have their voyage halted by an unexpected attack. Instead of a giant squid, you get an avanc. Instead of Captain Nemo, you get Uther Doul--a man whos past could easily spawn several spin-off novels. Instead of the Nautilus, you get Armada, a miles-wide city constructed entirely out of captured ships that are all tethered together. Supposedly you can even visit a likeness of Armada on the online virtual world Second Life. Instead of visiting an island of cannibals, the characters in The Scar visit an island of giant mosquito people that will literally attack you and suck you dry. Overall, I like The Scar better than Perdido Street Station, except when it comes to the ending. I thought Perdidos ending was more poetic and powerful. Ill admit too that The Scar takes a while to get moving, but once it does it becomes very hard to put it down. Its interesting to discover how ones own feelings mirror that of the main character, Bellis Coldwine. What is going on here? Am I ever going to get off this city of ships? Where are we going? The reader is as much a prisoner as she is. But just as Armada integrates captured ships and their crews into its cityscape, so is the reader attached to the tale of this ship-city, and its fate.

Excellent read. I loved exploring the far reaches of the wonderfully weird world of Bas-Lag. Chinas prose is sophisticated and the characters have real depth. The ending was slightly disappointing but hey I very much enjoyed the ride.