!http://a1204.g.akamai.net/7/1204/1401/04110808011/images.barnesandnoble.com/images/8500000/8506400.jpg! because of the “Mieville Seminar”:http://crookedtimber.org/category/mieville-seminar (or perhaps more accurately, the knowledge of its existence). Enough interesting stuff was said in the bits I read that I figured it couldn’t be a bad book.
And, indeed, it’s not. Neither, though, is it a great book. I’m hard pressed to articulate the things I didn’t like about it. I think it’s the prose. It’s not that the prose is bad, it’s just…too much. There’s so much going on, and sometimes the prose gets in the way of the story–not by clanging and making one cringe, but just by being a little too self-obsessed.
Still, if you’re willing to overlook some missteps and aesthetic quibbles for a book that has boundless ambition, you could do a lot worse.
