The Scar
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4.5 • 94 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A mythmaker of the highest order, China Miéville has emblazoned the fantasy novel with fresh language, startling images, and stunning originality. Set in the same sprawling world of Miéville’s Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning novel, Perdido Street Station, this latest epic introduces a whole new cast of intriguing characters and dazzling creations.
Aboard a vast seafaring vessel, a band of prisoners and slaves, their bodies remade into grotesque biological oddities, is being transported to the fledgling colony of New Crobuzon. But the journey is not theirs alone. They are joined by a handful of travelers, each with a reason for fleeing the city. Among them is Bellis Coldwine, a renowned linguist whose services as an interpreter grant her passage—and escape from horrific punishment. For she is linked to Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, the brilliant renegade scientist who has unwittingly unleashed a nightmare upon New Crobuzon.
For Bellis, the plan is clear: live among the new frontiersmen of the colony until it is safe to return home. But when the ship is besieged by pirates on the Swollen Ocean, the senior officers are summarily executed. The surviving passengers are brought to Armada, a city constructed from the hulls of pirated ships, a floating, landless mass ruled by the bizarre duality called the Lovers. On Armada, everyone is given work, and even Remades live as equals to humans, Cactae, and Cray. Yet no one may ever leave.
Lonely and embittered in her captivity, Bellis knows that to show dissent is a death sentence. Instead, she must furtively seek information about Armada’s agenda. The answer lies in the dark, amorphous shapes that float undetected miles below the waters—terrifying entities with a singular, chilling mission. . . .
China Miéville is a writer for a new era—and The Scar is a luminous, brilliantly imagined novel that is nothing short of spectacular.
BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from China Miéville’s Embassytown.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this stand-alone novel set in the same monster-haunted universe as last year's much-praised Perdido Street Station, British author Mi ville, one of the most talented new writers in the field, takes us on a gripping hunt to capture a magical sea-creature so large that it could snack on Moby Dick, and that's just for starters. Armada, a floating city made up of the hulls of thousands of captured vessels, travels slowly across the world of Bas-Lag, sending out its pirate ships to prey on the unwary, gradually assembling the supplies and captive personnel it needs to create a stupendous work of dark magic. Bellis Coldwine, an embittered, lonely woman, exiled from the great city of New Crobuzon, is merely one of a host of people accidentally trapped in Armada's far-flung net, but she soon finds herself playing a vital role in the byzantine plans of the city's half-mad rulers. The author creates a marvelously detailed floating civilization filled with dark, eccentric characters worthy of Mervyn Peake or Charles Dickens, including the aptly named Coldwine, a translator who has devoted much of her life to dead languages; Uther Doul, the superhuman soldier/scholar who refuses to do anything more than follow orders; and Silas Fennec, the secret agent whose perverse magic has made him something more and less than human. Together they sail through treacherous, magic-ridden seas, on a quest for the Scar, a place where reality mutates and all things become possible. This is state-of-the-art dark fantasy and a likely candidate for any number of award nominations. (July 2).
Customer Reviews
Excellent read.
The Scar is an amazing follow up to Perdido Street Station. Though you don't have to have read it to enjoy The Scar.
Mieville has an extremely vivid imagination and a profound ability to create unthinkable creatures and somehow paint them in our minds as if they were memories of familiar animal at a zoo. Cactacae, avanc, and grindylow may mean nothing to you now but after finishing The Scar you will have encountered ( or re-encountered) the vegetal cactus people, a mythical leviathan, and a monster of nightmarish shadow.
The novel builds in momentum, never losing pace, but knowing when to stop and paint an intricate scene so we, the reader, are able to envision a floating city of a millennia's worth of scavenged and pirated ships where our central character, Bellis, finds herself press-ganged.
You will not be dissatisfied with this read. Lots of fun, but filled with emotion and character.
china mieville
The books are fantastic and utterly mind blowing. What an imagination. I’ve read them all and never failed to be entertained. Btw…forget trying to sound out the names. I used the first 3 letters.
Long-winded and collapsed under the weight of its own weirdness
This dude needs to lay off the mushroom tea. He’s got an incredible imagination, but - for the second time (my mistake) - I’ve started one of his books absolutely spellbound only to grow weary toward the end. It’s a mistake I won’t make a third time. It’s like he’s too impressed with his own bizarre premises that he’s convinced the reader will maintain interest far beyond the point at which his story becomes tedious. Skip this one and Perdidi Street Station. There’s a point in both - far before the end - that the weirdness just becomes to baroque and ends up as a distraction from things like plot or character development. He’s also way too fond of the word ‘puissance.’