book review: Mieville does Melville

[psocoptera]

Railsea, China Mieville. Sadly, I did not especially enjoy this book. Maybe if you haven't read The Scar and Iron Council and Un Lun Dun and Kraken you might really enjoy the creativity and atmosphere and whatnot? But I have read all those books and Railsea kind of felt like it was just pieces of them mixed together, Mieville preoccupied with his standard preoccupations again. Which seems unfair to hold against him - it can hardly be a surprise when an author writes the kind of thing they write - but I think his better books take his standard stuff and pair it with something *else*. (Embassytown is about the city as crossroads but it's also about language and narrative, Un Lun Dun is about the city as midden but it's also about quests and chosen-ones, etc.) Railsea isn't a *bad* book - this is Mieville, there's some really clever stuff here - but I never really got into the story. And there was just *too much* of it, I think we could have had all the cleverness in about half the length. That said, there's a chance Mieville is falling into an every-other-book pattern for me (Embassytown and The City and The City yes, Kraken and this one no), so I'll definitely still read his next book to see if the pattern holds. (Much as I am eagerly awaiting the tenth Bloody Jack book this fall, given that so far #s 1, 4, and 7 have been the good ones.)

Comments

[aryky.livejournal.com]

I have never understood how that books-by-an-author pattern thing works, especially how it manages to be so consistent. For DWJ's last seven books, though, it was really quite consistent. I still don't understand why. I'd be interested to see if it continues to be consistent with you and Mieville - and if you can think of any reasons for it, since I still want to understand that phenomenon.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

Hm. Maybe it's confirmation bias - once I think I see a pattern, I'm predisposed to judge even-numbered books harshly and odd-numbered books leniently (or whatever). Or maybe I've forgotten about all the times I thought there was a pattern and then it broke, and I just remember the patterns that haven't broken yet, so I forget how common pattern-breaking is.

Or maybe it really is something going on with some authors and not just in my brain, like, they alternate who does their beta-reads or something ::grin::.

[aryky.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the best answer I could ever come up with was sort of like your predisposition thing, although more like the opposite of confirmation bias - that after I read a book that really disappointed me, my expectations were lower, so that it was easier for the next book to surpass them, but then my expectations would rise again, so it was easier for the next book to disappoint me, and so on. I'm not sure that explains the persistence of the effect on re-reads, though. Each time I reread Conrad's Fate I assume it can't really be as entertaining as I remember it and that it was just an effect of comparing it to The Pinhoe Egg, but I really do think I like it!

[cereph.livejournal.com]

I would add #3 to the list of good Bloody Jack books (not that I didn't enjoy the others, or at least parts of them, but 1, 3, 4, and 7 were definitely the best)