China Mieville does not classify his novels as fantasy or science fiction, but as "weird fiction," and this one certainly fits that description. The setting is a partly explored world populated by many, many different species of sentient life (human-types, fish men, cactus men, and mosquito people, to name a few). The world's limited technology is powered by a combination of steampunk gadgetry and magic. The plot centers on a floating city made up of lashed-together ships and boats of all kinds. The inhabitants of the city are pirates, led by two humans known as The Lovers who cut each other to make mirror-image scarring as part of their lovemaking. Their plan to harness a sea creature as big as an island to pull their flotilla to an unexplored part of a far ocean to seek the scar from the wounding of the world is opposed only by some press-ganged captives and by the vampire residents of the city.
It's as if the author took every fantasy/science fiction cliche' he could remember or imagine and crammed them all into one book, whether they fit or made sense or not.
Despite all these goings-on, the first half or so of the book is actually slow and pretty dull. Mieville does get going in the latter half and things get fairly exciting. A kind of psychological sub-plot whereby the female protagonist is manipulated by one male after another is funny in a perverse way, since she is such an unsympathetic character. (I couldn't figure out if Mieville intended this to be funny or not.)
One stylistic matter annoyed me intensely: Mieville fixates on a word and uses it over and over in close proximity. For example, I lost count of how many times he used "puissant," but it was at least 10 times within 50 pages. And that's not his only pet word. I can't imagine an editor letting this go, even if the author could.
This was Mieville's second novel, and I am pleased to report that he got better. His The City and the City, written in 2009, is excellent and straddles the boundary between genre and literary fiction.
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