[alison]

Somewhere in the depths of a site called Crooked Timber is a very insightful analysis of Tolkien's influence on Mieville's writing. And Mieville's response to that. Worth reading, I think. It's just too simplistic to say that he hates Tolkien; given Mieville's political stance (Trotskyist, no?) of course he'd loathe everything the man stood for. And you have to say he puts his money where his mouth is: his books are all, to my mind, very interesting in terms of their constant probing of ideologies, and very interesting particularly on questions of gender.

I read Mieville backwards, in that I started with Iron Council, then read PSS and last The Scar. Iron Council blew me away (despite my feeling that the metaphor, for all its attempted ambiguity, was made all too neat at the end - go, unionist uprisings!) And PSS - unwieldy and messy though it is - I found totally engrossing. The Scar is probably my least favourite of the three; there's something about it that seems attenuated, that I can't put my finger on, despite all the mindblowing invention and continual energy. Maybe it's a lack of the sexual energy that drives so forcefully in the other two novels?

[LordBalthazar]

Just finished reading The Scar last night and, like most newcomers to Melville, I was mightily impressed with the world he created and the various races that inhabited it. I loved the idea of the Armada, the different factions existing within the society, and wished we had bee treated to a little more of the political infighting that we only glimpsed during the debate over their journey and the ensuing uprising. I thought Bellis was a refreshingly atypical protagonist - cold, selfish, and female - and most of the supporting characters very real (Tanner, Shekel, Shekel's half-motorized lady).

Melville has a beautiful writing style, incredibly rich and descriptive. His account of Tearfly's descent and encounter with the grindylow was terrifying.

I thought the big guns - The Lovers, the Brucolac, Doul - weren't anywhere near as wel-defined as the other characters, but I believe it was purposely so. I would argue that the larger than life Lovers and mysterious Brucolac worked better as unfathomable characters. The Doul character, on the other hand, could have benefited from a little more depth after his own dangerous/mysterious had been established, especially given that, by book's end, it is suggested he played Bellis and yet no real reason is given as to why he would do so. Of course, he may have manipulated the situation to keep them from reaching the Scar, but why did he choose such a complicated and risky method? Why didn't he throw in with Brucolac who rose up to achieve the same ends or, at the very least, conveniently avoid supporting the Lovers when Brucolac came looking for them? True, he was loyal to the Lovers, but why? Especially if he believed they were wrong. Why did loyalty mean so much to this character?

Overall, I liked this book a lot, found it wonderfully creative, beautifully written, and filled with some terrific concepts (loved the Sword of Possibilities). Perdido Street Station is next on my to-read list.

[molybdenum]

This book was absolutely incredible. I think the most amazing thing about it is how the structure of the book fits in with the theme of the story.

Take Bellis Coldwine for instance. I'm not sure about everyone else, but I found her (and most of the other characters) a little dull throughout the entire book. Not that they were 2-dimensional, or unrealistic, they were just dull. There is one notable exception to this: Uther Doul. The reason for this is the main characters the whole time were just pieces to a puzzle, just tools used by Doul to perform his manipulations. Tools aren't incredibly interesting or exciting things, they are just tools. Even though most of the scenes seemed to be from the standpoint of Bellis, it's almost like Uther's description of what Bellis was thinking, no real likable or dislikable parts to it, it is just a tool.

The other part of this book that fascinated me was the ending. In one sense it was anti-climatic...after going all this way we are going to turn around...but at the same time, the fact that no one really knows what happenned creates a possible-ending. Just like the possible sword and the possible letter. Was this the real Hedrigal, or only a possible Hedrigal?..etc.
(My personal favorite solution is that when the Scar consumed them it simply sent them back into another possibility withh no memory of the previous one. This happenned continuous times until in one possibility, Hedrigal escaped. This is why Hedrigal disappeared, because he did not go with the rest of the ship into another possibility. Then he came back to tell the next possibility what happened, and the chain of possibilities falling into the scar were ended. Not exactly sure how Doul's manipulations would have fit into that, but it's possible.)

So, yes, some parts of the book could have been better, for instance, there was a lot of convienient coincidences (Shekal finding Kruach Aum's book and handing it to Bellis instead of, say, anyone else, Bellis being the only known person in the city able to speak High Kettai that well, Tanner being the person to find Bellis trying to sneak out on the mosquito island, the only person who could get the letter where it needed to go), and parts of me wishes we got to see the scar in actuality, and that I actually would grow to like the characters, but all that aside, as of right now, Mieville's up there with some of my favorite authors.