Stephan ’s Reviews > Perdido Street Station > Status Update

"Frflcfc"? What? I already am stunned my Mieville's command of English, but I'm not ready to accept that as a word.. Must be a mistake.

"You think you can go frflcfc?"

I think Mieville must be the only author on earth where you would even consider this not being an error.
edit: I checked. It's not an error. But what does it mean?

"Frflcfc"? What? I already am stunned my Mieville's command of English, but I'm not ready to accept that as a word.. Must be a mistake.

"You think you can go frflcfc?"

I think Mieville must be the only author on earth where you would even consider this not being an error.

Some very dark stuff going on here. I told a friend about Mieville, he looked him up and came back to me saying "Dreadful! Don't you get nightmares from that weird shit?" I was stunned by his assessment because my fascination by Mieville's writing made me totally one-sided and now I am much more aware of aspects that could be seen as horror. Doesn't change my fascination by one bit though!

If you haven't read Mieville before, here are some of the words that he uses: hirsute - hairy, argot - slang, skein - tangle, chary - vigilant, brine - water of the sea, charnel - filled with corpses, inchoate - incipient and sometimes all on one page..

Again I'm hooked already! Mieville has me invested in the story. At first I was only fascinated and stunned & enjoying it, now I'm really in. New elements have my special interest. Not only are this authors books good, I find them expanding on ideas, taking them further & exploring the what-if's. I've encountered judgement for reading fantasy, seeing the genre as escapist. Well, dear judges, this is so much more!

"Temagant!" he moaned after her. "Shrew! Harridan! All right, all right, you win, you, you... uh... virago, you spit-fire!"

Where do these words come from? Thank goodness for my Kobo's dictionary, so many words I've never heard of! Does Mieville spend his free time reading thesauruses and dictionaries? I can only add Xanthippe to above quote...

Mieville awes me. I read the first four pages of chapter one 3 times, it's paints such a vivid picture. I drifted through the scene, saw it happening, smelled the local scents, moved back and forward. I've closed the book to head off and find out a bit about Mieville and what made him into this inspiring author.

I was already liking this before I opened the book on my Kobo. The first thing I saw was the amount of pages (623). I like books to have 400+ pages, gives the story more room. This just shows I'm not used to paper books anymore!