Rating: 4.5 out of 5
There is something to be said about scars. They are signs that someone got wounded. They are signs that the wounds have healed. They are also signs that some wounds cannot ever truly and completely heal. They will always be reminders of the pain that someone went through. Scars are a sign of something being severed and its attempt to reattach itself, although unable to return to the way it was before. Scars feature prominently on The Scar, the third novel by China Mielville, probably the most imaginative writer in speculative fiction of this time. Most of the story’s characters carry scars on them, either physically or mentally.
The Scar may also be a statement by the author on traditional epic fantasy trends where characters always strive to bring the world back to what it once was before the great evil emerged. In most of those stories, after the dark enemy is defeated, everything goes back to normal, the world turns as it once did, even slightly better, a little bit brighter. For Mielville, a world going through great, terrible and calamitous events never reverts back to what it was before. There will always be something severed, something lost. Some things will never completely heal. There will always be scars, in the bodies and minds of the people who went through them. And it shows in Mielville’s works, more so in The Scar.
The Scar takes the readers back to the world of Bas-lag, introduced first in Mielville’s second novel, Perdido Street Station. But this time, he takes us away from the remarkable city of New Crobuzon into the vast incredible world outside it. (Incidentally, The Scar is a standalone book where the reading of Perdido Street Station is not a requirement. Although yours truly recommends reading Perdido… first to be able to properly appreciate the events of both books.) Anyone familiar with the author’s dark and quirky style knows by now that Bas-lag is a world unlike any other worlds of fantasy. There are no elves, dwarves or orcs. Instead Bas-lag contains khepri, cactacae, anophelii, cray, scabmettler, and vampir. And then there are the Remade, those whose bodies have been transformed in different ways, either as punishment for a crime or as a requirement for a profession. One Remade in the story is a woman, whose lower part of the body is attached to a mechanical steam contraption that allows her to travel through caterpillar tracks that replaced her legs.
In the story, we glimpse Bas-lag mostly through the eyes of Bellis Coldwine, a fugitive from New Crobuzon escaping the authorities because of her perceived connection to some calamitous event which had happened in the city (an event chronicled in Perdido Street Station). She hires out herself as a translator aboard the New Crobuzon ship, Terpsichoria, whose passenger manifest include people looking for a new life away from New Crobuzon and a cargo of criminal Remades destined for a prison colony, including one Tanner Sack, who had tentacles attached to his torso as a punishment for some crime (and from whose point-of-view are some parts of the story also told).
They reach Salkrikaltor, a cray city with whom New Crobuzon has business with concerning the operation of three deep-sea mining rigs nearby. And now, one of them is missing. Here they also pickup a new passenger, Silas Fennec, who without any explanation, forces it to return back to New Crobuzon. It never reaches there. Pirates attack the Terpsichoria and take all the survivors to a new destination: the Armada.
To say that the Armada is a floating city is an understatement. It is built upon a vast number of ships, steamers, boats, all kinds of ocean-going vessels (even the husk of a dead whale) collected, hijacked or stolen throughout the centuries by pirates who created their own home and a fully-functioning self-sufficient society with semi-autonomous districts, currently ruled by a scar-faced couple known only as The Lovers and protected by the formidable and enigmatic warrior, Uther Doul. And contrary to expectations, the captives of the Terpsichoria are offered citizenship, jobs, equal status aboard the Armada. And for some, especially the Remade prisoners like Tanner Sack, it means a new life and a new chance for respect, and a reason to embrace being a Remade (so much so that he had himself further remade.) But for Bellis, who discovered that the price of acceptance is to never leave the city, the Armada becomes a prison and yearns, ironically, for the home she has been fleeing from.
But all is not as it seems. The capture of the Terpsichoria has not been an unfortunate twist of fate. They have come at a time when plans are in motion - plans which are unknown to other schemers. Information suggests that New Crobuzon is coming under attack from an unknown and terrifying force. Something is searching the oceans for an important object. An impossible mythical creature is being summoned. A legend is being sought. The future of the Armada is being contested. Manipulations and schemes abound.
Such are the multi-layered complexities found in The Scar yet the reader isn’t overwhelmed by them. Mielville creates such a subtle weave of the plot that one never realizes how complex a story this is. Written in a more linear form that Perdido Street Station but still proceeding in an easy pace, at least for more than half of the story, until everything shifts into higher gear in the final part including getting involved in the most exciting and epic naval engagement in fiction this side of George R. R. Martin.
Mielville being a true great writer explores a number of themes within his story. As stated earlier, and being true to its title, he explores the motif of scars. Like physical scarring as a result of physical wounds or the weird and exotic sexual expression of the Lovers deliberate scarring of their faces. Or the emotional scars that one obtains after being exiled from one home, or after experiencing the loss of a loved one.
Another important theme raised is the importance of writing in society – the profound meaning of the simple act of a person writing his name on an object he owns; or as a tool to control information to an isolated society one wants to control; or the knowledge preserved and obtained by the ability to pass important information from one generation to another in books, or the power to undermine an empire by the putting in pages the weaknesses and strengths of a city.
All these are just a small part of the things that come out of the mind-boggling imagination of China Mielville. One has to read his works in order to comprehend his brilliance. He even managed to write a compelling story with a lead character that is cold, relatively uninteresting, unsympathetic and a little bit whiny. With The Scar, he solidifies his place in his genre (Sci-fi? Fantasy? Horror? All of the above? Who cares! As long as we enjoy them.), and proves that the accolades he received with Perdido Street Station was not a fluke. This guy is for real.
He comes at a time when speculative fiction is starting to break away from the chains it imposed on itself, trying to find a fresh new identity. It is no secret that he has made himself a critic of J.R.R. Tolkien and for some fans of fantasy, this may be sacrilegious. Still, as no one could ever deny the place of Tolkien as the father of today’s form of epic fantasy, he challenges the Tolkenesque idea that fantasy should be the place of ideals and hierarchy and standards. For Mielville, fantasy should be much more. It should be a genre that challenges every writer to create wonder, to create fantasies with no limitations in mind. And with The Scar as with Perdido Street Station, Mielville has given the genre just that, making him probably the most important speculative fiction writer of his generation.
There is something to be said about scars. They are signs that someone got wounded. They are signs that the wounds have healed. They are also signs that some wounds cannot ever truly and completely heal. They will always be reminders of the pain that someone went through. Scars are a sign of something being severed and its attempt to reattach itself, although unable to return to the way it was before. Scars feature prominently on The Scar, the third novel by China Mielville, probably the most imaginative writer in speculative fiction of this time. Most of the story’s characters carry scars on them, either physically or mentally.
The Scar may also be a statement by the author on traditional epic fantasy trends where characters always strive to bring the world back to what it once was before the great evil emerged. In most of those stories, after the dark enemy is defeated, everything goes back to normal, the world turns as it once did, even slightly better, a little bit brighter. For Mielville, a world going through great, terrible and calamitous events never reverts back to what it was before. There will always be something severed, something lost. Some things will never completely heal. There will always be scars, in the bodies and minds of the people who went through them. And it shows in Mielville’s works, more so in The Scar.
The Scar takes the readers back to the world of Bas-lag, introduced first in Mielville’s second novel, Perdido Street Station. But this time, he takes us away from the remarkable city of New Crobuzon into the vast incredible world outside it. (Incidentally, The Scar is a standalone book where the reading of Perdido Street Station is not a requirement. Although yours truly recommends reading Perdido… first to be able to properly appreciate the events of both books.) Anyone familiar with the author’s dark and quirky style knows by now that Bas-lag is a world unlike any other worlds of fantasy. There are no elves, dwarves or orcs. Instead Bas-lag contains khepri, cactacae, anophelii, cray, scabmettler, and vampir. And then there are the Remade, those whose bodies have been transformed in different ways, either as punishment for a crime or as a requirement for a profession. One Remade in the story is a woman, whose lower part of the body is attached to a mechanical steam contraption that allows her to travel through caterpillar tracks that replaced her legs.
In the story, we glimpse Bas-lag mostly through the eyes of Bellis Coldwine, a fugitive from New Crobuzon escaping the authorities because of her perceived connection to some calamitous event which had happened in the city (an event chronicled in Perdido Street Station). She hires out herself as a translator aboard the New Crobuzon ship, Terpsichoria, whose passenger manifest include people looking for a new life away from New Crobuzon and a cargo of criminal Remades destined for a prison colony, including one Tanner Sack, who had tentacles attached to his torso as a punishment for some crime (and from whose point-of-view are some parts of the story also told).
They reach Salkrikaltor, a cray city with whom New Crobuzon has business with concerning the operation of three deep-sea mining rigs nearby. And now, one of them is missing. Here they also pickup a new passenger, Silas Fennec, who without any explanation, forces it to return back to New Crobuzon. It never reaches there. Pirates attack the Terpsichoria and take all the survivors to a new destination: the Armada.
To say that the Armada is a floating city is an understatement. It is built upon a vast number of ships, steamers, boats, all kinds of ocean-going vessels (even the husk of a dead whale) collected, hijacked or stolen throughout the centuries by pirates who created their own home and a fully-functioning self-sufficient society with semi-autonomous districts, currently ruled by a scar-faced couple known only as The Lovers and protected by the formidable and enigmatic warrior, Uther Doul. And contrary to expectations, the captives of the Terpsichoria are offered citizenship, jobs, equal status aboard the Armada. And for some, especially the Remade prisoners like Tanner Sack, it means a new life and a new chance for respect, and a reason to embrace being a Remade (so much so that he had himself further remade.) But for Bellis, who discovered that the price of acceptance is to never leave the city, the Armada becomes a prison and yearns, ironically, for the home she has been fleeing from.
But all is not as it seems. The capture of the Terpsichoria has not been an unfortunate twist of fate. They have come at a time when plans are in motion - plans which are unknown to other schemers. Information suggests that New Crobuzon is coming under attack from an unknown and terrifying force. Something is searching the oceans for an important object. An impossible mythical creature is being summoned. A legend is being sought. The future of the Armada is being contested. Manipulations and schemes abound.
Such are the multi-layered complexities found in The Scar yet the reader isn’t overwhelmed by them. Mielville creates such a subtle weave of the plot that one never realizes how complex a story this is. Written in a more linear form that Perdido Street Station but still proceeding in an easy pace, at least for more than half of the story, until everything shifts into higher gear in the final part including getting involved in the most exciting and epic naval engagement in fiction this side of George R. R. Martin.
Mielville being a true great writer explores a number of themes within his story. As stated earlier, and being true to its title, he explores the motif of scars. Like physical scarring as a result of physical wounds or the weird and exotic sexual expression of the Lovers deliberate scarring of their faces. Or the emotional scars that one obtains after being exiled from one home, or after experiencing the loss of a loved one.
Another important theme raised is the importance of writing in society – the profound meaning of the simple act of a person writing his name on an object he owns; or as a tool to control information to an isolated society one wants to control; or the knowledge preserved and obtained by the ability to pass important information from one generation to another in books, or the power to undermine an empire by the putting in pages the weaknesses and strengths of a city.
All these are just a small part of the things that come out of the mind-boggling imagination of China Mielville. One has to read his works in order to comprehend his brilliance. He even managed to write a compelling story with a lead character that is cold, relatively uninteresting, unsympathetic and a little bit whiny. With The Scar, he solidifies his place in his genre (Sci-fi? Fantasy? Horror? All of the above? Who cares! As long as we enjoy them.), and proves that the accolades he received with Perdido Street Station was not a fluke. This guy is for real.
He comes at a time when speculative fiction is starting to break away from the chains it imposed on itself, trying to find a fresh new identity. It is no secret that he has made himself a critic of J.R.R. Tolkien and for some fans of fantasy, this may be sacrilegious. Still, as no one could ever deny the place of Tolkien as the father of today’s form of epic fantasy, he challenges the Tolkenesque idea that fantasy should be the place of ideals and hierarchy and standards. For Mielville, fantasy should be much more. It should be a genre that challenges every writer to create wonder, to create fantasies with no limitations in mind. And with The Scar as with Perdido Street Station, Mielville has given the genre just that, making him probably the most important speculative fiction writer of his generation.
