Books 2009 (#1 The Scar, China Mieville)

[kangeiko]

Title: The Scar
Author: China Mieville
Page count: 624 pages.

I think I liked the first half of this more than I liked Perdido Street Station. That could be because it took me a while to warm up to Bas-Lag in PSS, whereas here I was bought in from the get-go.

I liked the sea voyage, how long and arduous and boring it is. This could be because I liked sea voyages in general. I also liked the concept of Armada although, as wingsmith pointed out, it's not as well realised as New Crobuzon. I think that's partly because C.M. didn't have as much time to research/invent it, but, mainly, because Bellis cuts herself off from the city for a significant portion of the book, and we see things through her eyes. If she's not looking, then we can't see. When at last she starts paying attention, things lived up - but by then we're off Armada and on the island of the mosquito people. Which I... liked? Sorta. I liked the terror of it, but something about the Malarial Kingdom (awesome though the concept is) didn't quite ring true for me. But the she-anophelii were suitably yucky. (That's a technical term.)

Back on Armada, I didn't have a whole lot of time for the Lovers, they struck me as rather pretentious (the characters, I mean, rather than the execution - I didn't think the execution was pretentious, I merely found it irritating). And maybe rulers are allowed to be pretentious, I don't know. But I preferred the Brucolac. (I love the idea of a goretax, btw.)

Now, on to the plot. OK, I liked the Lovers' plan, even though we only see a bit of it. (What do they have planned once they reach the Scar? That's never revealed, no one can imagine it, and I think that's a serious lapse in imagination there - the Lovers become merely crazy, rather than power-hungry.) But up until we reach the Scar and it all falls over, I liked the plan. It built gradually, rather than being revealed all in one go, and I liked that some people were in on bits and when they were left out of other bits they were disgruntled. Basically, I liked the politics of it.

I also liked the save-New-Crobuzon! plot, although Simon Fench/Silas Fennec annoyed the living daylights out of me. Not as badly as Doul, though, and we'll come to that later. Having figured out that he wasn't saving New Crobuzon at pretty much the point where he stole a compass (which is, I think, the earliest point in the book when you can actually work out not only that he's gunning for Armada - or at least for being rescued - but also how the fleet would find the city), the whole thing became All About Silas. Except when it was All About Bellis. Or All About Doul. ACK.

My main complaint, after a decent set-up and lots of potential, is the ending.
1. Everything was a Grand Plan on Doul's part to stop the Lovers. Oh, yay, he is so clever! Let me worship you with your wonderful voice. I hate Grand Plans. Also, do we have a reason why? No. We don't know what the Lover wanted to do at the Scar, so we don't really understand why Doul worked so hard to oppose it - does he think it's suicide? Did he change his mind? Does he prefer to be sailing due east? Whatever.
2. Everything except Fennec's Grand Plan, of course, which I also hated. I liked the pettiness of it, but I disliked that he was yet another all-intelligent, full-of-mysterious-powers guy.
3. BELLIS OMG. I get that I'm supposed to connect with a female protagonist more. Maybe I did, maybe I didn't. But I was more interested in the khepri in PSS than I was in Bellis, who was so soul-sick for New Crobuzon that I wanted to slap her. Moreover, the fact that she was hoodwinked and manipulated not just the once, but TWICE, and then sent home - well, really, it's best she be out of the way of these CLEVER SCARY MEN, isn't it? Add to that the female Lover being set adrift towards the Scar, while her male counterpart takes over as sole leader, and you have some pretty twisted gender politics. (And the she-anophelii sort of added to this, by the time I was done reading, which is why it all accumulated at the end.) Isaac was hoodwinked in PSS, and so were so many other people, but he wasn't ever made to be stupid and pathetic and selfish and small-minded, which is what Bellis was. Now, maybe that was what the character required, but it was an unfortunate coincidence that this happened at the same time as her being female, and developing a schoolgirl crush on Doul (who is supposed to be liked Lestat, I suppose. Or, whatsis face, bloke from the Twilight books I refuse to read).

Basically, it was a great set-up, and then two-thirds of the way through it suddenly started collapsing in on itself. Poo.

I am told that I will like The Iron Council better; I hope so.

Comments

[wingsmith.livejournal.com]

Hmmm,

Interesting. I agree that the lack of explanation of the Lover's plot makes it a little vague. I think the idea was more or less that they wanted to mine the possibilites spilling out of the Scar to increase their own power and that of Armada, because at the end of the day this is Mieville and everyone in power is corrupt and greedy.

I didn't find I lost sympathy with Bellis for getting duped by either Doul or Fennec. I lost sympathy with her because, she frankly wasn't very sympathetic. I would have been taken in by Doul ( I know this because I was.) I also thought that the romance element made for a nice gender reversal on the standard 'Honeytrap' plot device, (i.e. lustful man falls for sexy manipulative woman). For me, Bellis didn't ever come across as any more flawed than any of CM's other (tbf immensely flawed leads.)

My favourite character was Tanner. I liked the ideas in the Scar, but I found it pushed less of my aesthetic buttons, because I'm less into Pirates than Urban Grunginess.

[kangeiko]

I wasn't emotionally involved with Bellis, any more than I was with Isaac (in fact, I think I connected with Isaac more), but I found that throughout the book there was a definite gender division being drawn up - Bellis has her sexuality and vanity used against her, not once but twice (she's duped both times by thinking that Doul and Fennec are romantically interested in her); the Lover is shown as crass and self-involved when her ambition takes her away from Armada (whereas do a gender switch-around, and it becomes a man abandoning a weak woman to pursue his calling, rather than a too-ambitious, stupid woman chasing ghosts); the she-anophelii are literally voracious man-eaters and they are kept at bay and killed for self-defence. Even Sister Meriope ends up pregnant and dead. That's consistent male/female imagery, of the 'women are sexual, voracious beings led around by their appetites' Victorian type. Compare that to PSS, where the khepri are a wholly female culture and are rounded and differentiated and well-realised, and it becomes even more pronounced. I'm not saying he set out to write a book with gender issues; I'm saying my reading of it is of a book with wonky gender issues. I had quite a pronounced reaction to that because I liked the beginning so much, so I felt even more let down by it. athena25 thinks I will like The Iron Council for this reason.

I liked Tanner as well; I liked all of the Remade, in fact. I would have liked more of an exploration of that, rather than what we got.

[(Anonymous)]

IC's my least favourite of the three Bas-Lag novels because I found it to be the least aesthetically and imaginatively rich.

The gothicky syrupy grotesqueness of the first two gets set aside for some overt marxist stuff that I really didn't care about but you might. You've got more of a lit theory background than I do.

Also, I find that IC suffers from a sense of disclocation. Its set in too many places for not long enough and too little time is spent on setting. I think CM's best attribute is the sense of place he creates, and that's weakened in it.

From a theory stand point though, the book is very clever. You can interpret and make connections endlessly. Especially at the end.