The Scar

China Mieville

Comparing any fantasy novel to Mieville's mighty Perdido Street Station invites a bad review. But it can't be helped, in the case of The Scar. After all, it's the sequel to Perdido Street Station. It's not surprising that it doesn't measure up; what is surprising is how close it comes to doing so.

Not long after the events of Perdido Street Station, Grimnebulin's sometime-girlfriend, Bellis Coldwine, flees New Crobuzon when she feels the militia closing in. Boarding the Terpsichoria, she heads off for the colonies on the other side of the world, stopping at Salkrikaltor Cray on the way for some negotiations. Not long after they leave Cray, however, they are ambushed by pirates from a nation who are completely unconcerned with New Crobuzon's might, and taken prisoner. Things go, to put it mildly, downhill from there.

It seemed to me throughout that much of Mieville's impetus for writing The Scar was to explore and flesh out some of the places that were just mentioned in Perdido Street Station. All well and good, as much of what was praised about the former novel was Mieville's ability to build a world with an awe-inspiring amount of descriptive realism. So it's no surprise that the same happens here, as Mieville takes us thousands of miles north and west of New Crobuzon, jumping around the map and filling in pieces of it we didn't get to see before. Mieville's descriptive talents are as strong as ever.

The plot's got a good deal going for it, as well. The pirates are not your normal brand of pirate, and Bellis spends much of her time trying to figure out what's really going on as a possible means of somehow winning her freedom from her captors. She, and her various co-conspirators, are just as expertly drawn as the batch in Perdido Street Station.

Where the book sometimes flags is pace. Perdido Street Station is compelling reading, the kind of book for which foregoing food and sleep often seems like a good idea. Not so in parts of The Scar. Only parts, mind you, but there are passages here and there where the pace flags. That Mieville previously achieved a perfectly-paced novel in the midst of the vast amounts of thick description therein is the only reason for criticism here; with most authors, we'd be amazed it moves as swiftly as it does.

A worthy, if (very slightly) inferior, successor to Perdido Street Station.