Perdido Franz Station, Part 2

The strange tale of Perdido Street Station did indeed unfold. And it unfolded as a monster hunt. Something of a let down, but not enough of one to rob the novel of its bizarre and terrible power.

Unfortunately, much of the discussion revolved around synopsis for the benefit of old-timers and first visitors who weren't able to complete all 614 pages of Mieville's dense, detail laden paragraphs, and some disappointment at the plot's low ambitions. Is it perhaps wise to ground the strange phantasmagoria of New Corbuzon with a standard issue plot of killing the beastie? We remained undecided. Though we were not undecided on the richness of the setting--a haunting character in and of itself, elegantly introduced (completely lacking in Star Wars Text Crawls), and wisely returned to by Mieville in other works.

Digression abounded as we gushed over vivid descriptions of New Corbuzon's bestiary. The capacity of the human mind for self-deception, our ability to train ourselves to not notice the obvious was poured over. Prompted by the dank, repulsive red light district, we were led to a catalog of encounters with appalling fetish in real life, proving that the bleakest fantasies are found in the dark corners of our own world.

And we ragged on Blame briefly.