Books about Perdido from Amazon.com

When Mae West said, "Too much of a good thing can be wonderful," she could have been talking about China Miéville's Perdido Street Station. The novel's publication met with a burst of extravagant praise from Big Name Authors and was almost instantly a multiaward finalist. You expect hyperbole in blurbs; and sometimes unworthy books win awards, so nominations don't necessarily mean much. But Perdido Street Station deserves the acclaim. It's ambitious and brilliant and--rarity of rarities--sui generis. Its clearest influences are Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy and M. John Harrison's Viriconium books, but it isn't much like them. It's Dickensian in scope, but fast-paced and modern. It's a love song for cities, and it packs a world into its strange, sprawling, steam-punky city of New Crobuzon. It can be read with equal validity as fantasy, science fiction, horror, or slipstream. It's got love, loss, crime, sex, riots, mad scientists, drugs, art, corruption, demons, dreams, obsession, magic, aliens, subversion, torture, dirigibles, romantic outlaws, artificial intelligence, and dangerous cults.

Generous, gaudy, grand, grotesque, gigantic, grim, grimy, and glorious, Perdito Street Station is a bloody fascinating book. It's also so massive that you may begin to feel you're getting too much of a good thing; just slow down and enjoy.

Yes, but what is Perdido Street Station about? To oversimplify: the eccentric scientist Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin is hired to restore the power of flight to a cruelly de-winged birdman. Isaac's secret lover is Lin, an artist of the khepri, a humano-insectoid race; theirs is a forbidden relationship. Lin is hired (rather against her will) by a mysterious crime boss to capture his horrifying likeness in the unique khepri art form. Isaac's quest for flying things to study leads to verification of his controversial unified theory of the strange sciences of his world. It also brings him an odd, unknown grub stolen from a secret government experiment so perilous it is sold to a ruthless drug lord--the same crime boss who hired Lin. The grub emerges from its cocoon, becomes an extraordinarily dangerous monster, and escapes Isaac's lab to ravage New Crobuzon, even as his discovery becomes known to a hidden, powerful, and sinister intelligence. Lin disappears and Isaac finds himself pursued by the monster, the drug lord, the government and armies of New Crobuzon, and other, more bizarre factions, not all confined to his world. --Cynthia Ward.
Price: $4.23 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Madewell Brown walked into the village on a hot, dry day in 1946. A solitary black man, with one arm longer than the other, he had never found a place for himself Never, that is, until he had painted his own history on the interior walls of his adobe house in Guadalupe. Fifty years later, Will Sawyer's truck runs out of gas, and as he walks that same long road back into town he knows it's best to keep his eyes on the ground. But he doesn't understand the town's long history of displacement, or the difficulty of truly fitting in here, until he hears the story of the dead girl found hanging from Las Manos Bridge. In this sad and poignantly humorous novel, Collignon returns to the same magical town he first introduced in The Journal of Antonio Montoya. Once again mixing present and past, living and dead, he delivers a forthright and unflinching examination of race, belonging, and identity..
Price: $2.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The critically acclaimed author of the Sharon McCone series delivers a rivetingnew mystery about a small town pitted against a foreign corporation. At the northernmost point of Soledad County lies Cape Perdido-once a lumber town, now a getaway for tourists and outdoor recreationists. But when the water harvesting plans of a North Carolina company threaten the residents' livelihoods, four people get caught up in the fight to save the town: Jessie Domingo, a community liaison specialist from New York City; Joseph Openshaw, an environmentalist forced to face ghosts of his past; Steph Pace, a restaurateur and former love of Openshaw's who must confront the same ghosts; and Timothy McNear, a former lumber mill owner who harbors secrets of his own. The arrival of the 'waterbaggers' will drive otherwise peaceful people to desperate acts, and a dramatic series of events-including a sniper's bullet, a midnight inferno, and an abduction-will awaken the residents of Cape Perdido to unsavory truths about their town and each other..
Price: $0.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]