The Scar is the second of the New Crobuzon series by China Mieville, but you certainly don’t need to read the first (Perdido Street Station) to understand or enjoy the second.
This is a long book with a lot going on! Let’s do a quick summary. Bellis Coldwine, our complicated protagonist, is a professional translator on a ship from New Crobuzon voluntarily going into exile after the events of Perdido Street Station. Her plans immediately collapse as she finds herself “press-ganged” by pirates onto a floating city called Armada. There are lots of mysteries and mysterious characters with their own motives, relationships, and histories on Armada. It is ruled by a weirdo couple called “the Lovers”. There’s a supernaturally talented warrior dude called Uther Doul. There’s a vampir called the Brucolac who has hidden connections and histories since he’s, you know, undead. There are friends and lovers and betrayers. The Lovers have some sort of secret project that they need help with, and Bellis finds herself embroiled therein. Several hundred pages in, we discover that the titular Scar is a source of some sort of alternate reality power that the Lovers want to harness. But honestly, the Scar is kind of neither here nor there and most of the plot is about Bellis’ role in this crazy chess game being played by, apparently, everyone she knows in Armada.
This should have been a five-star can’t-put-down stay-up-all-night page-turner for me but it just…wasn’t. Honestly, I can’t figure it out. I liked the complicated, vaguely amoral characters. I love a pirate-y story. I liked the weirdos that inhabited Armada. I loved the creepy mosquito ladies and the cacatai and the Remades. I like the idea of a crafty villain paying all sides against the middle. Lord knows I love a 500+ page fantasy journey with nuanced motives. I like the unexpected twists and turns, the way Miéville shows instead of tells. It’s so literary and clever and weird and deliberate. There were parts that were really, really excellent – the subplot with Tanner Sack and Shekel ripped my heart out.
But something about the pacing just felt off to me. I kept putting it down and then not picking it up; glossing over details and then going back to re-read entire sections. Parts that, plot-wise, should have been really big (the capture of the avanc, the fate of the Lover, Bellis’ jail time) felt deeply anticlimactic. It was kind of like, “wow, this crazy thing that I’ve been foreshadowing for 100 pages is finally happening, welp ok on to the next thing, remember this random guy we talked briefly about before?” I wanted more time to really wallow.
I recommend it for the sheer creativity and depth of the world-building – truly, it deserves 5 stars for those elements. But the reading experience just wasn’t it for me, so minus 1 star for that. (It just made me want to re-read Kraken.) I’m sorry Miéville, I still love you and I’m still going to read the next New Crobuzon.