Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Confirming that this one’s my fave

The Scar by China Mieville

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This was kind of a new experience for me. I reread old favorites all the time, but how often do you get to reread new favorites? This is the first China Mieville I ever read (reviewed in 2014!), and I have now read everything he’s written, so I started over. This one is still my favorite. The world-building is amazing. This man’s imagination is bonkers, and I’m so glad he shares it with the world. The characters are unlikeable but incredibly compelling, which is so […]

The kind of book that you wish you could read for the first time, again.

Perdido Street Station by China Mielville

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When I was reading this book, a friend asked me what it was about.  I didn’t really know how to respond, because this book is insane.  Eventually I said something like, “It’s about humans…and other creatures that are loosely based on various mythologies?…in a parallel-world steampunk magic police state.  And also they are fighting these crazy dream-sucking moths.” And that’s true!  But there are also mob bosses, red light districts, cactus-people, water-magicians, sentient machines, scientists in secret labs, and, my favorite character, a giant multidimensional […]

“Sci-fi about language”: a heady entry in a favorite subgenre

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I have a niche interest in “sci-fi books about language” (give me all your recommendations!) and so this one came my way. China Miéville is a pretty highbrow author, and this is a pretty literary SF book. It is pretty focused on its own theoretical linguistics and the xenology behind language. It doesn’t go so much for major character development or plot, but it’s not annoying in the way that it can be when a fictional structure is just a lazy device to deliver a […]

The Review and the Review

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This is my first ever double-review! I have borrowed the wonderful extra brain that is my friend Amy. We met briefly in England and now she’s in Georgia and I’m in Denmark. We’ve read the same book and then I’ve bombarded her with loads of questions in an effort to ensure that she’d do most of the work, because well Amy’s brilliant and I love hearing what she thinks. I, of course, stole these questions shamelessly from the internet so there is nothing original about […]

Slime beneath me/slime up above/ooh you’ll love my…toxic love

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This *sniff* was my last *sob* China Mieville. I discovered him three-ish years ago, and have been rationing his books, but now I’m done! And now I have to wait till he writes something new! Woe is me! Ahem. Anyway. I didn’t adore this one, which makes it all the more woeful, but so-so YA China is better than no China at all. Deeba and her friend Zanna are in high school, and manage to make their way to a mysterious hidden land full of […]

The weirdest afterschool special I’ve never seen

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This book was an impulse purchase on a long airport layover a few years ago. I’d heard good things about China Miéville and wanted to give him a shot, and I figured a quick kids’ book read would be a good place to start, and then — classic me — I let it sit on the shelf for nearly two years before getting to it. Un Lun Dun has a lot going for it. The protagonists, Zanna and Deeba, pre-teen girls and best friends, have […]



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