The Scar - China Miéville

   2002; 578 pages.  Book Two (out of three) in the “Bas-Lag” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Steampunk Fiction; Weird Fantasy.  Laurels: 2003 British Fantasy Award (winner); 2003 Locus Award (winner); nominated for 2002 British Science Fiction Award, 2002 Phillip K. Dick Award, 2003 Arthur C. Clarke Award, 2003 Hugo Award, and 2003 World Fantasy Award.  Overall Rating : 9½*/10.

 

    Bellis Coldwine is going on an extended cruise.  She boarded the ship Terpsichoria in the capital city of New Crobuzon and is headed for the distant port of Nova Esperium.

 

    The Terpsichoria is not your typical cruise ship though.  It’s primarily used to transport slaves throughout the empire although paying passengers such as Bellis are also welcomed.  But this is not a pleasure voyage for Bellis; it’s one of desperation.  Her friends and acquaintances in New Crobuzon have been “disappearing” in the middle of the night, and it's not hard to figure out that it won’t be long before whoever the abductors are, probably the New Crobuzon militia, will soon be coming for her as well.

 

    Alas, Fate has a detour in store for Bellis.  The open sea is a dangerous place, and the Terpsichoria has just been captured by pirates.  They’re freeing the slaves and press-ganging both them and passengers into becoming residents of the floating pirate metropolis of Armada.

 

    Oh well.  Any port in a storm is fine by Bellis.  What’s important to her is where she’s fleeing from, not where she is, or where she’s going.

 

What’s To Like...

    The Scar is the second book in China Miéville’s “Bas-Lag” trilogy.  It’s not really a sequel, but it’s set in the same world as Book One, Perdido Street Station, which I read more than ten years ago and is reviewed here.

 

    China Miéville’s world-building in The Scar is both ambitious and masterfully done.  Most of the story takes place on the giant ocean-borne city of Armada, which has citizens dwelling both above and below the water surface.  The city itself is made up of dozens upon dozens of watercraft seized by the pirates, welded together, and converted into an urban area.  That may sound a bit contrived, but in Miéville’s hands it works perfectly.

 

    The character development is equally dazzling.  For the most part, we follow Bellis's adventures and intrigues, as she struggles to come to grips with the fact that Armada is both her new and permanent home.  We meet all sorts of sentient species that have found a haven in, under, and around Armada, including crays (half-human/half crayfish), cactacae (“cactus people”), dinichthys (“bonefish”), vampires (called “vampir”), anophelli (“mosquito people”), scabmettlers, grindylow, and the bizarre, artificially-fashioned “Remade”.  Who knows, maybe we'll even spot a creature called the godwhale, otherwise known as the "mountain-that-swims".

 

    Lots of species means lots of spoken languages, and Bellis finds herself in a key position of a translator due to her working knowledge of some of the more arcane tongues.  She may not be fluent in all of these, but for now she’s the best resource the wandering pirates have got.

 

    The storyline is complex, which is typical for China Miéville novels.  The reasons for Bellis’s fleeing New Crobuzon remain obscure for a long time, as does her determination to eventually return there.  Other press-ganged passengers from the Terpsichoria have their own reasons for wanting to contact New Crobuzon officials and some pirate leaders have their own agendas for steering Armada to uncharted waters.  It was a fun challenge to figure out who was using whom, and what ulterior motives the various main characters had.  It takes a while for the action to kick in alongside the intrigue, but once it does, you are treated to several exciting, chapter-long battle scenes.

 

    There is some magic (called “thaumaturgy”) present in the tale, including some very useful charmed artifacts, but it doesn’t overwhelm the storyline.  I liked the concept of “probability mining”, and chuckled at the fact that book-hoarding was considered a serious crime in the Garwater sector of Armada.  Miéville's choice of words is a vocabulary-lover’s delight: my favorites are given below, but there were lots more.

 

    Everything builds to a suitably exciting ending, including several twists to keep you on the edge of your seat.  In the end, Armada and its inhabitants are saved from a dire fate.  Or did they chicken out and miss a chance to gain unprecedented power?  That remains for the surviving characters, as well as the reader, to ponder.  Only China Miéville knows the answer.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Gurned (v.) : made a grotesque face (British).

Others: Disphotic (adj.); Integument (n.), Adumbrating (v.); Fatuous (adj.), Raddled (v.); Delimited (v.), Pusillanimous (adj.); Tup (v.), Detumescent (adj.); Bathetic (adj.), Benthic (adj.); Kitted (v., British), Blebbed (adj.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.5/5 based on 527 ratings.

    Goodreads: 4.17/5 based on 29,260 ratings and 1,817 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    In New Crobuzon, what was not regulated was illicit.  In Armada, things were different.  It was, after all, a pirate city.  What did not directly threaten the city did not concern its authorities.  Bellis’ message, like other secrets, did not have to strive to be covert, as it might back home to avoid the militia.  Instead, it sped through this wrangling city with ease and speed, leaving a little trail for those who knew how to look.  (loc. 6141)

 

    “They knew how to pick at the might-have-beens and pull out the best of them, use them to shape the world.  For every action, there’s an infinity of outcomes.  Countless trillions are possible, many milliards are likely, millions might be considered probable, several occur as possibilities to us as observers—and one comes true.

    “But the Ghosthead knew how to tap some of those that might have been.”  (loc. 6703)

 

Kindle Details…

    The Scar is presently priced at $11.99 at Amazon.  The other two books in the series go for $9.99 (Perdido Street Station) and $10.99 (The Iron Council).  China Miéville has another dozen or so full-length e-books for your Kindle, most of them fiction, ranging in price from $7.99 to $13.99.

 

Let’s help you come up with my plan.  (loc. 3646)

    It’s hard to find anything to quibble about in The Scar.  It took me a while to figure out what the main plotline was, but I suspect this was a deliberate on the part of Miéville, since it allows the reader to soak up the mesmerizing atmosphere of life on Armada.

 

    There’s a fair amount of cussing, with the f-bomb and variations of damn being the most popular choices, although the fabulous word "shat" also makes an appearance.  Cusswords involving deities are common too, with a majority of them invoking a local god called “Jabber”.  There are a couple rolls-in-the-hay by Bellis, one allusion to auto-eroticism, and repeated instances of "statuary-eroticism".  I'll let you muse on that last one.

 

    My final gripe is also the nit-pickiest: there are no maps, at least in the Kindle version of The Scar.  Given all the seafaring travel that Bellis and the pirates do, my brain was screaming for a chart showing this world.

 

    9½ Stars.  I’m of the opinion that, since the passing of Kurt Vonnegut some years back, the most skilled contemporary author is now China Miéville.  The Scar did nothing to change my viewpoint.  I have two more of his books sitting on my TBR shelf: Iron Council, which is the final book in this Bas-Lag trilogy, and October, a non-fiction historical account of the Russian revolution in October, 1917.  It’s a pleasant quandary to decide which of these I should read next.