"The Scar" (Second Look)

The Scar (China Mieville)

Up until now, all the Mievelle books I've been read have been feast or famine: You either get a gangbusters book crammed with great ideas like Perdido Street Station, or you get a tedious, unreadable slog like The City & The City. As it turns out, The Scar is neither; It's more of a big, tasteless buffet, the first mediocre Mieville book I've read. Never let it be said Mievelle doesn't have original ideas, and the book is fairly bursting with them. The problem is that there's no beginning, middle, and end the to plot. There's no climax. Instead, the book reads like "Here's a bunch of shit that happened," and the result is that while I wasn't bored, the story never kicks into high gear. Instead, the story remains shapeless and flabby. It's kind of like this: Imagine the first Indiana Jones movie is six hours long, and at the end, instead of opening the Ark, the Germans decide it's a bad idea and go home, and also let Indy go because they're not that bad after all.
I can't really recommend this one, and at this point I'm starting to worry that Mieville has already written his one great book and needs to hire a new editor.

Grade: C-