You can read my review of China Miéville’s Un Lun Dun, appearing in this Sunday’s Los Angeles Times. In fact, it’s something of a West Coast Bloggin’ Boys Club feel this week, what with appearances in the same issue by Tod Goldberg and Jim Ruland.
You can read my review of China Miéville’s Un Lun Dun, appearing in this Sunday’s Los Angeles Times. In fact, it’s something of a West Coast Bloggin’ Boys Club feel this week, what with appearances in the same issue by Tod Goldberg and Jim Ruland.
I was just sitting down to write about Un Lun Dun, but will probably just link to your review instead. I was so looking forward to this book but am very disappointed.
I couldn’t agree with your review any more other than to suggest that you went a little easy on Mieville. I find his writing to be clumsy, as you noted, more frequently than not. There is a lot to be said for looping, verbose prose, but when someone uses the word ‘vertiginous’ more than a dozen times in a single novel (as he did in
‘Perdido,’ I counted) I have to wonder where their thesaurus was. Additionally, I am curious what you think of his insistence that he is at the helm of his own genre — legitimate bucking of the status quo, or petty disassociation with the unpopular kids?