I feel like no one has or if they had, it was so long ago they won’t remember it.
But I need to talk about this book!
Anyone? 
I’m trying to find people who have read the mammoth book.
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I haven’t but I’m willing to listen
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Well, too much world building detail, no relief for any character, a gritty and grim story with intricate cause and effect, and it’s all just kind of depressing, but I still enjoyed it.
It’s multiple third person past tense. Isaac is kind of like the main character. I think he’s middle-aged or close to. He’s a scientist and when a bird of prey species comes to ask for help for flying again, Isaac is plunged into researching flying things. A mysterious grub he gets prematurely hatches and turns on them all, frees its siblings from elsewhere and the giant aliens bring horror to the city, New Crobuzon, by eating minds at night. Everyone fights and there’s no end to the horror and fear, but no one gives up.
It’s insanity dystopian urban adult fantasy.
There. I talked about it without spoilers.
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Sounds really cool. Shame I haven’t heard of it before.
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It was written in year 2000. I can’t remember how I found it. I found it at random one day. I didn’t realize how thick it was until I got it though
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Did you feel that it needed to be a thick book or did it drag a little with the pacing?
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The pacing was okay. It was the details that was a slug through. Like, the author could have just said the machine whirred to life, but instead he had go into describing how the cogs turned and the wires sparked with energy and then the energy did this and that and this was all done in the fraction of a second…
I mean… 
All the detail and sciency stuff was hard to follow sometimes, too. Sometimes I got bored.
And he LOVED describing the city itself with incredible detail down to that one vine on the one rock.
And when a giant spider species turned up, he took two whole pages solely on description.
I think if all the description and world info dump was cut back, it would be about 600 pages and not 850 But it didn’t matter I couldn’t remember all the details in the end.
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He might have read a lot of classic sci-fi books, 10,000 Leagues Under the Sea has a lot of extraneous detail, but it was written in a time before anyone could just open a National Geographic magazine and see high-quality, full-color photos of marine life. The author isn’t writing about real life creatures and tech, so he might have gone overboard on descriptions in order to make sure the reader can understand and visualize what is happening.
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Maybe. Especially considering it was published in 2000, he probably worked on it in the late 90s, so whatever was popular then would have influenced him. If you get a chance to read it, I suggest you do. I would give it 4 out of 5 stars.
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Sounds like something I should read.
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I think you’d enjoy it 
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My partner has read it! And lots of others by China Mieville. He liked it a lot.
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It’s a really unique world. Just when you think you’ve seen everything, hand-shaped parasites with a left and right hand appear.
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Oof, I personally don’t think it’s the best of his novels in terms of plot, but if this one was too “weird” for your tastes, you’ll probably not enjoy his other works, either. I loved The City & The City – no sci fi, but the surrealness of his concepts just amp up in that.
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No, not too weird. The only part I didn’t enjoy was the sheer amount of info dump. I gave it a 4 out of 5 stars. I found this book because I was looking for books like The Anvil of the World by Kage Baker. Now THAT was a weird book XD Have you heard of it?
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Heard of it, yes, but I haven’t read it myself!
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Certainly a lot less info-dump compared to Perdido. A much shorter read, too It was like a fever dream. Adult fantasy for sure. I did a review on it and my immediate reaction after reading sums it up nicely.
This is what I said in my review: Sort of like if The Alchemist was written by Terry Pratchett with a hint of The Little Prince and Narnia
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