The Scar

[avram]

Did I mention that I finished Declare a few days back? Really good, but not as full of clever stuff as Last Call. Powers did an amazing job building a fantasy novel around the odd details of Kim Philby’s life, but parts of it felt a bit arbitrary. Reading the Arabian Nights beforehand paid off, though; lots of references.

So now I’m in China Miéville’s The Scar, which is set in the same world as Perdido Street Station. So far I like The Scar better than Perdido; the scene-setting italic section at the beginning was actually interesting. And I just have to like a setting where cryptogeography is a formal field of study. (It’s just a throw-away reference, so far, but still.)