The Scar is China Mieville's follow-up to the darkly gorgeous Perdido Street Station, his evocative account of a monster hunt in the decaying, chaotic city of New Crobuzon. While The Scar takes place in the same world as Perdido Street Station, it never actually sets foot in the city: in fact, the protagonist, Bellis Coldwine, is escaping New Crobuzon because of her role in the "sleeping sickness" that was the subject of the first book.

She escapes by feigning knowledge of foreign languages and thereby getting a berth on a prison ship headed for a New Crobuzon colony across the seas. Above the decks, the ship is host to a group of unusual travelers who are testaments to Mieville's uncanny skill (a la Mervyn Peake) at choosing effective names. Below the decks, the ship is the cell of hundreds of prisoners, many of them Remade, crammed in the holds as free labor for the colonies. When the ship is overtaken by pirates, a fortunately spared Coldwine is forced to begin a new life. But somehow her past refuses to let her go.

The Scar, like Perdido Street Station, showcases Mieville's astounding imagination and his consummate world-building skills. Almost everything in his book is unique, from the new races he introduces in The Scar to the bizarre flora and fauna and the geological and meterological phenomena that pepper the plotline. Freed from the physical limitations of New Crobuzon, Mieville has just run wild: he literally has an entire world (and beyond) to play with, and play with it he does. The result is Mieville's trademark macabre but darkly fascinating scenery, an even more remarkable achievement given that he did the same thing in Perdido Street Station and he doesn't seem to be repeating himself here.

The plot, too, is a joy: while Mieville perhaps stuffs in a few too many twists and turns, each subplot has an enormously satisfying payoff, and Mieville does an excellent job of laying just enough foundation so that when the relevant event finally happens, it's something that you've already been anticipating for a long, long time--and Mieville usually delivers. The big exception to the excellent plotting in this book is the ending: while the concluding chapters improve a great deal on the disaster that was the ending of Perdido Street Station, I still felt that the ending was something of a letdown, with nothing of the shivering impact delivered by the earlier mini-climaxes.

Overall, though, The Scar is an excellent novel, and a worthy successor to Perdido Street Station.

Copyright © 2003 Steven Wu