Characters: B+
Writing: A-
Plot: A
Pacing: A
Poignancy: B+
I've read a lot of China Mieville books in the last year. The Scar is probably the best of the those books, on a technical level, though it's not my favorite. Here, Mieville seems to recognize his strengths while trying a bit too hard to shy away from his weaknesses, creating a novel that is consistently good and often great, yet never quite so stunning or impressive as Perdido Street Station.
The Scar, like seemingly all of Mieville's novels, takes place in a city that eventually begins to shape the plot through its own quirks and circumstances. The Scar is set not long after the events of Perdido Street Station, following an exile named Bellis who had to flee her home following the events of that previous novel. That is the only connection between the two books, really — the events of one set in motion the events of the next, but you could easily read The Scar on its own. Proceeding with the plot summary: Bellis is captured by mysterious pirates, who take her to Armada, a legendary floating city composed of thousands of stolen ships lashed together, existing for hundreds of years as a vagrant metropolis, impossible for anyone to intentionally track down. Of course, the story only begins there. The novel deals with a city of pirates, but the story isn't as topical as that tease-y synopsis suggests — stupid Johnny Depp — as pirating actually has very little to do with the plot. Once Bellis arrives in Aramada, she's soon involved in a complicated conspiracy and a hard-to-explain-without-giving everything-away plot to lead the city into a new era. Shit gets real.
Like with Perdido Street Station, the strength of the novel is all the odd, imaginative stuff that goes down. But Perdido Street Station reads like a fireworks display of creativity, with ideas bursting and arcing away out of nowhere, making little contribution to the plot, yet stunning nonetheless. The Scar is more balanced. The plot unfolds at a steady, well thought-out pace. Everything is well structured. Most of the random ideas Mieville throws out make an obvious contribution to later events in the book. And that's both an improvement and a detriment. The Scar is probably a better novel on a technical level, but it never really blew me away. The plot is more structured, and cleverly executed, there are moments when it doesn't feel quite satisfying. The characters are amongst the strongest Mieville has created, but as I've noticed in his other novels, many of them feel like a tease, as if he doesn't quite know what to do with them once they're there — developed to the point where you'd expect some last development from them that never comes. Mieville is also very distant with some of his plot points in The Scar — in particular the Avanc, which he seems to consciously keep at an arms length from the reader, as if worried he couldn't do it justice.
While not his most sprawling or ambitious work, The Scar is a fantastic novel and proof that Mieville has a deep understanding of his craft, an awareness of his own strengths that allows him to create a chaotic, vast world that somehow seems perfectly organic and tangible. In tone — if not in feasibility — The Scar and Perdido Street Station are perhaps the most realistic fantasy-type novels I've ever read. (Uh-oh, gritty... dark... pirates... vampires... how has this not been made into a movie yet?) Mieville's ideas are so impressive not just because of their variety and uniqueness, but because they fit together like jigsaw pieces, creating something more impressive than any one of them, and somehow, also, creating a rich and compelling narrative.
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