The Scar, China Mieville
The Scar, China Mieville
4 Rating(s)
List: $27.50 | Sale: $19.25
Club: $13.75

The Scar

Author: China Miéville

Series: Bas-Lag #2

Narrator: Gildart Jackson

Unabridged: 26 hr 59 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/28/2014


Synopsis

A mythmaker of the highest order, China Miéville has emblazoned the fantasy novel with fresh language, startling images, and stunning originality. Set in the same sprawling world of Miéville’s Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning novel, Perdido Street Station, this latest epic introduces a whole new cast of intriguing characters and dazzling creations.

Aboard a vast seafaring vessel, a band of prisoners and slaves, their bodies remade into grotesque biological oddities, is being transported to the fledgling colony of New Crobuzon. But the journey is not theirs alone. They are joined by a handful of travelers, each with a reason for fleeing the city. Among them is Bellis Coldwine, a renowned linguist whose services as an interpreter grant her passage—and escape from horrific punishment. For she is linked to Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, the brilliant renegade scientist who has unwittingly unleashed a nightmare upon New Crobuzon.

For Bellis, the plan is clear: live among the new frontiersmen of the colony until it is safe to return home. But when the ship is besieged by pirates on the Swollen Ocean, the senior officers are summarily executed. The surviving passengers are brought to Armada, a city constructed from the hulls of pirated ships, a floating, landless mass ruled by the bizarre duality called the Lovers. On Armada, everyone is given work, and even Remades live as equals to humans, Cactae, and Cray. Yet no one may ever leave.

Lonely and embittered in her captivity, Bellis knows that to show dissent is a death sentence. Instead, she must furtively seek information about Armada’s agenda. The answer lies in the dark, amorphous shapes that float undetected miles below the waters—terrifying entities with a singular, chilling mission. . . .

China Miéville is a writer for a new era—and The Scar is a luminous, brilliantly imagined novel that is nothing short of spectacular.

About The Author

China Miéville is the author of King RatPerdido Street Station, winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the British Fantasy Award; The Scar, winner of the Locus Award and the British Fantasy Award; Iron Council, winner of the Locus Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award;Looking for Jake, a collection of short stories; and Un Lun Dun, his New York Times bestselling book for younger readers. He lives and works in London.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Vit on September 16, 2022

The Scar is a novel created by the imagination that was set free right out of the bedlam in the outer space. A mile below the lowest cloud, rock breaches water and the sea begins. It has been given many names. Each inlet and bay and stream has been classified as if it were discrete. But it is one thi......more

Goodreads review by Crystal on June 05, 2008

It took me two days to get through the last 50 pages of China Miéville's The Scar. Not because I was bored, or because the story was particularly impenetrable, but simply because I did not want the book to be over. I did finish it, however. And for a good ten minutes after the last sentence I found......more

Goodreads review by Bradley on February 08, 2017

So. I have a question for you. When's the last time you watched vampires go fishing? No? Then where the f***ing hell have you been? Seriously! Okay, so the effort involved is a bit more than even the undead can muster, and a fleet, or no, actually, a whole *nation* of boats has a hard time with this fi......more

Goodreads review by Traveller on January 16, 2015

It's hard to avoid politics, and in particular, Mièville's politics when it comes to Bas-lag. In Mièville's Marxist oriented doctoral thesis, Between Equal Rights: A Marxist Theory of International Law, he argues that international law is fundamentally constituted by the violence of imperialism, whi......more

Goodreads review by Scott on September 30, 2017

Wow. Clear an evening, take a day off, do whatever you need to do to carve out some serious reading time because the The Scar is good. Very, very good. This is the sort of book you put down for a second just to exclaim aloud how good it is, the sort you push on friends and family with evangelical fe......more