In a word, underwhelming. I'm a big fan of his stuff having really enjoyed Perdido Street Station, Scar and The City and the City. I've repeatedly read in places that this was supposed to be comedy or maybe just that it was supposed to be humorous, if that is the case it might be one of the reasons it wasn't that great, if he was concentrating on getting humour across in anything more than a passing sort of way it might explain why the book was so lacklustre. It wasn't terrifically funny either.

So what's right? The plot. It's a good premise. A curator of a museum that has its top exhibit inexplicably stolen must traverse the typical weird underbelly of society that we get from Mieville to get to the bottom of things. The weird is weird. It's good, there's nothing wrong with it, but it does feel like he's just going through the motion, putting words together in a cool way. Knacking, reality smithing etc. (though the origami thing was pretty standout) and creating oddball characters with only ones doing anything for me was Goss and Subby (who were awesome!). Collingswood felt unconvincing, it felt she was trying too hard to be this sassy funny droll character when she was far from it.

I've mistakenly strayed into what's wrong? To be honest i think i've exhausted what i liked about it. I didn't like most of the character, purely because they were all too blase. Only Goss and Subby were understated and through that they were more effective for it.

I also didn't like all the random powers that just popped as was necessary for plot advancement. They weren't used particularly cleverly, they were made for the plot, not the other way around. This book went from A to B without Mieville's route around F U C K M and E.

Still i enjoyed it well enough, it was okay, just don't expect anything amazing from it. I think what's most disappointing is that i know Mieville can do better and i'm sure that the negativity of this review stems from that knowledge.

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