Book Review: number9dream by David Mitchell

David Mitchell’s second novel, number9dream has all the typical hallmarks of its writer. Interconnected stories—check. Historical pastiche—check. Blurred lines between fantasy and reality—check.

We follow teenaged Eiji Miyake in his search for his father in Tokyo, in a journey which veers wildly from one writing style to another.

So we might be thrown into Eiji’s delusional fantasies involving him storming a building with guns to steal his father’s file, or into a violent encounter with the Yakuza, which Mitchell still manages to execute with characteristic drollness. Every chapter is a new puzzle to solve. You’re disorientated as you’re chucked into some new and bizarre slant and have to work out what the hell’s going on—and on the whole, it works.

Tokyo is a vivid consumerist bubble, a Blade Runner-ish city (at one point Eiji watches Blade Runner in the video shop he lives above and works in) layered with colours and sights and smells. A twenty-four hour city which exists in stark contrast to the backwardly beautiful Hicksville in which Eiji grew up.

Eiji is a likeable character too, as he embarks on his Bildungsroman journey of origins and identity. He spends a lot of time lying in his capsule above the video shop, looking after the stray feline Cat and waging war on the pesky Cockroach. He even finds the girl of his dreams (entranced by the back of her lovely neck) in between dodging Yakuza factions, trying not to get blown up and hunting for his father. Is it all in Eiji’s head? Is some of it? Who knows?

Where number9dream falters is perhaps in the execution of its ambition. While Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks gelled together, number9dream is sometimes just a bit too sprawling and disconnected. Some of the segments don’t work as well as the others—particularly one section where Eiji goes into hiding.

He discovers an author’s manuscript about a chicken and a writing goat and suddenly we’re in the murky waters of metafiction. And I think we’d all agree, this is where we do not wish to be. Another section follows the doomed pilot of one of the manned suicide torpedoes (Kaitens) during WW2. It should be fascinating, and while the pilot’s journals pertinently talk about his family back in Nagasaki during the summer of 1944, the section still doesn’t quite ignite our interest.

Still, it’s an engrossing read and the ending is suitably Mitchell-esque in its apocalyptic doom and gloom. A flawed but vivid novel.

Book Review: Perdido Street Station by China Mieville

The best character in China Mieville’s second novel is the city of New Crobuzon itself – a sprawling, crazy and psychedelic metropolis that would have made Hunter S Thompson proud.  The hub of this city is Perdido Street Station.  From here the city spirals out into different boroughs, districts and oddities; there’s slums and high rises occupied by bird-men, sewers and abattoirs, a glass dome full of sentient cactus people and a dump which is home to HAL 9000 and his buddies.  Oh, and there’s bugs.  Christ, are there bugs.  There’s a whole bug ghetto and the protagonist Isaac (a tubby and edgy scientist) is dating a woman with a scarab beetle for a head.  Yes, you read that right.  Add to this mix a giant spider that shimmers in and out of reality and likes cutting off people’s ears and some giant moths that suck your mind out and there’s a real bug-fest going on. 

Isaac is approached by Yagharek, one of the bird-men (a garuda) who’s been maimed by his own kind and had his wings sawed off.  He wants to be able to fly again and hopes Isaac can help him.  Although Isaac is a scientist, the science studied in New Crobuzon is all kinds of fantastical: magic and demonology sit beside physics and chemistry here.  The plot threads are disparate to start with; we move from Isaac and his research to his creepy-crawlie girlfriend Lin, who’s crafting a sculpture of a local crime lord with khepri spit (don’t ask) to the corrupt heads of state to an underground politically active newspaper.  These strands all eventually combine into what’s essentially an overblown bug-hunt, as giant slake-moths terrorize the city each night (Isaac inadvertently hatched one and let it escape).

In a way this seemed a bit of a cop-out to me.  Mieville spends so long world-building and creating his wide-ranging cast that once it all becomes focused on hunting moths Perdido Street Station falls into more familiar and lacklustre ways.  And at nearly 900 pages this is a long book.  If I wanted giant creatures attacking each other in a city I’d be watching Mothra vs Godzilla.  Still, the ending re-awakened my interest.  It’s pleasingly bitter-sweet and downbeat, raising a load of ethical issues and questions.  Fans of urban fantasy, the new weird and speculative fiction will love Perdido Street Station.  But be prepared for an acid trip of a plot and lots of creepy-crawlies.