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• Excellent collection of stories. This is my first exposure to Mieville's work, and I'm very impressed. These are not "light" stories; they require your full attention while reading them, or you will miss something.Some of them are somewhat uncomfortable, and a couple of them made me look at some pretty commonplace things in a whole new light!Only 4 stars because there were a few places in some of the stories that I felt the author was being intentionally tortuous in order to hide the twist that came at the end.

  4.00 out of 5

  Meijhen

• An excellent collection of short stories and a novella that solidify Mieville's position as a master of disturbing urban fantasy, drawn from lots of different magazines and anthologies. Disappearances and strange invasions, secret wars and conspiracies. One even manages to create a scary setting out of a children's playroom full of brightly coloured balls and a wendy house. "Jack" is set among the Remade of New Crobuzon, but most are in or around London. A great way to catch up with his short fiction.

  4.00 out of 5

  unapersson

• This collection of short stories takes fantasy to new levels. Some of the tales border on horror, treating subjects that are supernatural, and others investigate dystopian worlds, usually in the ruins of London. Only one is humorous: about a futuristic Christmas entirely taken over by commercialization. The stories are excellent in terms of language and creativity, voice and characterization. It sometimes evokes Delaney's [Dhalgren]. Miélville has stories to tell, and he knows how to tell them.

  4.00 out of 5

  kambrogi

• Highly recommended, although quite different to the New Crobuzon novels. It's pretty much all horror, much more overtly so than <i>The Scar</i> or <i>Iron Council</i>, and generally much more effectively so than <i>Perdido St Station</i>. They're not all completely successful, but there are several definite winners.Several show the same slightly manic inventiveness that gave rise to the Remade and the possibility magics of <i>The Scar</i> -- the VF of "Reports of Certain Events in London" are delightful (I'm avoiding spoilage here, and not explaining that acronym; the story is in a classic form, a collection of letters and fragmentary notes that, pieced together, slowly reveal the awful truth, and it would be a crime to shortcut that process), and "Familiar" is a tiny glimpse into a world with enormous possibilities for developement.All in all, highly recommended if you have a taste for this "New Weird" stuff everybody is talking about, or if you like horror in general and aren't afraid of something a bit different.

  4.00 out of 5

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