A book review written by: Lee Sonogan
(2005) Fantasy, sci-fi, short stories
“Perhaps the window is not a sun but an asterisk, interrupting the grammar of the sky, with me sitting below it like a footnote.”
― China Miéville, Looking for Jake and Other Stories
The first book I have read was by the British author China Mieville. It was published by Del Rey Books and Macmillian. The book is a collection of 13 short stories and one Novella. Its genres are Fantasy, Science fiction and even horror. The book is 303 pages long with double-sided pages. I borrow this book from a friend and was motivated to read it because he said it was good.
Political, gothic and paranoid. Most of the short stories were published in interesting places from 1998 to 2004. A few were originally short stories to be original for the book. In 2006 it was announced that the story Details was turned into a script by Dan Kay, and later on picked up by the movie studio, Paramount Vantage. The script was said to expand upon the original story. As of November 2008, Martyrs director Pascal Laugier is attached to direct
Stories in the book:
- Looking for Jake
- Foundation (Recommended)
- The Ball Room (Cowritten with Emma Bircham and Max Schaefer)
- Reports of certain events in London
- Familiar (Recommended)
- Entry taken from a medical encyclopedia
- Details
- Go between (Recommended)
- Different skies (Recommended)
- An end to hunger (Recommended)
- Tis the season
- Jack
- On the way to the front (Illustrated by Liam Sharp)
- The Tain (Recommended)
In conclusion, all stories had something interesting but not all stories in them were good. A little bit under average. How the stories were described in a paranoid way was interesting and enjoyable. Depth packed into the story made it better as a story went. Some characters were unique in their own way. There was a decent amount of good endings to stories in this book and some anti-climatic ones. I recommend this book to fans of all genres who want to see unique concepts for those genres.
6.95/10
“It was a very inexact apocalypse.”
― China Miéville, Looking for Jake: Stories
PS – There was no blog post yesterday because the power at my house all day was out. Finishing this book was one of the things I did that day.
Here is some links to my book for sale: