Perdido Street Station is bustling with life. Imagine a book as a sandwich filled with all sorts of juicy and shiny insects. These insects are intriguing, they look good, they revolt and arouse your curiosity at the same time. I am reminded of the first and only time I ate an insect, it was a beetle, an Asiatic rhinoceros beetle (Oryctes rhinoceros). I don't know why I mentioned that. The point is like my tasting of the beetle, it is nice to subject one's self to new and somewhat harmless experiences every now and then. It is a good thing to appreciate and to try to understand alien things.

The book is gothic, it is brutal, it is very very weird. I slogged through this book about seventy-percent in, because it somehow got boring for me. Lots of geography to take in. Descriptions of streets, roofs, rivers, buildings, architecture. Lots of new creatures to take in - creatures that fly, swim, are half-dead, undead, from this and other dimensions, creatures that can do extreme kinds of damage to you. It can be suffocating. But I managed to do it. I finished it. Overall it was a good experience. The characters are thought-out, well-fleshed. Lots of loose ends left untied. Great exhilarating story. Must read second book.