Hmm... there's a moment in one of Mieville's short but very Melvillean digressions in which his outside-the-narrative narrator threatens to turn it into a long and Melvillean digression and then stops and says something like "No. There is a chase scene to talk about instead." It's like he's afraid of depth.
The Moby Dick stuff is very much off to the side. That is sometimes fabulous, as in the moment rushthatspeaks talks about with the moler captains all talking about their personal white whales, their 'philosophies'. And it is sometimes dangerously ironic and detached, an off-the-rails action-adventure that happens to be borrowing a steampunked Melvillean milieu for kicks.
So basically it's frustrating in the same way all Mieville is frustrating.
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regna
(no subject)
Date: 2013-01-08 19:57 (UTC)The Moby Dick stuff is very much off to the side. That is sometimes fabulous, as in the moment rushthatspeaks talks about with the moler captains all talking about their personal white whales, their 'philosophies'. And it is sometimes dangerously ironic and detached, an off-the-rails action-adventure that happens to be borrowing a steampunked Melvillean milieu for kicks.
So basically it's frustrating in the same way all Mieville is frustrating.