The Etched City

It's official, I’ve read my first China Mieville knock off. In her first novel, The Etched City, Australian newcomer K.J. Bishop blatantly emulates the horrifically fantastic, vaguely steam punk style of Mieville…and she fails miserably (unless the point of the novel is, rather than entertain, to engage the reader in a war of attrition).

The novel starts off well enough, the first sixty pages are filled with promise; set in the dustbowl of Copper Country, the reader is introduced to army doctor Raule and the vagabond Gwynn, rebels fleeing the harsh justice of the Army of Heroes. They make their way to the city of Ashamoil, a wholly uninteresting conjuring of New Crobuzon, and then the novel gets boring.

Gwynn becomes a hired gun for the Horn Fan Cartel where he helps run their lucrative slave deal while Raule works as a doctor to Ashamoil’s poorest residents. Normally, I would give my faithful readers a better overview of the plot, but this is all I can say; at this point, the plot grinds to a sudden halt for the next 300 pages until Ms. Bishop remembers that novels contain elements like “plot” and “climax.”

The bulk of Bishop’s novel is an exercise in imagination, a horrific carnival. The reader waits as otherworldly, vaguely philosophical, often times downright ugly and always unnecessary devices are described in seemingly endless succession until the reader is drowned into complacency. For example, Raule (an interesting character who Bishop all but abandoned once the story moved to Ashamoil) keeps a collection of horribly mutated stillborn children. Does this serve any purpose besides allowing Bishop to showcase her imagination? No.

There is no doubt that this style of writing can be effectively done, as evidenced by Mievilles’ brilliant Bas-Lag novels. Those novels all have an absorbing plot; The Etched City doesn’t. It is also evident that Ms. Bishop is a competent writer, as proved by the vivid imagery constituting a majority of the novel.

Unfortunately, that is not enough. There is no plot at all to carry the reader’s interest and one is overwhelmed by the endless parade of vividly detailed (yet ultimately pointless) horrors until the reader stops caring, which is a decidedly bad sign.

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