I've been struggling through Perdido Street Station. It's maybe the...third? Mieville book I've started (never finished one). I don't know what it is, but something about his stuff just doesn't grab me. It's weird because I actually quite like PSS; it's imaginative as fuck, the writing's good if not just plain great, and it's utterly stuffed with creativity (even though I think it almost suffers under the weight of the sheer insanity of it all). I mean hell, the guy managed to make a crimson-skinned woman with the head of an insect into something bizarrely erotic. It's brilliant, honestly. But it's just one of those types of books that I have to force myself through. It's like, once I'm actually reading it, I'm pretty engaged. But picking the damn thing up is tough for me almost every time.
Regardless, I'm determined to finish this one, if only to say that I've actually finished a CM book, but also because I am genuinely curious how this jumble of seemingly unrelated plots pan out with each other.
Also, I've watched/read several interviews with CM, and he seems like a pretty cool dude with some very interesting ideas, and genuinely important thoughts on the genre of SFF. Maybe a little pretentious, but shit, he's a writer, and more than that, a writer with a message. Gotta give the guy a little leeway.