Things I Know I Know

I'm reading Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. I keep it in my car and I've been mostly reading it when I go out to lunch, which is maybe once a week or so. For that reason, I haven't gotten very far into it yet and I haven't really reached any conclusions about whether I like it or not.

It has awesome description. And beyond that, the world he's created is rich and deep and textured. He has a handy way with words and worldbuilding and there is depth and substance to what he's created.

But...it dwells way too much on bodily fluids. By this I mean not just that there's a lot of description of sweat and snot and spit (a lot of description of spit), though there is, but that all the description, even of more mundane things, has some sort of lingering sense of slime and fluid and gunk.

For example...

Swelling flatly above the low houses beside her was the Flyside militia tower. A vast, filthy pudgy pillar, squat and mean, somehow, for all its thirty-five stories.

And...

The converging rivers on either side ran sluggishly and the water streamed here and there as its currents mixed nameless chemicals into potent compounds. The slop from failed experiments...

And even...

Oozing obscenely over the top of the Flyside tower was a half-inflated dirigible. It flapped and lolled and swelled like a dying fish.

If I wrote a description of the same places, it would sound completely different, possibly dirty, even filthy, but not so slimy. I don't say this is good or bad, though you notice who has published a novel (him) and who hasn't (me). Still and all, I could use a lot less about spit and slime and dripping.