∎ Download Gratis This CensusTaker China Miéville 9781101967324 Books

This CensusTaker China Miéville 9781101967324 Books

Download As PDF : This CensusTaker China Miéville 9781101967324 Books

This CensusTaker China Miéville 9781101967324 Books

At first, I had a really hard time getting into this book. I started it several times, then put it down and read something else. Finally, I told myself, I have to read this book. The language is good, though the jumping form one point of view to another was disorienting at first. Also, I couldn’t get a hold on anything concrete in the narrative at first. But I’d told myself I’d read all ten of the books, and so I kept going back to it. Like I said the writing itself is very good, and that helped. Finally, almost halfway through the book, the narrative and the characters started to grab me. Slowly it became a full embrace, and I was immersed in the story. Under any other occasion, I would have set this book down and never picked it back up. I’m glad I did, and it was worth it. It paid off. I’ll have to read more from this author.

You can read my reviews of all ten Locus Award novella finalists on my blog, which you can find on my author page: Good Feeling: seven short stories


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This CensusTaker China Miéville 9781101967324 Books Reviews

Interesting book but complex and had to go back to re-read some of it when i had gotten to the end to try and clarify. Very mysterious. Maybe based in the future.
Lots of questions left unanswered to think about.
Not sure i would recommend it based on the plot alone but its a very interesting book and I loved the way its written.
Like Most of Mieville's book the idea and plot is interesting but the changing tone and variation of writing may confuse those who are unfamiliar to it. Feels like he was trying to tap in Cormac in The Road with a poetic style of writing format but draws out too much and sometimes makes the story go slow and boring. Deff one of my favorite writers but would put it in my category of my least favorites
Admittedly, this contains some of Mieville's most self-conscious prose. I won't quote anything, but the writing felt a bit forced at times.

As for the rest, this is a delightfully weird, ambiguous tale, full of brooding atmosphere and misdirection. On the very first page, we see signs of experimentation to come a narrator who switches from first-person to third-person in the space of a paragraph. Those who seek a more literary flare combined with genre elements (the author himself decries the division between literary fiction and genre fiction, and does his best to commingle the best of each) will be pleased to see the author try.

And try he does. I almost gave this three stars, but the author's sheer boldness and temerity to take any risks at all, even when he falters, is something very few literary juggernauts are wont to do; rather, they prefer to stick to the same ol' conventions that catapulted them into the literary supremacy. Moreover, Mieville has dared to venture into stand-alone novellas, which is arguably the ideal form for his mode of fiction. But standards for high page count in publishing dictate many writers' processes, usually to their detriment the most common sin is excessive padding, a blatant disregard for the readers' attention spans, and a penchant for logodiarrhea where concision would suffice.

Mieville is ever bold, unfettered, and generous with his pen; he refuses to acquiesce to the market's demands. He is always surprising, and that is the reason I will continue to buy/read his works. That is the reason I give this four stars instead of three.

(I can't say the same for Haruki Murakami, Jonathan Franzen, or even Salman Rushdie, at this point. A novel has to actually be novel.)
Not sure what to think about this. Never read Mieville before, but the premise of the story intrigued me, so I picked it up. I love weird, mysterious stories, like Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy. This... was not that. It was mostly confusing, wordy, jumbled... I think some of that is just due to the main character being a child, but it never got better, even in the parts where the narrator is older. And there's the glaring problem of the narrator being unreliable, meaning this story presents a lot of questions and no answers. Maybe if I read it again, or scoured it from cover to cover for details? Took notes, made a ledger? But frankly, it wasn't interesting enough to warrant that. I just kept hoping it would get better, but it was over before I ran out of patience.

As a side note, are they gouging for e-books or what?! This book was a VERY short $12 read.
I've read just about every Mieville book, and until reading this, considered myself a huge fan. 'King Rat', 'Perdido Street Station' and 'The Scar' are three of my favorite books ever, and my immediate reaction to 'This Census-Taker' was to send an email to my friends telling them not to buy it. Mieville has taken it upon himself to write stories in a growing list of genres. While the pursuit is noble, the results are becoming more and more disappointing.

Is this a bad story? No. Is it a good story? No. It's a fairly short story sold under its own cover and doesn't hold up to either being its own title or having a price like a novel. It tells the story of a boy, his difficult family life and how he ends up in what seems to be an interesting profession. But, the most interesting elements of the story (why the census is being taken as it is, his father's history and profession and the discovered details of his father's deeds) are all left unexplained. Mieville frequently leaves some interesting pieces of stories unexplained, but in this case, those were the only interesting things. I'm fine if he leaves a few things unexplained and details out others because the payoff on those is well worth the price of admission. But here, every aspect is left to speculation. That was probably intentional and meant to portray the world as the young boy would see it, but it leaves the reader wanting something to cling to.
At first, I had a really hard time getting into this book. I started it several times, then put it down and read something else. Finally, I told myself, I have to read this book. The language is good, though the jumping form one point of view to another was disorienting at first. Also, I couldn’t get a hold on anything concrete in the narrative at first. But I’d told myself I’d read all ten of the books, and so I kept going back to it. Like I said the writing itself is very good, and that helped. Finally, almost halfway through the book, the narrative and the characters started to grab me. Slowly it became a full embrace, and I was immersed in the story. Under any other occasion, I would have set this book down and never picked it back up. I’m glad I did, and it was worth it. It paid off. I’ll have to read more from this author.

You can read my reviews of all ten Locus Award novella finalists on my blog, which you can find on my author page Good Feeling seven short stories