Mieville's ideas and imagination are great and I love the linguistic depth breadth and playfulness of his language and all of these positives are here. The Tattoo is a fantastic image and symbol of the power of ink, of language... but somehow a rather disappointing villain who after a great introduction was far too easily disposed of.

I found it a rather heavy going overall and felt that there were too few characters that I actually cared about. There was a small part of me that wanted the apocalyptic end that was so often promised and never arrived.