The Scar

Armada

The Scar begins in New Crobuzon — the city of Perdido Street Station — but moves quickly onto the open sea. Bellis Coldwine, a linguist, is fleeing the city after the events of the previous novel on a ship bound for a distant colony. The ship is captured by Armada’s fleet and taken to Armada itself: a floating city built from hundreds of lashed-together ships, spanning miles of ocean, governed by a committee of powerful individuals including the Lovers — a couple who carve matching scars on each other’s faces.

Armada is preparing for an enormous and mysterious undertaking. Bellis is determined to escape. Both objectives require navigating a community completely different from any city she has known.

Armada as Subject

Miéville’s cities are always arguments about how societies organise themselves. Armada’s statelessness — it is not a nation, it acknowledges no territory, it is composed of captured and absorbed ships from every maritime culture — produces a specific kind of politics: genuinely pluralist but governed by the agenda of those powerful enough to direct it. Its internal conflicts mirror those of any revolutionary commune that has achieved power without fully deciding what to do with it.

The central mystery — what is the Scar, and what does the Armada leadership intend to do at it — is handled with the slow, dense revelation that characterises Miéville’s best work.

What Distinguishes This Book

Among the qualities that set The Scar apart: Armada — a city built on lashed-together ships — is one of the great fantastical settings in contemporary fiction; Bellis Coldwine is a more morally complex and less straightforwardly sympathetic protagonist than Isaac; and The central mystery of the Scar and what the Armada leaders want with it is genuinely compelling. These strengths are evident from the first pages and sustain across the whole work.

Themes

The thematic concerns of The Scar give it weight beyond its surface narrative. A city built on ships is a city defined by movement and capture — its culture reflects this in every institution. The most interesting political questions concern communities that are not states — how do they organise, what do they owe their members. What you know and what you were told are not always the same thing — Bellis discovers this several times. These ideas emerge from the texture of the work rather than explicit statement, which is the mark of ambitious fiction done well.

The Reading Experience

The Scar is the kind of book that changes slightly depending on when you read it. The surface — plot, character, setting — remains constant, but the reader brings different things to it at different points in life, and the book meets them there. This is a property of enduring work, and it distinguishes The Scar from titles that are consumed once and not returned to.

Limitations

At 638 pages the density is formidable — Miéville never simplifies. Some subplots require more patience than others. These are worth knowing before starting, though they are unlikely to diminish the experience for the readers the book is written for.

Who This Is For

Readers of Perdido Street Station ready for the second Bas-Lag novel, or anyone who wants Miéville at his most imaginative world-building.

Our rating: 4.4/5 — Arguably better than Perdido Street Station: a more complex protagonist, a more interesting setting, and a mystery that fully rewards the investment required.

Reading Guides

• Perdido Street Station by China Miéville — Full Review
• Embassytown by China Miéville — Full Review

Publication, Armada’s Conception, and Miéville’s Career

The Scar was published in 2002 as the second Bas-Lag novel, following Perdido Street Station (2000). The two novels share a world but not a continuous narrative: Bellis Coldwine is fleeing New Crobuzon after the events of Perdido Street Station, and readers of the first novel understand her context, but the novel functions as a standalone work for those who begin here.

The conception of Armada — a city built on a raft of hundreds of lashed-together ships on the open ocean, populated by those who have escaped or been expelled from land-based societies — draws on historical precedents (floating communities in harbour cities, the Sargasso tradition) while being entirely imagined. The city’s political organization, its multiple competing factions, and its impossible collective project (harnessing an avanc — a creature of unimaginable scale — to tow the city where the leadership chooses) make it one of the most fully realized fantastical settings in contemporary fiction.

China Miéville won the Arthur C. Clarke Award three times — for Perdido Street Station (2001), The City & The City (2010), and Embassytown (2012) — making him the most decorated winner in the award’s history. He received a doctorate in International Relations from the London School of Economics; his thesis, on international law and Marxism, was published as Between Equal Rights (2005). The Scar is by many readers’ accounts his finest novel, offering more emotional purchase through Bellis Coldwine than the more ambitious but less personal Perdido Street Station.

Arthur C. Clarke Awards

China Miéville won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Perdido Street Station (2001), The City & The City (2010), and Embassytown (2012) — three wins, more than any other author in the award’s history. The Scar was shortlisted for the Clarke Award in 2003 and won the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel in the same year. Miéville’s academic work — his LSE doctorate on Marxism and international law was published as Between Equal Rights (2005) — is considered unusually integrated with his fiction.