Another goodie from Mr Mieville. Wonderful prose, and very interesting take on being a child, on who we are, and what our perceptions do to reality. And what a census taker - in Mieville’s world - can be tasked to take care of. At the end, you find yourself impressed, in awe, and still looking for answers. Because Mieville likes his holes. Both physical, and experiential.

Brilliant writing, a bizarre story (not a negative!) but ultimately I felt like this didn't do much for me. This was my first China Mieville read and I will definitely be trying something else of his out. Long live weird!

The Hope Is So:

Books Often Offer Kindred

Interests. Savor.

Glean. Read. Ever After, This.

This was baffling and mysterious and these impressions lasted even after the conclusion of the story. The unique narrative perspective furthered the atmosphere to intriguing effect and I fairly liked the way it was handled which left the reader interested yet dissatisfied. It withheld more often than it gave, and delineated contour lines while blurring geographical definition. The plot becomes all there is, really, something ill-defined and potent for in its very vagueness. Is it an allegory? An anecdote? A half-coloured short-story (this is a novella, I note) which does not fulfill its genre's promises of concise completion? What are these keys? What is the narrator's line of work? Was the crime really committed? What is a census-taker? This is a child's world, where terrible truths are matters of perception rather than fact, returning us to a world where facts evade access. The cover is apt: dark shadows not-quite-mountains swathed by pale smoke, more shapes than solid objects. I'm not quite sure how much I understood and what, at all, to make of it - if there is, at all, something there to plumb. At the very least this demonstrates Mieville is capable of surprises beyond 'usual' fantasy. In this he turns from writing about ancient myths and powers vividly present, to erase particularities, to unhinge the landmarks of the real, in something that hovers between nowhere and anywhere.

Maybe I’m not intellectual enough but this one went over my head! Beautiful bits of writing but an incoherent story without any resolution just lots of hints of PTSD violence & fear.

This Census-Taker did not start well. The beginning is slow, confusing, and nauseatingly gruesome. There came a point, though – once the narrative had actually caught up to the scene which opened the novel – where the haunting, gloomy atmosphere took over and I came to welcome the confusion. The novella raises many questions, hardly any of which are answered by the conclusion. It's set in a small, macabre town, impoverished and largely isolated from the outside world. The narrator's father makes a habit of bashing animals to death and throwing them down a hole, for reasons which are never exactly explained to the reader, but can be guessed. He seems to progress to killing people; he seems to progress to killing the narrator's mother. The town has no real policemen, and the volunteers who stand in for them are friends with the narrator's dad and tell the boy that he must have imagined the whole thing. The story continues on. In summary, this is a dark, atmospheric tale that you should only read if you can handle your questions going unanswered. That said, it's not too bad.