China Miéville

An English writer born in 1972. China Miéville is best known for his Fantasy work, most of which has won or been nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award or the World Fantasy Award at some time or another.

He purposefully avoids writing Tolkien-esque fantasy, preferring to invent his own sorts of worlds and fantasy creatures. Miéville used to be a huge Dungeons and Dragons fan, and occasionally references it in his works.

He's currently^[when?] writing Dial H, a Darker and Edgier reworking of the Dial H for Hero mythos belonging to DC Comics.

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Works written by China Miéville include:

• Bas-Lag Cycle
  • Perdido Street Station
  • The Scar
  • Iron Council
• The City & the City
• Embassytown
• King Rat
• Kraken
• The Tain
• Un Lun Dun

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China Miéville provides examples of the following tropes:

• Author Vocabulary Calendar: The Bas-Lag Cycle is considered to be particularly indicative of this.
• Black and Grey Morality: And when it's not:
• Blue and Orange Morality
• Creator Thumbprint: Pretty much his entire oeuvre is one great big twisted love letter to the city of London.
• Deconstructor Fleet
• Eldritch Abomination: Creature from Details.
• Face of a Thug: Look at him! He'd probably give Alan Moore a run for his money on the scariest-looking fantasy writer.
• New Weird
• Purple Prose: Miéville writes beautiful prose, if a bit purple. There's a fine line between "purple" and "exquisite." He has got a lot less purple recently -- more a pale lilac. At least he's stopped using 'ineluctable' every ten pages.
  • Miéville writes in defense of purple prose:

"I think for a lot of people who don’t read pulp growing up, there’s a real surprise that the particular kind of Pulp Modernism of a certain kind of lush Purple Prose isn’t necessarily a failure or a mistake, but is part of the fabric of the story and what makes it weird. There’s a big default notion that “spare,” or “precise” prose is somehow better. I keep insisting to them that while such prose is completely legitimate, it’s in no way intrinsically more accurate, more relevant, or better than lush prose."

• Steampunk
• Urban Fantasy: Even works not set on Earth are generally set in a fantasy counterpart of London.