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Looking for Jake: Stories
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Looking for Jake: Stories
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Looking for Jake: Stories
Audiobook9 hours

Looking for Jake: Stories

Written by China Miéville

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

What William Gibson did for science fiction, China Miéville has done for fantasy, shattering old paradigms with fiercely imaginative works of startling, often shocking, intensity. Now from this brilliant young writer comes a groundbreaking collection of stories, many of them previously unavailable in the United States, and including four never-before-published tales-one set in Miéville's signature fantasy world of New Crobuzon. Among the fourteen superb fictions are

"Jack"-Following the events of his acclaimed novel Perdido Street Station, this tale of twisted attachment and horrific revenge traces the rise and fall of the Remade Robin Hood known as Jack Half-a-Prayer.

"Familiar"-Spurned by its creator, a sorceress's familiar embarks on a strange and unsettling odyssey of self-discovery in a coming-of-age story like no other.


From the Trade Paperback edition.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateSep 13, 2011
ISBN9780307971494
Unavailable
Looking for Jake: Stories
Author

China Miéville

China Miéville is the multi-award-winning author of many works of fiction and non-fiction. His fiction includes The City and the City, Embassytown and This Census-Taker. He has won the Hugo, World Fantasy, and Arthur C. Clarke awards. His non-fiction includes the photo-illustrated essay London’s Overthrow, Between Equal Rights, a study of international law, and the narrative history of the Russian Revolution, October. He has written for various publications, including the New York Times, Guardian, Conjunctions and Granta, and he is a founding editor of Salvage.

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Reviews for Looking for Jake

Rating: 3.7919708613138683 out of 5 stars
4/5

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Matters shuffle along, pressed and steamed by the incessant heat. Each piece in this collection appears more climate controlled, as if penned upon a sofa while listening to The Fall and waiting for delivery Korean barbecue. You can recognize my resentment. I wanted to read Thomas Ligotti last night to no avail. Then early this morning when it was already jungle muggy outside. I read a story Reports of Certain Events in London, and this I was pleased by found documents, amateur societies and phantom streets. That high bar was to prove elusive. Nothing else left me as uneasy. Though there was a wonky tale, one which smelled of The Destructors, it’s a paen to aging felt contrived, though idea of a haunted stained glass was worth pondering. End to Hunger is an interesting gloss on the early days of the Internet and yet the pose of the (anarchist) activist artist is ultimately sad not tragic.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    My first Mieville.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Very dark.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I really liked some of the stories from this collection (particularly "Reports Of Certain Events In London," which convinced me to check it out in the first place.) Mieville is an elegant writer and interesting worldbuilder.

    However, the collection as a whole was lackluster because the stories began to follow an obvious narrative pattern. Nearly all of them had very passive narrators who either witnessed something horrific or fantastic happening and ended the story feeling haunted by it, or witnessed something horrific and fantastic happening and decided at the end to do something about it - but we never find out whether they are successful. There's lots of good set-up, but Mieville dodges the work of following through to a conclusion.

    There are obviously billions of ways to write short stories, and not every story needs to end with the protagonist accomplishing a goal, learning something about himself, and living happily every after. However, the atmosphere of horror, mystery, and uncertainty that Mieville accomplishes through writing about passive protagonists becomes a bit stale with repetition. I'm not particularly judging him as an author; this is his first collection of short stories and it makes sense that his magazine publications have used a formula that works for him. Nevertheless, I hope his longer works are a bit more full in their execution!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    God, Mieville is creepy. Almost all of these fall under the horror umbrella, I think, and even the ones that don't are just... creepy. But they're creepy because of the pervasive sense of loneliness, guilt, or powerlessness, not so much because of the Lovecraftian horrors lurking in the shadows. It's an exhausting collection, in some ways, but absolutely worth reading.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This collection of short stories showed me that, while I adore Mieville as a novel writer, I’m less fond of him as a short story author. Written between 1998 and 2005, these stories range from the incomprehensible (Foundation) to the fascinating (Reports of Certain Events in London) to the funny (Tis the Season) to the seriously creepy (Familiar) to the will-this-never-end (The Tain). There is even one set in New Crobuzon, the world of ‘Perdido Street Station’, a very good story. Mieville fans will find something to like and even love in this collection, despite its unevenness.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    As the title suggests, this is a collection of short stories that includes some very dark tales of varying quality. I bought this mainly for the New Crobuzon story called Jack who was a character that appeared briefly in Perdido Street Station and I wanted to find out more about him. This was the first tale I turned to and it didn't disappoint. I read the remaining 12 (which include 1 in a comic book style) and the final novella over the next month in-between reading the other books I've detailed above. There is no continuing thread that bind these stories together so I was able to pick the book up as and when I had the inclination and feel this was the best way for me to proceed rather than just bulldoze through them all.Other than Jack, my favourites would be Reports of Certain Events in London, Looking for Jake and An End to Hunger. The ones I least enjoyed were On the Way to the Front (the comic book one), Entry Taken from a Medical Encyclopaedia and Go Between. The Tain (the novella that concludes the book), is a fabulous piece of writing and is a story adapted from an entry in The Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    You made us hurt each other, and ourselves. You made us blood each other, when you fought in front of your looking glasses. You ignored them, and us, but we could not resist. When you conducted your knifings, your shootings dead. When you slit your own throats and watched the blood leak out of you, and out of us. We stabbed each other, for your vainglorious whims, and accompanied you in suicide. And where your mortuaries were glazed, you trapped us there, and made us rot with you. From "TheTain".This book contains fantasy and horror short stories, plus the novella "The Tain". My least favourites of the stories were "Different Skies" which was quite a scary and unpleasant tale, and "Familiar", which I shouldn't really have read while eating my lunch. My favourite was "'Tis the Season", which takes place at a time when Christmas has been privatised, so unless you buy a very expensive licence, you aren't allowed to sing carols, put your presents under a Christmas Tree, or even wish anybody a Marry Christmas! I also very much enjoyed "The Tain", which is based on an idea from a story by Borges.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A weird lil' collection of short stories (sci-fi/fantasy/horror/speculative fiction) that was fun to read. Nothing rocked my world but a couple were quite...unsettling (in a good way) and eerie. I enjoyed it overall, enough that I will actually try one of his novels now.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I discovered this author by hunting for "steampunk" as a tag on Library Thing, but it is misapplied to this collection. (A London setting does not make a story automatically old-fashioned, though there is a period feel to several of these). Only "Jack" hovers anywhere near that category, being set in a dystopian London where criminals are surgically altered in fantastical ways. Many are simply horror stories, of which I most enjoyed "Familiar" (despite the descent into grossness) and "Details"; others are closer to SF, including the satirical "'Tis the Season". Particularly fine is "Reports of Certain Events in London" which has a period feel, though set in the 1990s, and calls on a well-used fantasy element (the house/street that is not always in the same place) in an amusing and engaging way. The final novella-length story, "The Tain", is a nice piece of work fusing alien-invasion with vampire tale. MB 28-xi-2010
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    An excellent collection of short stories and a novella that solidify Mieville's position as a master of disturbing urban fantasy, drawn from lots of different magazines and anthologies. Disappearances and strange invasions, secret wars and conspiracies. One even manages to create a scary setting out of a children's playroom full of brightly coloured balls and a wendy house. "Jack" is set among the Remade of New Crobuzon, but most are in or around London. A great way to catch up with his short fiction.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Short stories ranging from the brilliant (title story, The Tain) to the retarded (On the Way to the Front, Familiar) to the disappointing (Jack). Interesting way to pass an evening, but not much beyond that. Mieville has an interesting voice, but also has an irritating tendency to start and end these short stories like a six year old telling a joke: no punch line and lots of discursion. With a lesser writer this would be irritating beyond belief, but with Mieville it does not rise to that level, you must keep reading, but shake your head when you finish.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I didn't care for this as much as Mieville's novels; his detail-rich style is better suited to building up vast worlds than for shorter formats.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Excellent collection of stories. This is my first exposure to Mieville's work, and I'm very impressed. These are not "light" stories; they require your full attention while reading them, or you will miss something.Some of them are somewhat uncomfortable, and a couple of them made me look at some pretty commonplace things in a whole new light!Only 4 stars because there were a few places in some of the stories that I felt the author was being intentionally tortuous in order to hide the twist that came at the end.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Highly recommended, although quite different to the New Crobuzon novels. It's pretty much all horror, much more overtly so than The Scar or Iron Council, and generally much more effectively so than Perdido St Station. They're not all completely successful, but there are several definite winners.Several show the same slightly manic inventiveness that gave rise to the Remade and the possibility magics of The Scar -- the VF of "Reports of Certain Events in London" are delightful (I'm avoiding spoilage here, and not explaining that acronym; the story is in a classic form, a collection of letters and fragmentary notes that, pieced together, slowly reveal the awful truth, and it would be a crime to shortcut that process), and "Familiar" is a tiny glimpse into a world with enormous possibilities for developement.All in all, highly recommended if you have a taste for this "New Weird" stuff everybody is talking about, or if you like horror in general and aren't afraid of something a bit different.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Short story collections are usually uneven, but this one is really really good throughout. Mieville is one of the few writers with a prodigious imagination and the ability to write beautifully. A great book.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is an excellent collection of short stories, including the award-winning novella "The Tain." It's fun to see Mieville outside of the universe of his three most recent novels; I love Perdido Street Station, The Scar, and Iron Council, but it's always fun to see an author in a different context. The title story is excellent, as is "The Tain" and "The Ball Room," but my favorite was "Reports of Certain Events in London."
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I wasn't sure what to expect from China Mieville when it came to short stories. But I've read a handful of his novels and was excited to see what he could do with the medium. I was not disappointed. I was slightly terrified by a few of them, and overall I couldn't believe how good they were. I borrowed this from the library, but it's one that I'm going to have to pick up for my own. I already know I'm going to have to give these another once over, when I do I'll be able to articulate my thoughts a little more clearly.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I very much disliked these short stories. Generally there was an interesting idea behind them, but there was little in the way of plot or structure, and the writing wasn't special.

    The novella at the end was better, but still not satisfying.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I liked this book less than his Bas-Lag novels. He is a brilliant writer, but these stories seemed a little uneven, less flamboyantly inventive, less polished. I enjoyed them, but was also disappointed. And, I must say, my interested in his creative process helped to hold my attention to the end as much as the actual qualities of the stories themselves.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    If proof were needed that "genre fiction" can be is inventive and well-crafted as so-called "literary fiction", China Mieville would be it. In this collection of short stories, he revels in plots and settings which traditionally-minded critics would snob - futuristic dystopias, post-apocalyptic war-torn urban scenarios, steampunk cities... there's even a fairly conventional but surprisingly chilling ghost story. The streets of London are often referenced, sometimes explicitly, occasionally as a barely disguised backdrop. But it is a London at once recognisable and uncannily different. Indeed, this is a common thread which runs through the stories - the ordinary and mundane become extraordinary, fantastical and, more often than not, scary.

    There are some duds - ironically, I found the title-story one of the least striking of the collection. On the whole however, this is a gripping book and a great introduction to the strangely familiar yet disturbingly weird world of Mieville.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    One of those rare occasions where I got to borrow a book from my girlfriend. (She has good taste, but since she lives in Belgium, I tend to encounter books first. But this one I kept meaning to pick up and somehow didn't.) I wasn't sure what I thought of the idea of China Miéville doing short stories: his novels are so often so sprawling, so full of gleefully grotesque imagery, that I didn't think he could contain himself within a short story.

    He can.

    Some of the stories are more effective than others -- I particularly enjoyed Reports of Certain Events in London, somehow, I couldn't really say why. Anyway, if you like Miéville's stuff, these short stories are a good opportunity to see him constrain himself somewhat and write tight little stories. If you can't seem to get a handhold with Miéville, but you like the idea of his work, this might be it.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    In April 2009 I stopped scheduling my reviews ahead of time. The scheduling process was making reading and blogging feel like homework. Since it's currently an unpaid hobby for me, I decided I had to stop being a slave to the calendar even if it meant falling behind on reviews. To keep things interesting on the review side of things, I started picking which book or short story to review next by random. This process has the advantage of giving every recently finished book or story the chance of being reviewed immediately. The flip side of it, though, is that some things can and do fall through the cracks.Take for instance, Looking for Jake, a short story collection by China Miéville. It feels to me like I just read it. His stories have that effect on me. But at the same time, I can remember observing the strange coincidence of reading "'Tis the Season" while listening to Christmas music. We were sitting outside on a chilly November day at the Soledad Starbucks. We were on our way home from Thanksgiving and were planning our first Christmas at home. Here it is now, a year later.Looking for Jake is an excellent collection of short stories. Although Miéville is probably best known now for his long and complicated adult science fiction novels, I think he excels in shorter forms.The title story is set in the same world as Perdido Street Station. It gives some background into how London came to be the way it is in the novel. I'm glad I had read the novel before reading the short story. Had I not, though, there was still enough there to make a compelling story.There is also a nod at Un Lun Dun in "Reports of Certain Events in London." I hadn't read the novel yet so seeing the connection when I did later in the spring was a lot of fun.One of my favorites though is "Details" which to this day has me wary of the cracks in walls and the other random details one sees in the course of a day. Imagine if those flaws in life were actually part of a greater evil. That's the gist of the story. It's so simplistic in its execution and yet so deliciously creepy!"An End to Hunger" set back in the days of the Nintendo 64, while dated by its technological references is still a fun read. It was also the very first China Miéville piece I had ever read (and like Stardust with Neil Gaiman, had completely forgotten about). So it was a nice surprise and a recovered memory of a new year's morning almost a decade earlier reading short stories at my in-laws' house.I recommend this collection to short story lovers, urban fantasy lovers and China Miéville fans who haven't tried his short fiction yet.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This collection of short stories showed me that, while I adore Mieville as a novel writer, I’m less fond of him as a short story author. Written between 1998 and 2005, these stories range from the incomprehensible (Foundation) to the fascinating (Reports of Certain Events in London) to the funny (Tis the Season) to the seriously creepy (Familiar) to the will-this-never-end (The Tain). There is even one set in New Crobuzon, the world of ‘Perdido Street Station’, a very good story. Mieville fans will find something to like and even love in this collection, despite its unevenness.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Very varied. Which I suppose is the point of a short story collection, but sometimes I prefer more (or at least some attempt) at a unifying theme. These are just too disparete.They're all pretty dark though. Perhaps the lightest bears some resemblance to Michael Marshall Smith's work, the anti-capitalist and at times almost funny 'Tis the Season' : of a parent taking a daughter to a christmas party in a world where Christmas TM has been branded and copyrighted. The Noel Police are certainly a nice touch, but I'm not quite sure what the Gay Men's Choral Causcus were up to, and does choir ever rythme with queer?Most of the stories are more disturbing - either in the MR James' style of people behind mirrors and old windows reflecting things no longer there, or else just out and out weird. Perhaps most annoying some of the wierder stories just stop without ever having reached any form of end. There is one offering from New Creuzon which if you haven't read Mieville's other works you are going to find almost completely inexplicable. There are no introductions or comments, just a hodge podge of stories lumped together. Although tht eonly novel of Mieville's I've read was too long and in need of editing I'm not convinced he's a master of the short form either. Wonderful imagination but not quite there in telling the stories........................................................................................................................................
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This collection of short stories takes fantasy to new levels. Some of the tales border on horror, treating subjects that are supernatural, and others investigate dystopian worlds, usually in the ruins of London. Only one is humorous: about a futuristic Christmas entirely taken over by commercialization. The stories are excellent in terms of language and creativity, voice and characterization. It sometimes evokes Delaney's [Dhalgren]. Miélville has stories to tell, and he knows how to tell them.