"Sprawling" does not begin to describe the complexities of this wildly imaginative novel, populated by strange races and even stranger magical technologies. The word "WOW" keeps coming to mind when trying to describe Miéville's sheer overwhelming flood of scenery, characters, and ideas, all propelled by gorgeous prose. It's a hell of a ride.

Still, this wealth of detail, Miéville's multitude of viewpoints, and all the action tend to disguise some very basic structural problems with The Scar. For example, Miéville opens with a prologue that introduces one plot thread. He then briefly revisits this thread every few chapters, but nothing actually happens in it for five hundred pages! After a few episodes of this prolonged rabbit-out-of-the-hat trick, I started skimming those passages, waiting for Miéville to get to the point.

A more serious problem for me as a character-driven reader, is that the people in The Scar range from unsympathetic to downright nasty. Bellis is very credibly drawn as a self-involved, humorless misanthrope, so most of her interactions with others are understandably brief and unpleasant. Silas, the other most prominent point of view, is even more unpalatable. Only a few minor characters (such as prisoner Tanner Sack and his young friend, Shekel) have much in the way of redeeming qualities, and for me it wasn't enough to balance the grim situation and escalating, graphic violence.

The epic scope of this drama also obscures the fact that the protagonists are not driving the story. For much of the book, Bellis is a helpless observer, and neither she nor Silas have any immediate human dilemma to engage the reader's empathy. As the piles of corpses mounted, Bellis sneered, and the subplot snoozed along, I found myself putting the book down more often.

Miéville's vivid world-building and his clever, coherent use of ancient technology from medieval alchemy to the age of steam give this novel a distinct whiff of SF. But using my infallible genre-categorizing method ("if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck..."), I'd label it as Fantasy.

Nevertheless, I do recommend The Scar to both SF and Fantasy readers. Miéville's stunning vision is worth a look, even if you're not up for the entire 640 pages.