then she appeared

I've read four China Mieville novels now (King Rat, PSS, The Scar, and The City and The City) and while I liked them all, I find myself sort of annoyed that in all four of them, 1) his settings seemed better than his characters and 2) his women always seem to end up getting tortured or humiliated. The ending of PSS particularly annoyed me since he'd pulled off quite a feat (IMO) by making the bug-headed artist chick the most sympathetic character in the whole book and then...well, I won't mention it if you haven't finished it yet, but dang that ending annoyed me.