Name: Railsea
Rating: 3.9375 (16 reviews)
ISBN: 9780345524522

China Mieville

Critically acclaimed author Mieville ("Kraken, Un Lun Dun") delivers a gripping reimagining of Herman Melville's classic novel "Moby-Dick, " but this time, the giant whale is an ivory-colored mole.

Railsea

China Miéville

Venture into the Railsea in this extraordinary novel from bestselling author China Mieville On board the moletrain Medes, a boy called Sham watches in awe as he witnesses his first moldywarpe hunt. The giant mole bursting from the earth, the harpoonists targeting their prey, the battle resulting in one's death and the other's glory are extraordinary. But no matter how spectacular it is, travelling the endless rails of the railsea, Sham senses that there's more to life. Even if his captain can think only of her obsessive hunt for one savage mole. When they find a wrecked train, it's a welcome distraction. But the impossible salvage Sham finds there leads to trouble. Soon he's hunted on all sides: by pirates, trainsfolk, monsters and salvage-scrabblers. And it might not be just Sham's life that's about to change. It could be the whole of the railsea.

ikkychan

Once in a while, there comes a book which struck you with its exceptionally vivid imagination, powerful narrative, and intricate wordplay that you can’t help but keep on turning the page until the very end. “Railsea” by China Miéville is such a book. The ‘astoundingly long ago’ mega-catastrophe ‘the Godsquabble’ has left the world in its most unimaginable state; it has changed the very structure of the world, the ecosystem and its wildlife. The sea has dried up; but instead of a limitless nothingness of wastelands, a convoluted, tangled-up endless train rails surged in its place, connecting continents and islands together within its intricately woven, serpentine tracks. Below the railways, on what seemingly harmless flat dirt, lurked numerous deadly monsters of unthinkable stature: ginormous mole or Moldywarpe, carnivorous Antlion, huge Earwigs, Naked Mole Rat with razor-sharp teeth and colossal earthworms; all of which want to, and will, kill human —no matter how measly their population is left on earth. Our hero comes as the youngster Sham Yes ap Shoorap, a reluctant, dispassionate doctor assistant working in a moler train the 
 Medes
 with a number of impressive crew: first mate Boyza Go Mbenday, the harpoonist Danjamin Benightly, Sham’s supervisor Dr Fremlo, Hob Vurinam and the <s>ship</s> train own’s captain, Abacat Naphi, among others. They are mole hunters: they track gigantic moles known as Moldywarpe and bring them down with harpoons to further sell the meat, bones, innards and fur of their resourceful quarry. Sham finds delight in the travel his occupation provides, since he hasn't got a lot of opportunity seeing other parts of the world other than Streggeye, his hometown; but not much so for the killing he has to witness, actively participate in and endure. Apart from hunting the monthly quota of Molemeat, like any other captain at that time, Naphi shares a ‘burrowing signifier’, an impossible feat, an unreachable target named Mocker Jack, a cunning and elusive ‘old-tooth colored’ gigantic moldywarpe, which has become Naphi’s sole ‘philosophy’, her meaning of existence, her raison d'être ever since it snatched her limbs and turned it into a synthetic, iron-casted prosthetic. But Sham doesn’t share the same ambition as hers. He often caught looking longingly at a gathering of salvors with their fancy gears and quirky getups, whose occupation is to salvage usable junks all over the railsea. He wonders what kind of peculiar machinery or curious trinkets they might find along the way—the same motivation that led him to lend a hand in a retrieval mission when the Medes crossed a track with a mysterious trainwreck. The first (and hopefully not last) salvage that he ever chanced upon to do ended up shanghaied him into a cat-and-mouse chase with pirates, military, deadly abominations and a pair of determined two-thirds orphans. In the voyage across the otherworldly realm of the railsea, the characters—along with the reader— find themselves exploring the truth behind the myths and the origin of their own society. I’d like to avoid saying the word in fear of cheapening its value, but Boy, this book is brilliantly written. It might feel slow at first and needs some time to get used to, but Miéville’s world deserves no less than a proper introduction. The complex and intricate worldbuilding; strange but believable neologism; the articulate rendition of post-apocalyptic society; the harsh and hostile environment; including the portrayal of how civilization is built on top of never-ending, looping train rails; all assembling a bouquet of this cauliflower of fantastic tale of adventure. The abundance of details does not overwhelm the storyline—far from making it zany or scatterbrained, it’s enriching, stays credible and consistent throughout the narrative that it moves the reader with immense power. So powerful that Miéville himself knows and acknowledges our eagerness to know everything that happens to everyone everywhere in the story. He masterfully teased the readers with the intrigue and curiosity he planted in between chapters, like that time when he left an entire chapter blank except to say “Time for the Shroakes? Not yet.” As if I have enough patience to wait. Despite the cornucopia of delectable details, what I most enjoyed about the book is the inventive, off-kilter language and wordplay that seems catachrestical. The avant-garde lingo, exclusive use of ampersand, made-up technical term and newfound lingua-franca Railcreole interwoven within the beautiful storytelling shows me the capabilities language holds in giving life to an imaginary, patently unreal reality. But as we know, nothing exists within a vacuum, this book nonetheless. We can trace parts of the story that mirrors our known actuality of living in modern-day capitalism: like Salvagepunk where we reconstruct old technology and upcycle it as an act of resistance against the wasteful current; Captain Naphi reflecting Ahab’s obsession in Moby Dick to further implying the uselessness of ungrounded ideals; until the anticlimactic end of finding out the truth about generational <s>debt</s> wealth and international monetary funds. Whether we ultimately agree or not, Miéville’s strong beliefs persevere as the underlying message in the narrative and give it a strong root to grow into.

Sarah Sammis

Railsea is China Miéville's second YA fantasy. After adoring every last word and illustration in Un Lun Dun I was overjoyed to get an egalley for review. I think this is a time where expectations have outrun reality.

Sham (of a much longer name which I won't bother repeating here) works on mole train. He'd rather work salvage but this is the job he could find. And so like Ishmael, he's stuck with an insane captain on an equally insane hunt. Except he lives in a barren world where the earth is covered with endless crisscrossing railroad tracks and the land beneath is teeming with bloodthirsty, man-eating creatures — like the dreaded moldywarpe.

Moldywarpe to me sounds like a Flannimal — and while they can be fierce, they are often more crude and silly than deadly. Just as I was trying to get Ricky Gervais's creations out of my mind and focus on Mieville's book, there is an illustration of a naked mole-rat. Sure, it's large, hungry and dangerous but it's still a naked mole-rat. Forget Flanimals, now I'm thinking of Kim Possible and Ron's pet, Rufus — for the remainder of the book.

Just like Un Lun Dun, Railsea is metafiction. It plays with conventions and genre expectations. One way it does this is through the re-definition of common words like "philosophy" and the use of anagrams for character names. A little bit of this goes a long way. Here there is an over abundance.

Those puns in turn lead to parodies of Moby-Dick and Robert Louis Stevenson's pirate stories. Unfortunately Miéville is out of his comfort zone and can't keep pace with either Melville's humor or Stevenson's high seas hijinks.

& then there are the ampersands. Apparently these are intended to show the twists and turns of the Railsea. In an egalley where often we are given works still in the process of final edits, I took these ampersands to be stand-ins for and because looks unpolished and incomplete.

While most of the book blogosphere is falling down in adoration for Miéville's latest work, I just can't join in the fun. I want to but for me the book does not work.

Read via NetGalley

Two stars

Kelsey Lynn

Moby Dick meets treasure island, set in a unique railroad world future, where Ishmael (Sham) sets out to find his own obsession rather than sitting around and watching Ahab (Captian Naphi) obsess over his (hers). This is a exciting adventure that is YA but so well imagined and written that it can appeal to anyone at it's reading level. It's real YA, YA for people who like to read. Reading it, and having read so many "YA" on the market now, made me look back on those and want to change my stars. China Meilville is a very talented author, and I look forward to reading more of his books. 

Mieville has created a wholly unique world. A kind of Mad Max like salvage-punk future, where the sky and ground is diseased, and little islands of fertile and safe land are connected by never ending railroads. The impression I got is that the land is literally all rails, great expanses crossing each other, next to each other.
 
We Follow Sham, a doctor's assistant on a Mole Train, and crew that travels the rails under Captian Naphi. Through their travels we're introduced to the creatures that inhabit the Railsea, burrowing creatures, antlions, moles, molerats. As a Captian of the Railsea, like many others, Naphi has a philosophy, or a creature in which she is obsessed with hunting down. This one is a great Moldywarpe, and sand/tooth colored one that took her arm. In there journey to slay this Moldywarpe, they stumble upon a wreck that shows pictures of the edge of the railsea, a single rail that goes into the horizon. This leads Sham onto his own philosophy, finding the children he sees in another picture, learning about the adventure this wreck was on, and eventually being captured by pirates who are also interested in these mysterious explorers and the unknown they are seeking. Because the more unknown and farther away, the more salvage and $$$ is available. We primarily follow Sham, but at times we follow Naphi, and other times the Shroake children. With a finale that causes all three groups to collide, the books is quite the inspired adventure. 

 I was impressed immediately with the simplicity in which Mieville does his world building. Simple, well placed sentences completely created the world to where I felt like I knew it well. Mieville also does a phenomenal job at character development and description. I'm an illustrator and whenever I read a book and immediately want to draw everything I've read, I'll love the author. He did this for me, I wanted to do character design studies for Captian Naphi, Sirocco, Daybe. There were whole scenes that I wrote down in my sketchbook. He was that visual. 

 I went into this book because a site said it was a retelling of Moby Dick, this isn't exactly accurate, but it's not inaccurate. The inspiration is obvious, but it's not actually the major point. It's kind of an inspirational re-telling and a what-if for Ishmael's character. What if he followed his own obsessions and dreams, what if he had his own adventure. The book is extremely successful in this. I, however, couldn't help but be a little bummed out, cause I was really looking forward to a straight up retelling with a giant mole haha. So that's not the author's fault at all, and it doesn't hurt the book, I just had thought the book was going to go a different way. 

 The only thing I had a problem with was the ending, it felt... quick, all this build up and then I realized I only had 7 pages left and couldn't understand how it could be wrapped up that quickly. I almost feel like he could have ended it with an open feeling before the final part, which had it's own open ending. The book had it's climax, and the author chose to go a bit further, but then didn't add much with that bit. So it doesn't hurt it... but I couldn't help but feel it wasn't needed. 

I was highly impressed with Mieville, and the story, the world, the whole book. If this is his YA I can't wait to read his adult fiction. He's woven a interesting and vivid world. One that makes other YA books that we're seeing these days look pathetic in comparison of writing and world building, and story, and everything.

Fraser Simons

This was a surprising book. Progressively gets more complex when you stick with it; a bit frustrating at the beginning because it appears basic, both in terms of dialogue and theme. Then things get wild and weird. I can’t say I enjoyed the characters all that much. They were fine but not noteworthy. The pleasure came from the setting and the overarching question. 

This is my first Melville and maybe this is ‘normal’ and I’d never have known it. I just always read that Mieville books were extremely complex and Literary, or that they kitbashed genre in a way that upset purists. Possibly a bunch of this novel just sailed over my head, if that’s the case. Or maybe this was just so accessible and more straight forward so I misaligned my expectations based on reputation.

So, I guess you could say I was relieved? Because I was expecting to be consuming something with a super high cognitive load, but ended up something fairly straight forward with an interesting internal mystery and a cool world/aesthetic. It could have easily been a 5 star read had it been a bit more developed, tightened up, and more complex characterizations. It’s a weird book.

Savage giant moles, rail pirates, and explorers abound in China Miéville's thrilling young adult novel, Railsea. On board the moletrain Medes, Sham Yes ap Soorap watches in awe as he witnesses his first moldywarpe hunt. The giant mole bursting from the earth, the harpoonists targeting their prey, the battle resulting in one’s death and the other’s glory – are extraordinary. But no matter how spectacular it is, travelling the endless rails of the railsea, Sham senses that there’s more to life. Even if his captain can think only of her obsessive hunt for one savage mole. When they find a wrecked train, it's a welcome distraction. But the impossible salvage Sham finds there leads to trouble. Soon he's hunted on all sides: by pirates, trainsfolk, monsters and salvage-scrabblers. And it might not be just Sham's life that's about to change. It could be the whole of the railsea.

Robin Lee-Perrella

Konrad Lischka

Hannah Swithinbank

Melly

“Other names besides [Herman] Melville’s will surely come to mind as you read this thrilling tale—there’s Dune’s Frank Herbert. . . . But in this, as in all of his works, Miéville has that special knack for evoking other writers even while making the story wholly his own.”—Los Angeles Times On board the moletrain Medes, Sham Yes ap Soorap watches in awe as he witnesses his first moldywarpe hunt: the giant mole bursting from the earth, the harpoonists targeting their prey, the battle resulting in one’s death & the other’s glory. Spectacular as it is, Sham can’t shake the sense that there is more to life than the endless rails of the railsea—even if his captain thinks only of hunting the ivory-colored mole that took her arm years ago. But when they come across a wrecked train, Sham finds something—a series of pictures hinting at something, somewhere, that should be impossible—that leads to considerably more than he’d bargained for. Soon he’s hunted on all sides, by pirates, trainsfolk, monsters & salvage-scrabblers. & it might not be just Sham’s life that’s about to change. It could be the whole of the railsea. NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “[Miéville] gives all readers a lot to dig into here, be it emotional drama, Godzilla-esque monster carnage, or the high adventure that comes only with riding the rails.”—USA Today “Superb . . . massively imaginative.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Riveting . . . a great adventure.”—NPR “Wildly inventive . . . Every sentence is packed with wit.”—The Guardian (London)

Railsea

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