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

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.

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.

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.

Konrad Lischka

Hannah Swithinbank

Melly

Scordatura

“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)

A Novel

Katie Ravenwood

Amanda S

Maddy

Steven O'Toole

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.

Railsea

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