Book Review: Railsea

China Mieville's 2012 YA novel Railsea is a bizarre mishmash of any number of things ranging from Giant Monster Movies to Moby Dick and the works of Robert Louis Stevenson. It follows a young doctor's assistant on a train named Sham, who begins the book covered in blood and, no...

Okay, so the book takes place in a world covered in train tracks and populated in those who live in hard rock areas where the giant Moles and other monsters can't...

So there are trains that travel out searching for moles to butcher - sort of like whaling ships...

OK - simply put, this novel is really an immersive experience. Going into it with little expectation (except that I'm a fan of the author), I found myself quickly drawn into Sham's world and into the mystery that he spends most of the novel attempting to solve.

In some ways, the less you know going in the better, but believe me, it's well worth the journey.

Book Review: Iron Council

China Mieville's third novel set in the fictional world of Bas-Lag, Iron Council really should have worked for me, as it mixed his world with Western tropes, but as compared to Perdido Street Station and The Scar, it fell a little flat for me.

Both previous novels had really compelling characters and settings, while Iron Council focused largely on concept.  An escaped train houses a small society attempting to outrun those after it, but when compared to books like Christopher Priest's Inverted World, which had a much more compelling lead, I just found the book didn't hold my interest as well as his other titles.

Although not my favourite steampunk novel, I'm still a big enough fan of the author that I'll keep coming back for more.

Book Review: The Scar

China Mieville's second book set in the world of Bas-Lag is the 2004 novel, The Scar, and even though it doesn't take place in the city of New Crobuzon (the setting of his book Perdido Street Station), that city hovers over the majority of this book as both threat and homeland.

The novel follows a translator named Bellis Coldwine, a famous linguist in her own right, who has taken a job on the first available ship out of New Crobuzon's harbor as she is on the run from the government due to the activities of an ex-boyfriend named Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin (the protagonist of Perdido Street Station). The story follows her through her first mission and then the novel switches gears as (sorry for the mild 13-year-old spoiler) her ship is overtaken and she is press-ganged into working and living on a floating city called Armada.

Much of the novel follows her explorations and discoveries on this new city, including its varied rulers, denizens, and culture (here the remade are seen as equal, and sometimes slightly higher than equal, members of society). Much of the book deals with language and literacy and a significant portion is set in a library, so I was quickly sold.

I really love Mieville's ability to populate his novels with a large number of characters all with their own agendas and a consistent interplay of actions, reactions and rules.

A great read and yes, I'll be following it up with his third book in the setting Iron Council, next month.