Railsea: A Novel

This book was driven by a great and very imaginative plot. The language used was absolutely beautiful, and the characters were immensely rich and engaging. Over all, this is worthy to be called a take off of the classic "Moby Dick".

I enjoyed this book very much, it started out with a striking similiar plot from Moby Dick, however it had it's own bizarre story line and a very unusual ending. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoy's an adventure story.

It's a bit difficult to describe my feelings about Railsea.

Allow me to illustrate my problem: I can't figure out what the book is supposed to be. Is it an allegory about corporate greed, about the toll humanity takes on the world around us? It seems so. Is it simply a weird adventure, written from an absinthe dream after falling asleep reading Moby Dick? It easily could be.

It could be that the entire story was an excuse to hurl the reader into this world of water-less ports and sea-less monsters -- it's as good a reason as any, I suppose.

And that's the problem with Railsea: I have no idea what I've just read. I have no idea what I was supposed to get out of it.

But of course, this could be purposeful: in a (spoiler-free) way, I'm mirroring the journey of the book's protagonist, Sham. You see, that's the true wonderful nature of the book -- it presents a world of mysteries, full of people working to solve them.

The intrepid captains who hunt their philosophies (in the form of giant burrowing monsters who represent life-lessons and principles in the eyes of the hunters) are trying to solve the mysteries of their own lives. The brave updivers, who struggle to discover what lies abandoned in the alien-infested cliffs and poisonous air of the upsky. It seems that everyone in the Railsea is looking for information about their surroundings.

So is it an adventure about a boy? An exploration of a setting? A cautionary tale?

It shifts. Near the beginning of the book, during the opening mole-hunting scenes, I was truly reminded of Moby Dick -- and yearned to re-read it, for a very brief time, until the upsky began to get attention, and the cast-off artifacts of alien visitation. Then, I wanted to reread Roadside Picnic. Of course, eventually it all collapses in on itself, and I realized that what I really wanted was a longer book, or another book -- anything to stay in the world longer. After all, this is a Mieville book, and if he is truly great at anything, it is making the weird feel familiar -- his worlds have an authenticity.

Whatever you see in this book when you reluctantly close it, you will be happy that you read it.

Railsea is an environmental cautionary tale of Vonneguttian proportions, showing the long term results of human folly etc.
Luckily, this is Mieville we're talking about, and so this is basically a book where the imagination runs free, and the reader is taken on a page-turning adventure that's hard to stop. Mieville's social commentary pendulates between the utopic and the dystopic, but importantly the book is gripping enough so as to make all this just a backdrop to a really great story.

I gave in and paid the vastly over inflated price for the electronic version of the book. OK, whine over. The book is poetic, the story is compelling and it's conclusion leaves the reader feeling totally satisfied. His use of language throughout brought to mind the lyricism of Tim Winton. His best book to date. Thank you, Mr Mieville.

Bleh bleh bleh.

Bleh.

Mievelle used to blow me away with his creative vision but this kind of ongoing flirtation with children's stories is just failing I think. Like if you are a marathon winner and you decide to compete in the kiddy pool. Maybe it's interesting for the author but not for me. I thought I was watching a real talent bloom but now I am not so sure. Wish he would get back to original and weird vs. original and stupid.

Mieville's Railsea is a provocative look at our descendants long into the future -- implying a past where catastrophe seems to have met alien technology. But for Sham ap Soorap and his friends and colleagues, the future is about finding a route beyond myth and fear to a positive future. It's a story about survival and youth and exploration, tradition and lawlessness and discovery. Loved it.

I realize that I am reviewing this book prematurely, as I haven't finished it yet. It gave me a headache, so I came here to review it. Here's my problem. I'm a speed reader. I learned how to read fast and I've always read fast. The ampersands are causing tiny little glitches in my speed reading process, and apparently they also cause headaches. I'm annoyed with them. It's a good story, I want to get into it, but the dang ampersands are hurting my brain. It's like trying to eat a delicious orange, but getting a giant mouthful of seeds in every bite. And I'm annoyed with them. I've decided that they're pretentious. They are serving no purpose, they disrupt my reading process, and the author should have just written "and" like a normal person.

Railsea: I went into this with high hopes, as it received several decent reviews on the store. Well, I couldn't wait for it to be over. What a waste of time & money. It was just weird, and though there were parts that sped up the page turning most of it dragged. Maybe because I was hoping for a little bit of a sea adventure and quickly realized it was all metal, metal, and more metal. It just left a bad taste, and it's my own fault for not reading the first chapter before buying. I have read worse, in all fairness.

Orphaned at an early age, then raised by doting relatives, a young lad sets off to sea, apprenticing with a crew that is hunting the great ... yellow mole. This is the railsea, a complex network of trains and islands interspersed with large, predatory burrowing creatures. The novel, as Mieville acknowledges, owes much to the classic adventure and seafaring stories. He has created a detailed world, but unfortunately it suffers from flat characters. Most of them didn't really come to life until the last chapters of the book.

Not that it impacts the story, but the conceit of using the ampersand instead of writing out the word "and" was really annoying. With the start of every new page the little curly bastards were leaping out at me, distracting me from the other words on the page.

Another great novel in the 'weird fiction' genre from China Mieville. The best way to describe this author is: he's not for everyone & he is definitely not trying to be. For a lover of SciFi & fantasy its very refreshing to read something that is truly new & original & Mr Mieville is certainly well known for delivering that kind of fiction. Many authors make the "new & original" claim but fail in the end. China delivers!

When publishers say "a book for all ages" it usually means that it is a children's book but Railsea is really a book for all ages. I am over 50 & I thoroughly enjoyed this story. Also, if you are considering reading this book & thought that perhaps the plausibility of a world crisscrossed by railroads was a bit too fantastic, I would say don't worry about it. The story is well thought out.

Railsea is more than simply a story. As you read it, you may find yourself looking at a deeper metaphor about modern civilization & where humanity may be going with it.

Time for the Shroakes!

Sham ap Soorap joins the moletrain Medes and sets out to seek his way in the world as the Medes doctor's assistant. The Medes hunts giant moles that live under the railsea, a mishmash conglomeration of railroad lines, loops, tangles and switchbacks laid down generations before and compromises the entire known world; people are relegated to small island nations scattered amongst the railsea. To venture out into the railsea can be a dangerous thing, for there are not only giant moles underground but also a vast array of large creatures with even larger teeth waiting for the misdirected or careless to step foot on the ground so they can attack from beneath.

Set against this backdrop, Sham ap Soorap discovers something amidst a derelict train that not only begins a quest that thrusts him into harm at nearly every turn but also may point towards the long-forgotten provenance of the railsea itself.

Railsea is nothing short of a completely entertaining novel by China Mieville. The descriptions of mole-hunting are vivid, Sham's lens of the world through the moletrain Medes abounds with verve, his adventure, while hardly unique amongst the annals of literature (ahem... Moby Dick), does what every great story does, grab the reader in a vice-grip from the beginning and not let go. This is the first tale I've read from China Mieville...it won't be the last.

I really loved this book! It definitely has some overtones of Miby Dick in that they are on a train hunting a giant mole across an ocean of soft earth filled with stuff that wants to eat you; so sort of similiar? It honestly took me a few chapters to really get over how weird it is, but it is definitely worth it. The characters are interesting and realistic enough that you actually care what happens to them, but the world building does not suffer from so much attention to the characters- the book hits the perfect mix of describing everything enough to make it pretty absorbing. The ending left a bit to the imagination, so I really hope a sequel happens to explain more and keep things going a little longer, but other than that I liked everything about it. It seems to take place in a future where crap has really hit the fan and settled into a toxic wasteland kind of world where creatures that should not exist do, which makes for a lot of action, haha. Overall reccomend it!

3/5 Rating: Originally posted at https://mylifemybooksmyescape.wordpress.com/

A retelling of the classic story Mody Dick like no one else but Mieville could. The unique prose & interesting narrative did take a bit getting used to, but the railsea was something else. The imaginative world building the Mieville comes up is something that always leave me is awe, & Railsea is no exception.

Sham Yes ap Soorap is a young, doctor's assistance on the mole hunting train Medes. After Sham's father passed away, his mother abandon him, & this left Sham under the care of his cousins. They felt it was best for Sham to become this doctor's assistance & possibly even a captain one day. Sham understands his cousin's care & concern, but he has no love for medicine or being a captain - his desire lies in salvage.

One day the Medes comes along a train wreck & he is summoned to go inside & investigate. Among all the wreckage & bones, he finds a hole in ground that contains a mysterious piece of salvage. He gives it to Captain Nalphi, & together they learn just how mysterious this salvage is. Nalphi makes Sham promise to forget what he saw & tell no else. He promises, but Sham knows he does not mean it. He's gotten a taste of salvage & what he has found, he believes warrants further pursuit.

In order to continue this pursuit, Sham needs to go to Manihiki, & must somehow convince Captain Nalphi to go there. This will be no easy task in itself, because Captin Nalphi is in a determined, obsessive search for the ivory-colored mole. The one that took her arm so many years ago.

This piece of salvage, & his want to discover its mystery, will lead Sham to being chased by both pirates & the navy. & will cause him to face not only monsters of the railsea, but also angels from Heaven.

This was not my first Mieville novel. I knew coming in that nothing about his writing would be conventional or simple, but this one still required a bit of adjusting at the beginning. His prose were very unique. There are a lot of short. Fragmented sentences. In places where I thought there should have a comma. Or dash. There were periods. The other adjustment had to with the "&". No where in the novel does Mieville say the word "and". He only uses the symbol "&". It was weird seeing those everywhere & at the start, they tend to stick out quite sharply to the eye. & when he put it at the start of a sentence - I thought it looked really weird. With this unconventional writing style & prose, most of my focus was on trying to grasp his writing, & get into a good groove. Lucky though, the writing didn't take too long to get used to (thought I still think the "&" looks weird).

The start of the novel focuses mainly on the world-building. Spoiler Alter: Get ready for a ride! The imagination of what Mieville is able to come up with is always what I look forward to most, and Railsea was just as awesome! In this world there is no sea. There is land, but where there should be an ocean, there is just dirt. And in this dirt, live the monsters of the railsea! There are giant moles, giant earthworms, giant earwigs, and arrays of other monstrous creatures. I pictured these monsters moving the dirt kind of like the movie Tremors. This is a retelling of Moby Dick, but instead of hunting whales on ships, we are hunting moles on trains. All over the railsea are train tracks. Crossings over, zig zagging back and forth. Traveling parallel, perpendicular, and looping around each other. Trains tracks as far as the eye can see on the railsea.

Picture trains and side carts, racing down this complex of rails that extends to the horizon. Men and women aboard, shouting, taunting, throwing spears at this giant, monstrous mole, as it dives in and out of railsea, alongside them.

I must admit, that while most of my focus was the writing to start, as I began to be engulfed into the world, I quickly forgot that prose were different from the 'norm'. By the end, I actually enjoyed reading this prose style!

The final aspect of his writing I want to mention is the narrative style. It is told is 3rd person, but rather than reading a story, it felt as if I was being told a story. There are brief chapters when the narrator talks directly to the reader, letting us know what is going, what the narrator plans to do, or why they are telling the story like it is. Telling is a good word to use. It was almost as if I was sitting around a camp fire hearing someone tell me this.

I have not read Moby Dick since I was freshman in high school. Honestly, the only thing I remember is the captain lost a leg to the whale that he soon become obsessed with. As far I could tell though, Captain Nalphi loosing her arm, and chasing that mole are about as similar as the main stories compare. Aside from that, the story and plot are solely of Mieville. Perhaps someone who is more familiar with the works will see more parallels.

The story itself was very engaging. After we find the train wreck and salvage, the plot starts to unfold and take direction. Only real complaint was the last quarter of the book. Things got a little weird for me then (no, not Mieville weird), and the ending - while it was satisfying - I found it a bit underwhelming.

At its heart, I thought this was a coming-of-age tale for Sham. I loved and felt for Sham throughout the story. From where he started as this timid, shy, lost boy. Then seeing him find that salvage, watching where that journey that would take him, the people he would meet, and the changes he would go through. Sham is a very like-able and sympathetic character.

This is a YA novel, and I think the coming-of-age would make it a great read for children, but this easily accessible for adults to read.

The prose & writing style are little funky and unique, but the world-building will leave you in awe. Familiar with Moby Dick or not, this was an enjoying read.

3/5 Rating

-DJ

You just know there are lots of reasons people might give a pass to China Mieville's newest novel, Railsea. Some will see the YA or sci-fi/fantasy labels hanging on it and dismiss it out of hand. Others will hear it features a captain obsessed with hunting a giant white moldywarpe that cost her an arm and think "I hate parody/allusion" or "I really hated Moby Dick" or "Boy, I hate books with words like `moldywarpe" (or all three). Some will sigh mightily at the references to "symbol," "philosophies," environmental deprivation, and the woes of capitalism. Finally, some will note the direct address to the readers and discussion of the novel's own narrative choices, and shrug "Metafiction. Meh." To which I say they get what they deserve--missing out on a great wild and raucous romp of a novel filled to the brim with all the above plus trains, pirates, nomads, mole hunts, trips to the end of the known world, faithful and brave animal companions, loyal siblings, brilliant wordplay, literary allusions, ampersands, orphans, monsters, twists and turns a plenty, exploration and a plucky young boy who knows little save he has yet to discover his life's task. Sucks for them, obviously.

The railsea is as the name implies: an ocean of railroads. Switch water for land, boats for trains, and you've got the world of Railsea, crisscrossed by a seemingly infinite number of rail lines, cross lines, parallel lines, switches, roundabouts, and the like, all lying atop an earthen world filled with monstrously familiar predators--naked molerats the size of large dogs, huge carnivorous earwhigs, and of course, the great southern moldywarpe, capable of destroying an entire train--while above the habitable area is a poisonous upsky filled with equally fearsome creatures. Humans ply the rails as salvagers, navy folk, slavers and slaves, tourists, and, in the case of our young protagonist, Sham Yes ap Shroop, molers--those who hunt the giant moles for their pelts and flesh. Sham's Captain Naphi, though, is more--one of those captains obsessed with a particular giant animal. In her case, a giant white mole named Mocker-Jack that took her arm, since replaced by a cybernetic version.

Sham is already feeling out of place on his first voyage on the Medes, where he has shipped out as a doctor's apprentice. When he discovers a camera memory card amidst a wrecked train they stop to explore for salvage, he soon finds another quest, a more personal one, to replace the one he'd joined only partially of his own choosing.
His goal, however, is shared by a host of others, not all well intentioned. Among these are the Shroak siblings (whose parents took the pictures Sham found), the afore-mentioned pirate, the agents of an aggressive Railsea state, an independent salvager, and others. What they seek may upend all they know of their world.

To say more would be to ruin half the fun of this novel. Suffice to say those seeking simply an exciting action-filled tale will be more than satisfied, especially in the book's second half. The first half is admittedly a slower pace, but filled with so much invention--the animals, the trains, the cities, and so on--that one doesn't really mind or notice. And that isn't to say there isn't any action--we have our first mole hunt, an alleyway mugging, a drunken pub-crawl. But the book leaps into high gear in the second half, and then into third gear toward the end. Mieville also isn't afraid, despite the book's YA nature, to let the bodies fly (some literally), raising the stakes as the book goes on. Maybe because it's ostensibly a YA book, the plot despite its twists and turns, is more narrowly focused, speedier, and tighter, than many of Mieville's other works. By the way, one shouldn't confuse YA with simplistic language--there is no condescension whatsoever to the linguistically challenged here.

The story is well served by its characters, sharply drawn as one has come to expect from this author. Sham is reliably, realistically adolescent--awkward, unsure, confused, prone to fantasies and to backsliding. Captain Naphi is simple fantastic, intriguing at the start but growing utterly can't-take-your-eyes-off-her fascinating by the end of the novel. Even those characters without a lot of page time have some vivid moments--the first mate, Sham's lone friend aboard the Medes, a "naval" captain.

This being Mieville, though, we get a lot more than an exciting story and interesting characters of course. The giant animals the captains hunt and the obsessions to do so aren't just animals and jobs; they're "philosophies" that "embodied meanings, potentialities, ways of looking at the world . . . a faithfulness to an animal that was now a world-view." The setting, besides being wildly inventive, is also a commentary on modern capitalism. The book makes direct analogy between the rails and story-telling, calls attention to its own construction, as when it stops to examine a decision regarding point of view: "This train, our story, will not, cannot, veer now from this track on which, though not by choice, Sham is dragged." Having some knowledge of the arts beyond Moby Dick won't hurt either, with some of the reference more obvious than the others--such as a nod to Odysseus' negotiation of Scylla and Charybdis. Readers' mileage will vary on how they respond to such elements. Some will be fine with the metafictional aspect and groan at the politics, others might feel the opposite. I can't say that Mieville does something with each of these elements that feels wholly satisfying and some of these moments feel a little clumsily inserted, but I'll take an audacious riot of ideas, even if some don't wholly succeed, over being served up the same old same old or a tasteless mélange of plot points that never ask much of me.

Last year I ranked Mieville's Embassytown as one of my top five novels and before that I did the same with The City and The City. Railsea doesn't have the depth of either of those, but it is in some ways a more enjoyable read than either as well. I hopped aboard and didn't get off until I was done several hours later. I recommend you do the same. All aboard!

The rails stretch forever, a tangled mass of rails, switches and gauge changes stretching over poisoned land. The railsea is inhabited by dangerous beasts in turn hunting and hunted by men on trains. Angels, it is said, maintain the tracks, but these angels are no cute cherub--instead, they'll destroy anything that gets in their way. Sham Yes ap Soorap has, unwillingly, gotten a job on one of those hunting trains. His captain is one of those with a "philosophy." Captain Naphi, with her artificial arm, hunts an ivory-colored great mole and will allow nothing to stand between her and her obsession.

A chance encounter with a wrecked train gives Sham a clue to something he never could have imagined. One of the photos he recovers from the wreckage shows a single straight rail line. This is impossible in the railsea, and contrary to every religion preached. He becomes as obsessed with finding the truth behind this photo as his captain is with her mole.

Author China Mieville writes some of the most original and creative speculative fiction available today and RAILSEA provides flashes of this genius. The secret behind the railsea gradually emerges, and the most obvious Moby Dick references fade as Sham finds himself involved with ancient "salvage", with pirates, and with the secrets behind the entire railsea. Speaking of the railsea, Mieville uses the "&" symbol everywhere the word "and" would normally appear. It's a symbol for the interconnected mesh of the railsea. It's also amazing that such a little change could create some reading awkwardness but every time I hit this word, but it did.

Overall, RAILSEA is an above-average fantasy/sf story with sime intriguing social messages, a clever retake of Melville's Moby Dick (Mieville/Melville--is there a connection?). For me, though, this story lacked the really compelling imagination of some of Mieville's other works. Compared to Un Lun Dun or The City and the City, for example, there just isn't a lot here. I'll always go out of my way to grab the latest by China Mieville and RAILSEA isn't a disappointment... but it isn't quite up to Mieville's best, either.

As has become his wont, China Mieville has stuffed more clever ideas than into this book than most writers use in a lifetime. Part homage, part pastiche, part gonzo road trip, Railsea is both like and unlike anything you've read before.

The most exceptional part of this book, for me, was the great fun he had with the narrative voice. You can call it post-modern but it's also rather old-fashioned, with a fairy-tale like narrator. Some examples:

<i>THERE ARE TWO LAYERS TO THE SKY, & FOUR LAYERS to the world. No secrets there. Sham knew that, this book knows that, & you know that, too.

Were they happy or sad that Vurinam had mentioned their runaway? Yes. They were happy or sad.

At last they pushed on, under a huge night, in the deeps of which upsky predators made sounds. The Shroakes— —but wait. On reflection, now is not the time for Shroakes. There is at this instant too much occurring or about to occur to Sham ap Soorap.

“What do we do?” Zhed said. “Things couldn’t get any weirder.” It would have been simply rude for reality not to respond to a challenge like that.</i>

Few books are without blemishes, however, and for me the YA aspects dragged it down a bit. For instance, the daybat became Sham's friend all too easily, was seemingly able to understand him and go on missions for him. Some of the plot was a bit too trite or contrived--the existence of the transceiver revealed to Sham by a minor character at a convenient time, for instance. And time itself passed strangely--the Shroakes travel forever but are simply caught by the other characters? These little things cropped up a bit more than they should have.

Nonetheless, this is an outstanding book. The narrator is a clever, playful presence and it's a joy to read; the end evokes Douglas Adams more than it does Melville. The art is a real treat as well. To use a word gleaned from the book itself, it's rumbustious fun.

Railsea by China Mieville is a coming-of-age tale that takes its inspiration from Moby Dick and Treasure island and a whole universe of elements that he's mixed into a wildly imaginative story of a young man who has grown up in a world bounded by railroads who discovers there's something beyond and goes looking for it to claim his destiny.
The hero of the book, a young man called Sham (Shamus Yes Ap Soorap) has gone "to rail' to hunt the moldywarpes, beasts who inhabit the railsea and used for their fat and meat and fur. Apprenticed to the train's doctor, Sham is eager to hear the stories the railsailors tell and fascinated by the train's captain Abacat Naphi, a one-armed woman who lost her limb to a wily white moldywarpe and has been searching for it ever since.
He is less enthusiastic about the rough games the sailors entertain themselves with--games like beetle races and death matches with birds and beasts. One day Sham snaps, stealing a little day bat from the "arena" so it won't end up killed. This action marks him out to the other crew members. The captain marks him out for reasons of her own, and he's soon embroiled in feeding her obsession with developing one of his own.
As a proponent of "New Weird," Mieville has always blended myth and pop culture and literature in his works (most gracefully in Kraken) and in this novel, readers will recognize Moby Dick, Dune (the modlywarpes explode out of the dirt like the "worms" that make spice), a bit of Treasure Island and also Tales of the Arabian Nights.
The Moby Dick references aren't just superficial, with Captain Naphi, the one-armed monomaniac in search of the off-white mole who took her limb, but extend to the structure of the chapters and the subject matter. English majors will particularly enjoy the way Mieville has played with one of the classic works of American literature. (Particularly the chapter in Moby Dick known as the "Tryworks.")
There's a lot of world building here in this dystopian, post-Apocalypse landscape. The world of the railsea has its own jargon and its own logic and its own geography. (A cabin boy has been "at rail" before, for example.) the book begins with a stunning image of a blood-stained boy and we don't know until later that it's Sham in the aftermath of the moldywarpe hunt, drenched in blood after serving liquor to the butchers cutting up the creature.
All of this backdrop is extremely entertaining but it disguises the essential lack of plot. Yes, things happen (the scary stuff aboard the wrecked train, for example, that reminds us a bit of Jaws), but mostly this is a coming-of-age story that plays out in small moments.
As with Kraken, there's a sort of quest going on here. The captain is obsessed with finding her nemesis, which she describes as being the color of an old tooth, a rarity among the dark moldywarpes.
Other captains mock her obsession for a particular "prairie dog" and make fun of her philosophy as well. She is not so much a character as a plot placeholder for the story, which is familiar (at least in its broad strokes).
Still, we are intrigued by Sham, who is a dreamer singularly unsuited to the life of a train doctor. He can't believe others don't share his desire to know what's out there on the railsea and possibly beyond it.
There are wonderful inventions here--like the rumor market where you can buy and sell rumors and the price you pay determines the quality of the information passed along--and these bits of whimsy add to the reality Mieville is constructing here.

The action moments are strong--the sequence where a crew member is bitten by a creature in a wrecked train is particularly scary--but much of this story is the setup and the world and the literary underpinnings. (It very much feels as if there's a sequel coming at some point.)
Mieville plays with language and in the "second act" of the book he shatters point of view and begins following several different narrative threads. Somehow it all works.

Railsea takes place in a land like none other. It's an adventure tail, of pirates and 'fisherman' and salvage-seekers, but rather than an ocean of saltwater, the sailors venture on trains over a world full of criss-crossing railroad tracks. The earth below is full of creatures, earthy and subterranean and exotic. It's like radioactive waves struck a sandbox. And like a Moby Dick obsessed Ahab, one captain tries to capture the beast of all beasts, while other characters are in search of their origins or to learn what is beyond the rails.

Fantasy novels have always been cursed in following the Tolkien formula. Of course, there's different tones and worlds that can be created, but compare Terry Brooks to George Martin, and you'll find more similarities than differences.

But the Railsea, by China Mieville, is the most original land I can remember reading about. The king of self-described Weird Fiction, China Mieville, has weirded and welded something incredible. It makes me proud to be called a member of his same species.

The novel is described as "This is the story of a bloodstained boy..."Shamus Yes ap Soorap, and the first page opens to this poor fellow splattered with blood, and of course, the horror hits of how this young boy could become so bloody, yet the narrator asks us to withhold judgement. We learn the blood is from the first of his `modlywarpe' hunts, and yes, it is a rite of passage for him, and the first of many rites of passages for this young apprentice. A moldywarpe is a giant mole, and by the time you're done reading this novel, you'll have no doubt that the creatures exist.

Yes, an orphan as a main character is a bit trite, but the novel follows his adventures on the rails and his search to understand his origins. It goes beyond his parents to the nature of the world itself. Who created the rails? Were they maintained by Gods and Angels? When he sees an image of a single rail running across the land, it's evidence that this world is not all as it seems.

The novel is called Young Adult fiction but is YA only in comparison to the rest of China Mieville, and is full of weird and unusual styles. Some of my favorite moments are when the narrator takes a step back and self-reflects on the story and directly speaks to the reader, discussing story telling itself, and also gives periodic biological taxonomy of the creatures of the land, along with visual diagrams.

This novel wasn't perfect for me (yes, there are some novels that are) but was so good that I reveled in its earthy details. Yes, earthy, as you will feel like you are burrowing in the earth along with the huge rodents and worms, and you can't help but feel like you are also a sailor, yet not on a sea of water but a sea of rails.

I'm raising money and holding a lemonade stand in hopes that I can buy the movie rights, because I would love to see this on the big screen. In 3-d.

First Sentence: This is the story of a bloodstained boy.

How I Acquired the Book: Borrowed from my town's library.

The Review: Railsea is a really weird book. I read it because of its cool cover and interesting description, not because of the author, like some other reviewers did. In fact, I'm not even familiar with the author. This is my first China Mieville book, & it was a very enjoyable read. However, there were some things that I really disliked about it, so let me organise my thoughts:

Here is what I liked about the book:
+A very interesting premise. Many reviewers have called Railsea a cross between Treasure Island and Mody-Dick. I've read neither of them, but Railsea does remind me of Pirates of the Caribbean. Just replace the seas in PotC with endless rails & replace the ships with trains, & you've got Railsea. Some will laugh at the absurdity of this. Others, like me, will be fascinated by it.
+The prose. As I said before, this is my first China Mieville book, so I was unfamiliar with his prose. Let me just say it's like nothing I've ever read before. & it's extremely hard to describe, as prose is something you need to read for yourself. Read an excerpt of Railsea, & you'll see what I mean.
+The ending. Honestly, for the first half of Railsea, I kept thinking, "What is with all the acclaim this book has been getting? This book is so bleeping bad." But I did persist in reading it, & boy, am I glad I did! I think the ending of this redeems the rather slow start (more on that later). It's crazy, but it is awesome? Yes, it is.

Here is what I did not like about the book:
-The characters. Most of them were flat. In fact, my favourite character, & the only one I liked was a rather minor one: Daybe the bat. When you hate the main character the most, you know the nook's got problems.
-The slow start. It was so slow that I was even considering not finishing this, which is something I rarely do with books. It took me four days to read this book, & I normally finish books in one or two days. Things did speed up later, though, which I am glad for.

& here are two things that I would like to mention (that did not factor into this book's rating):
*For some reason, this book uses British spellings, like I have in this review. I know Mr. Mieville is a British author, but I was always under the impression that British books were always edited to become more "Americanised." Whatever; I'm no expert on that kind of stuff, so I didn't take any stars off for that. But some people may find it distracting.
*&, the author uses "&" instead of writing "and" in the book, like I did in this review. I liked his use of "&", & I thought it was very creative & original. But some people may find it distracting & irritating.

Overall, Railsea is a great romp of a book. It's not a book I'd recommend to everyone, as I had to use A LOT of my brainpower to read and digest it. I think even though Railsea is catered towards readers of all ages, adults would enjoy it more. I also think that this will be a book that I will read every few years to see how much I've matured. So if Railsea seems interesting to you, pick it up and give it a try. It's the kind of book that reviewers can't tell you if you'll it or not. You'll just have to see for yourself.

--reviewed by a teenager.

Set in a world where sailors travel across an intricate network of rails, Railsea starts out as a sort of sci fi Moby Dick. At the beginning of the novel, young Sham is a doctor's assistant on his first voyage on a moletrain, a train that travels the railsea attempting to harpoon giant moles and other subterranean critters. A chance encounter sets Sham and later the entire crew on a different sort of chase.

At first, Railsea was a little bit hard to get into. Though the writing is not terribly complex, Mieville uses a lot of vocabulary specific to the world he has imagined without explaining what these new words mean. For the first few chapters, I felt like I was reading a mad lib created by non-English speakers. Mieville also chooses to use quirky character names, so I felt like I was stumbling upon two or three unfamiliar words in each sentence. As I became more familiar with the vocabulary and the characters, the book became easier to read. The other thing that made this book a slow-started was the use of "&" instead of "and." This was particularly challenging when the author chose to begin a sentence with an ampersand.

Once I got used to Mieville's style in this book, I thoroughly enjoyed the story. The twists and turns of the characters' fate were unexpected. I would push myself to read a few extra chapters before bedtime each night because I just had to know what would happen next. By the end of the novel, I felt like I understood the world of Railsea and, personally, I would love to read more books set in this universe, perhaps a prequel or a sequel, or even just short stories that further flesh out the characters.

Another great novel in the 'weird fiction' genre from China Mieville. The best way to describe this author is: he's not for everyone & he is definitely not trying to be. For a lover of SciFi & fantasy its very refreshing to read something that is truly new & original & Mr Mieville is certainly well known for delivering that kind of fiction. Many authors make the "new & original" claim but fail in the end. China delivers!

When publishers say "a book for all ages" it usually means that it is a children's book but Railsea is really a book for all ages. I am over 50 & I thoroughly enjoyed this story. Also, if you are considering reading this book & thought that perhaps the plausibility of a world crisscrossed by railroads was a bit too fantastic, I would say don't worry about it. The story is well thought out.

Railsea is more than simply a story. As you read it, you may find yourself looking at a deeper metaphor about modern civilization & where humanity may be going with it.

Time for the Shroakes!

Once again China Miéville has demonstrated why he is in a class, and possibly a genre, all by himself. Railsea is yet another fantastic book by the author whose books defy adequate description and whose imagination knows no boundaries.

Railsea takes place on a world criss-crossed by innumerable railroad tracks which are used by pirates, scavengers, and hunters of the enormous rats, antlions, and other subterranean animals which inhabit the desolate landscape.

Much of the story is an homage to Melville's Moby Dick. Sham, Miéville's central character, is the surgeon's mate aboard the locomotive Medes. Naphi, the captain of the Medes is obsessed with hunting down a giant, pale Moldywarpe--a giant mole-type creature reminiscent of the sandworms of Dune--which she's been chasing for years.

On its voyage the Medes encounters a train that had long ago been attacked and derailed. And while searching through the wreckage Sham discovers a photographic record of the the journey the train's riders had been on. One of the pictures shows a scene that changes Sham's perception of the world and alters the course of his life. It's a picture of a lone railine, stretching out across an otherwise empty landscape. It's proof that somewhere out there the never-ending tangle of railines ends. And that new reality, along with the questions it raises of where that railine leads to and what's there, become Sham's obsession and the beginning of a journey that will change everything.

Railsea is a "big idea" book. This is not unusual for China Miéville. This book does the same thing for trains that Embassytown does for language. It expands the idea of rail-traveling trains in new directions, stretching our understanding while remaining faithful to their basic nature. The author has covered some of this ground before. In Iron Council he showed what might happen when a train's crew strikes out on their own, removing the tracks behind them and building a new route ahead. Railsea takes things a bit further.

Readers explore a world in which, unsurprisingly, train tracks cover most of the surface much like our ocean covers everything below... well, sea level. Some rocky islands are free of rails and of the poisoned soil beneath them. On these islands are the world's ports and cities. A variety of trains traverse the sea of rails. Some perform tasks similar to our familiar ocean-going ships: trade, exploration, "naval" military engagement, and even piracy. Others have stranger missions. There are trains that hunt the dangerous animals that burrow rapidly though the toxic soil. And there are the mysterious Angels that repair the rails for reasons of their own.

The railsea itself is such a well-crafted integration of the familiar and fantastic that it easily steals the reader's attention from the book's human characters. The characters' actions are interesting, but seem incidental compared to the continuing flow of new information about the railsea. It is enough to know that a young doctor's apprentice on a train that hunts giant moles finds pictures taken by a lost expedition. Soon joined by others, he follows this expedition's trail toward something new, interesting, and perhaps financially rewarding on the furthest shores of the railsea. You will have to join them to learn what they find.

I recommend this book highly. It is entertaining, imaginative and engaging. China Miéville's skills as a writer and storyteller have enabled him to create a reading experience well worth your time and attention. Enjoy!

I think Chine Mieville must be the most creative writer alive today. Each of his books is completely unique. Most writers seem to have a theme they keep coming back to again and again. Even if the characters and plots are different, their books seem to have as many similarities as differences. That doesn't mean they don't create compelling fiction, it just means they have something they do well, and keep coming back to it.

Not Mieville. The only thing his book have in common is how different they are. From each other, and from anyone else. Railsea was inspired by Moby Dick, perhaps, but it's set in a world that is totally unique.

Mieville's works can be challenging reads, however. He makes up words, which you figure out the meaning of as you go along. And he doesn't start with pages of expository material: he plunks you down right in the middle of things, and you discover the world around you just as you would if you had suddenly woken up in it, not knowing where you were. In the end, it's worth the effort.

"Railsea' is a Steampunk adventure set not in an alternative 19th century, but in a far future earth. I found it fresh and delightful. Like Pratchett's "Dodger," it only revealed itself as a YA book by having more interesting things to talk about than copulation. I would dock it about a quarter-point for descending into Lemony-Snicketty-ness a few times too often. The narrative voice is rather intrusive, as in "The Book Thief." (This seems to be a 21st-century conceit.)

Mieville is a master world-builder. His worlds are sometimes more interesting than his characters (a trait he shares with Ursula LeGuin), but his protagonists are smart and brave and (most importantly) humane.

This is piece of fiction that borrows heavily from Moby Dick, Treasure Island, and even Robinson Crusoe. The world’s seas have dried up and, somehow, a seemingly infinite set of rails have been laid on the naked abyssal plain. Trains follow the tracks much as ships used to sail the waters. Moles, stoats, and beetles have adapted to the plain and burrow beneath its surface. However, they are as ravenous as any shark so one only walks on the earth at mortal risk. Of course some of the trains are “whaler’s,” and one in particular is after an ivory furred giant mole. Fortunately, Mieville goes for more than just a retelling of Moby Dick and this becomes a fascinating tale of discovery set in a world that has been creatively imagined by Mieville.

You know that saying that people sometimes use to describe authors? That they just seemed to “have a way with words?” Well this was nothing like that. The complete opposite. I was astonished at all the reviews praising this book that ended up misleading me. Everyone's reviews spoke very highly of it and I was excited to read it.

If only I had bothered to read just a tiny bit of the beginning before purchasing! I immediately sat down to read this book when I got home, and to be perfectly honest, I was put off by the writing the moment I opened it. Which is NOT a good start. I was extremely disappointed and mad at myself. But it’s no one’s fault than my own for not at least opening the book before buying it.

The writing style was, well, childish. Yes. Childish. I’ve read many YA books, classical literature, romance, etc. I've read books of all kinds and I know very well the difference between a wondrous arrangement of words into sentences to form beautiful pieces of art, and a loosely held together array of coherent sentences that often make up YA novels. That is not to say I do not enjoy light reading that Railsea is made up of. I love light reading. Many of my favorite books are YA. However, Railsea manages to be written just a tiny bit more “light” than your average YA book. This certainly shows in the way the author chooses to word and describe people, feelings, and situations. It is difficult to put into words, but the best I can do to describe this is offer a comparison in how some films spoon feed their audiences. No one likes to be spoon fed things. It gives the impression that we’re not smart enough to figure it out on our own. Such is the case with this book. The wording is straightforward and unimaginative with no room for speculation in between. (But I am not calling the plot unimaginative. It is quite the opposite in fact. It is just that the writing style is.) The details were there but it did not flow. The writing was choppy and abrupt. The words didn’t come together and instead jumbled and tumbled off the page in a mess of words that fought for rhythm.
Inserts

The absolute worse thing though is the inserts. Throughout the book (as well as the very beginning in the prologue) there are small inserts in which the author rambles on about some turning point in the story and/or the characters and addresses the reader indirectly. They are infuriatingly terrible. They are written differently than the rest of the book and throws the reader for a loop when they pop up out of nowhere. While I could tolerate most of the author’s writings in Railsea by skim-reading through it, I could hardly bare these inserts. They were completely useless and did not add anything to the story.

Now, for the plot itself, it was interesting. As I said before, I was incredibly excited to read such a book with such a n exciting storyline. The world and creatures within the pages were quite astonishing to behold. It is too bad the author did not do a very good job of portraying this through their writing. I've never read such a ridiculously awful writing style before (then again I've never read Fifty Shades of Grey and I hear the writing style is the worse then anything).

And so alas, had this story been told better than I probably would have loved just as much as the other reviewers had. I’ve said this all my life and I will say it again now, a good idea can be ruined by bad writing and a bad idea can be made better with good writing. In conclusion, don’t waste your time. I really wanted to like this book. I’m sad that I could not.

Originally reviewed at [...]

4.5/5 Stars

What a ride. I was familiar with author China Miéville, having read some of his adult fiction titles, so when I discovered that he was publishing a YA work, I was excited to see how it would compare with his adult works. Sometimes the transition from one age group to another doesn't go over so well. I won't point any fingers but I have read some adult fiction author's attempts to break into the very popular YA market and fail miserably. YA doesn't equate to less intelligent, and nothing aggravates me more than when a writer tries to dumb down a book for a younger audience. Anyway (sorry about the rant) I am thrilled to say that Miéville's Railsea is just as action packed, imaginative, and smart as his adult works.

My first thoughts regarding Railsea lead me back to two of my favorite bloggers and friends, Heidi (Bunbury in the Stacks) and Asheley (Into the Hall of Books) because both of these girls read and loved this book. In fact, Railsea, had been languishing on my Kindle until I read Heidi's enthusiastic review, spurring me to pick it up and give it a look. I am so glad I did. Railsea has many elements that lovers of fantasy will enjoy. A hero quest across strange lands, chock full of action filled encounters with many odd and, at times, endearing characters. But there are also elements in Railsea that would make the die hard Dystopic fan's jaw drop. A foreign land, that seems at once dangerous, yet eerily familiar to the world we call our own. And Railsea caters to the lover of science fiction as well, full of fantastic burrowing creatures under the earth and even more amazing celestial creatures inhabiting the sky. If you are a fan of steampunk and the salvage filled world found in Paolo Bacigulupi's Ship Breaker, than you'll appreciate the similarities in Railsea. And anyone who enjoys classic works of literature, especially Herman Melville's Moby Dick or Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, will also enjoy Sham Yes ap Soorap's adventure across the railsea. So, to make a long story short, Railsea has a little something for everyone.

In a nutshell, Railsea is a nod to the classic, Moby Dick. But instead of a maritime setting where whaling ships rule the seas, Sham's world is a sea of railroad tracks, crisscrossing the land in a tangled jungle of iron. Rising above are islands, pockets of land where cities have been established like the seaports of old. But below the rails, deep in the ground, are fantastic creatures, burrowing animals that have grown to monstrous sizes, like the great southern moldywarpe. These are the animals Sham and his moletrain, the Medes, hunt in the railsea. In other words: incredible world building.

But that is not just what Railsea is about. In fact there are many different layers to the story, complex layers in fact, but I'll leave the deconstruction of Railsea to those more qualified. Suffice to say, this is a very smart read, a book that will make you think, and Miéville is able to do this in such a fashion it never felt too heavy handed or hard to comprehend (tying in to my rant above!) That is the genius of Miéville. For me, however, Railsea is Sham's story, a story about his desire for knowledge, and the adventure that follows in his quest for it.

I love the character of Sham, though I will admit it wasn't love at first sight. As the assistant to the physician aboard the moletrain Medes, where he lives and works, it took me a bit of time to warm up to him. But I think what I liked most about him was that even though he had a pretty cool gig, traveling to distant lands looking for moldywarpes, he's still not satisfied with the cards he has been dealt. Sham wants more. He longs to become a salvor, one of the many who scour the earth in search of all types of salvage: nu-salvage, and arche-salvage (the salvage of the distant past, i.e. our time, and Sham's favorite) and even alt-salvage, which is off -Terran, in other words, not from our planet. Sham longs for adventure and discovery. Well, he finds it, in more ways than one.

In addition to Sham there are a host of incredible characters featured in Railsea including the captain of the Medes, Naphi, who endlessly tracks her philosophy, her only system of belief, an obsession with the great moldywarpe Mocker Jack. Naphi, a modern day Captain Ahab, is complex and so well written, she's easily one of my favorite characters in Railsea. Aboard the Medes, there are memorable characters at every turn: Sham's trainmates Dr. Fremlo, Vurinam, Benightly and Mbendy to name a few. Miéville introduces the reader to the the salvor Sirocco, and the pirate Robalson, and the siblings Caldera and Dero, who harbor a secret that Sham can't resist. And lets not forget the vast assortment of animals we encounter along the way. From the massive great southern moldywarpe Mocker Jack, to Sham's pet daybat, Daybe, it's in the creation of these amazing animals, both endearing and horrific, where Miéville really shines.

I had heard that there were some beautiful illustrations in Railsea, and even though I had the electronic version of the text, I was stoked to see that they were still included. Maps and illustrations in books are such a cool treat. And cooler yet is that these have been drawn by the author himself.

Sometimes it's not easy to read Railsea. The names are strange, and hard to pronounce, and the setting seems so familiar yet so different at the same time. As I navigated my way through the start of the book I was reminded of Lewis Carroll's Jabberwockey, the language was so odd, the names almost like nonsense words (moldywarpe), yet it didn't take me too long to get a feel for it and decipher the meanings. I have to also mention that the writing style itself confused me a bit. You see the word and is never written out. Never. Instead an ampersand (&) is used in it's place. & I mean the entire length of the book. I was unsure if this was intentional or if this was something only present in my electronic galley version. But later in the book, Miéville actually offers an explanation as to why this occurs. I think Miéville might employ tactics like this as a way to pace the reader, and to always keep fresh in their minds, as it was in mine, that this world in which Sham lives is distinctly different and other from our own.

Another thing I loved about Railsea was Miéville's "breaking of the fourth wall," when a character, or the narrator in this case, addresses the reader directly (think Jane Eyre, when Jane addresses the audience with "Dear Reader.") Here Miéville uses this device to slow the down the action, at times stopping it all together and backtracking in the story. I LOVE when an author employs this device, it makes me feel like I'm not just reading a book, but am instead experiencing the story as if it were being read to me.

And that's what reading Railsea was like. Like sitting around a circle and an elder telling me this fantastic adventure. Or like your grandpa, sitting at your bedside, reading you chapters of this magical story that you know you will remember for the rest of your life. Stories you'll read to your children and grandchildren one day.

I know that when my son's are older, because I think to really get this book, the youngest reader should be an older tween or teen, I will definitely be introducing Railsea to them. Heidi said it best when she said that this book won't be for everyone. But for some, me included, this book is magical. It's timeless, and though it's technically published for a YA audience, this is definitely one of those rare reads that defies categorization. Like Moby Dick, Treasure Island and Ship Beaker, readers of all ages can enjoy this book. If you are already a fan of China Miéville, I think you'll enjoy Railsea, and if you aren't, why not give this one a try? You might find yourself as taken with it as I was.

RAILSEA has been compared to Herman Melville's MOBY DICK, but it's really just China Miéville's take on an adventure story. Its philosophies, the hunt, the unknown, and the need for answers and exploration of our origins drive this novel.

Shamus Yes ap Soorap (Sham for short) is the youngest crew member of the Medes, a mole train on the hunt for a big catch on the great railsea. He has dreams of working salvage --- finding new things, old things, and alien things. What he actually does is assist the doctor of the Medes and bring water to the men and women who are working to break down the moles they hunt into oil, bone and skin. The captain of the Medes, Naphi, is on the hunt for a mole --- a legendary ivory-colored mole called Mocker-Jack. She believes, as other mole train captains do, that capturing Mocker-Jack is her destiny.
When the railsea leads the crew of the Medes to an old wreck, Sham goes with the crew to investigate and finds something he hopes to make his very own piece of salvage. Instead, he hands over the small camera memory chip to the captain. The images it contains lead Sham and his captain in essentially the same direction with different outcomes --- Sham is led to two children of now dead-explorers, and the captain is led to new, never-before-conceived hunting grounds. Naphi's dreams of bringing down Mocker-Jack, her famed ivory-colored mole, now seem within reach.

What Miéville does that I absolutely love is create places so familiar, yet at the same time so strange. He creates a land that the crew is afraid to step on for fear of dying. This world of safe land among animal-prowled soft dirt is both alien and accessible at the same time. It's a world of dirt, but he makes you see it as a world of water --- deep and unsafe water at that. Out in the railsea, it's the tracks that keep everyone safe, and you have no choice but to believe that's the absolute truth of this world.

This is also a book filled with characters you'll care about and fear for in a world poised to attack. Sham is young, untested, naïve, and trusts people too easily. He never knew the fate of his parents, and when he has the opportunity to bring closure to two children whose parents have died, he sets out to do just that, unaware of the implications his actions may bring. His pet, an injured daybat he nursed back to health and named Daybe, is a stalwart friend and more than just a silly little bat. Daybe is fearless, with crazy loyalty to young Sham, and is one of the book's most memorable characters.

I've read several of Miéville's books, and he's now on the list of authors from whom I anxiously await books. No matter the topic, a book by Miéville is one that I want to read. He has an ability to take our world, warp a few elements, twist a few basic beliefs, and make it something so new and strange. These new worlds don't stop existing simply because the book is closed. His worlds and stories stay with you long after the end.

As a side note, I've seen this book described as a young adult novel. It's really much more than that, and much more than just a re-telling of MOBY DICK. It's about dreams and adventure in a world we want to get to know better. And isn't that why we read? China Miéville makes these worlds we crave possible. In fact, you should be reading RAILSEA now.

Reviewed by Amy Gwiazdowski on June 1, 2012

Railsea is a bit hard to follow in the beginning, but like all of Miéville's novels, if you give yourself time to understand the lay of the fantastical land, you'll certainly be glad you did. Miéville's quirky, endearing prose shines again in this latest burst of his brilliant imagination, the unlikely tale of Sham ap Soorap, a doctor's apprentice who finds adventure and mystery aboard a mole train. Half the fun is trying to figure out how this odd world of dirt oceans and gigantic ground dwellers might have evolved from our own. The rest is in following Sham as he finds a destiny much bigger than he ever could have dreamed.

The Science Fiction Gods must have been smiling on the day of China Mieville's birth. This top-notch author of King Rat, Un Lun Dun, Perdido Street Station, The City & The City, Kraken, & Embassytown sets yet another star in the SF heavens. Railsea is offered as a juvenile book, but the only thing that to my eye requires a younger reader is the premise of the world in which this story takes place. It is extreme in its stretching of our willing suspension of disbelief. It is as far as Michael Moorcock or Cordwainer Smith ever stretched it, but without removing the humanness of the tale. I recommend it to everyone who enjoys a good yarn.

Fantastically odd, a whole world created and populated with it's own lingo. I enjoyed it but I didn't feel the characters had a very strong personalities. They left me a little cold. But it was very entertaining. I listened to the audio version, read fantastically by Jonathan Cowley.

Once again Mieville creates a complete alternate world with all the history and mystery one has come to respect in his previous works, not to mention an exaggerated nod to" Moby Dick" and his close namesake, Melville. While I admit I found it hard to finish "Moby Dick" I found it hard to put "Railsea" down! I hope we can look forward to further "Railsea" world adventures.

I will keep it short as many other commentors have been quite thorough, but this is Mieville as he always is. The story is immediately strange and unsettling, resolving itself into something more familiar, but always leaving you wanting more and thinking over the multitude of possibilities he builds into his worlds. If you haven't read any of his work previously, this is a good starting place to gradually slip into the weird; but keep in mind that this is a young adult novel and that his regular work tends to have a more mature feel. If you are already a fan, this won't let you down. I, for one, just hope he keeps writing.

Perhaps, for some readers, Railsea with its huge murderous moles will be to much and for others its emphasis on moles will be to little, but I'm sure that even you will not consider this book among Mieville's masterpieces, you will be surprise by how sparkling, playful, fun and fulfilling this novel is.

In Railsea by China Miéville, the orphan Sham ap Soorap lives in a tangle, travelling the railsea as doctor's assistant on the moler Medes. It's not a job he's particularly good at, and it doesn't help he's not quite sure what he wants to do with himself.
The railsea on which the train Medes travels is a dangerous place -- step off the rails, which cover the dry, soft earth-ocean in a Borgesian labyrinth, and you'll find that the monsters of the deep are rather too close to the surface either for comfort or surviving the next five minutes. However, it has its rewards for those who travel the rails, switching their way from line to line in pursuit of salvage, moldywarpes, or philosophies. You might even find your place in life -- or so Sham hopes.
Of course, sometimes you also find something completely unexpected. One day Sham ends up on a crew sent out by the captain to investigate a wrecked train, and comes across some pictures. In short order, Sham finds himself in the middle of a pursuit by pirates, naval trains, and subterrains for what lies behind those pictures -- a truth that will change the world.
Escape Rating A: As with the rest of Miéville's oeuvre, Railsea works on many levels. It's a rollicking adventure tale worthy of Robert Louis Stevenson, a coming-of-age story, and a treat for those who like wordplay. For example, at one point the Medes finds itself trapped between a siller and the Kribbis Hole (read it aloud to fully appreciate).
The book is like the railsea itself, a dense knot of intersecting story lines, changes in points of view, and allusions. The entangling lines of the physical setting matches the complexity of the human setting with its array of diverse island city-states, pirates, salvors, and nomadic Bajjer traveling the lonely sea, to say nothing of the detritus of history and alien influence that litters the world and hints at many untold tales. The book makes it clear that its pages only scratch the surface of a fascinating milieu.
From this knot emerges a meditation on constraint and searching for freedom. The railsea cannot be escaped, seemingly -- as I mentioned, stray off the narrow (though not very straight) tracks and you'll quickly find yourself devoured by the denizens of the soft earth. The high sky is the domain of alien beings too strange and obscure to contemplate. Travel in one direction, and you'll eventually find the rails looping back on themselves. Pursue your obsession, as Ahab did with Moby-Dick, and you'll find yourself in the midst of dozens of captains, each with their own "philosophy" that few of them manage to hunt down.
There's a lot to be said for staying in the thicket -- there are lots of interesting things to find there, as any reader of Miéville has come to expect. Once you reach the end, however, you'll find a rather satisfying breath of fresh air.
Originally published at Reading Reality

This was an amazing story that my 8th grade class just ate up. I teach special ed and my students often have trouble staying focused when I read to them. This book had them hooked from the first chapter. I found myself so engrossed with the story I had to read ahead. China Mieville does it again.

This is a catchy book. The evocation of Melville is too obvious not to state. But it's also trivial. The book doesn't attempt to emulate Moby Dick on dry land. It's its own story.

A major part of the good and the bad, for me, is the language. It's singular and idiosyncratic. And that is at once refreshing and distracting for me.

I may be handicapped, in that I am listening to the narrated version, the audio book. And the narrator, it seems to me, is too seduced by the words. He continually falls out of storytelling into recitation.

It's easy to see why. Here's a sample of the writing:

"At this point, the intention had been to say that it was such slippery western terrain as few trainsfolk ever see, such strange wrong rails, that the Shroakes, by then, had reached, & in which & on which they travelled. But the time is not yet right."

You can see how its clear and how it can be parsed, yet, at the same time, its just odd enough that it can become a continual distraction, like a night light glinting intermittently in your eyes.

I have to say, I like it better on paper than from a narrator's mouth. And maybe I'll give up the audio book, for simply the book.

Loved it. It is a well written story that completely took me in. The only down point is the actual ending as it is unlikely to set forth into the unknown with no preparation or provisions at all. But I am happy to overlook that fact.

I hated this book. Mieville has his fans, many of whom claim to be Lovecraft followers as well, but I just can't get behind the author. He uses superfluous language/story structure, nonsense story arcs, and just plain general unremarkable characters to try and make you care about a world that in itself isn't all that bad. But the nature of the world, which would be a great mystery in anyone else's hands, turns to nothing more than fluff when allowed to languish under Mieville's literary "talent."

If you liked "King Rat" then you'll love this book as well. I myself just can't get behind the man as a writer. I've seen interviews and he seems okay enough...just can't read his stories.

This is a complex book. Even the ampersands are more than just and.

Moles are top predators. Enough said.

Train pirates that fly skull and crossed spanner flags. Enough said.

Aliens roam the upsky. Enough said.

Travel the Railsea with Sham op Sharoom, you might learn the call of the daybat.

Extremely difficult to stop reading. Well-crafted and delightful on every page. Sometimes it feels like the story takes place in either the distant future or the distant past of the Bas-Lag novels, but you don't need familiarity with any of Mieville's other works to enjoy Railsea.

Imagine if you took Moby Dick, Treasure Island, and a greatly expanded text of the Jabberwocky, put it in a blender and then set the result in a dystopian steampunk future. That might start to describe the weirdness that is Railsea: a world so fascinating and absorbing that you can't put this down. Swashbuckling, snarky, and infinitely imaginative, this is a definite must-read for all lovers of sci-fi.

Quite frankly, the above descriptions were picked at random - I was so bored that I couldn't get very far - as with all of Miéville's books - bored, bored, bored. I tried every book so far. Great imagination - and the most boring writing style I've ever experienced. I have read encyclopaedia, and they were far more thrilling.
I have Asperger's, and require no emotional involvement with the characters whatsoever, but these were just so far out in the land of 'couldn't care less', that it was unreadable.
Every one has been the same; lucky if I reach the end of the first chapter or two.