“This is the story of a bloodstained boy…”
– Railsea by China Miéville
I’ll get straight to the point of this blog: the latest release from China Miéville (Perdido Street Station, The City and the City, Embassytown, etc.), a novel for “readers of all ages” entitled Railsea, absolutely blew me away. I read and review books for a living and it has been a very, very long time since I have experienced a novel so insanely imaginative and so beautifully written that I dreaded putting it down as much as I dreaded it coming to its inevitable end. It was a singularly unique, genre-transcendent, masterwork – and looking at the book now on my desk, I have the completely irrational urge to pick it up and begin reading it all over again…
While Railsea is a reimagining of Herman Melville’s 1851 classic Moby-Dick, that is really only one facet of this story. It’s a strange and surreal amalgam of elements – science fiction, adventure fantasy, folklore and myth, post-apocalyptic fiction, even a touch of steampunk.
Set in the railsea – a vast network of railroad tracks with its own nightmarish ecosystem (giant predatory moles, worms, owls, etc.) and bizarre belief systems – the storyline follows Shamus Yes ap Soorap, a young doctor’s apprentice on the Medes, a moletrain that travels the railsea hunting down and killing dangerous quarry for their meat, fat, fur, etc. The train’s captain, an enigmatic woman with an artificial arm named Abacat Naphi, is preoccupied with tracking down the moldywarpe (a giant mole) that took her arm, a creature with fur the color of bone that she calls Mocker-Jack. But Sham could really care less about his captain’s obsession – he is immersed in his own quest, a search to find his place in the world, his purpose for living. But when Sham is called upon to explore the dangerous interior of a wrecked train, he discovers something that will force him to question everything he knows as true – and will compel him to begin an perilous journey that will take him to the very edge of the railsea, and beyond.
Yes, the realm that Miéville has created is breathtaking – both in scope and description – but it’s his powerful and poetic voice that makes this novel such an enjoyable read. I just love the way this guy uses words, like mole rats attacking with “guillotine teeth” immersed in “stygian dust.” Additionally, the entire novel is steeped in images and sequences with multiple meanings. In this excerpt, for example, Sham is inside a salvage shop and passes by a table of dolls. Miéville’s description of the display could easily be taken as an allegorical look at the existential and spiritual state of humanity – and he also offers up a glimpse into what the world looked like before the earth was turned toxic:
“Old dolls, salvaged dolls. No matter how cleaned they had been, the dust in which they had lain for so many lifetimes had permanently coloured them: whatever tone their skin had been supposed to be, it looked ensepiaed, as if through dirty glass. Mostly they were shaped like people, mostly like women or girls, though of deeply questionable physical proportions, with thickety knotted & scrambled hair where it remained at all. A few were grotesques, monsters. Many were limbless…”
But the thing that made Railsea such an unforgettable read for me was the way in which Miéville always kept the reader off balance – just like the character of Sham – I never knew what was coming next and the bombshell revelations that exploded throughout the latter half of the novel kept me furiously turning the pages into the wee hours of morning.
I loved the wit and the depth of this novel – but I am curious how it goes over with “readers of all ages.” Is it appropriate for middle grade readers and young adults? Certainly – but it’s most definitely not “typical” young adult reading fare. And by that I mean there are no paranormal fantasy elements (vampires, werewolves, etc.), there is no romance or romantic tension between characters, and oft-trod young adult themes (fitting in, body image, peer pressure, etc.) are absent. But those younger readers who do pick up and read Railsea will experience a truly wondrous novel that explores perhaps the most significant young adult (and adult, for that matter) theme of all – figuring out what you want to accomplish in life and then finding a way to do it.
All I can say is this: read Railsea – it will be one of the best novels you read this year. And you will never look at white whales or peg-legged ship captains the same way again (and that is a good thing)…
Paul Goat Allen has been a full-time book reviewer specializing in genre fiction for the last two decades and has written thousands of reviews for companies like Publishers Weekly, The Chicago Tribune, Kirkus Reviews, and BarnesandNoble.com. He is a member of the National Book Critics Circle.
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