I really enjoy recommending things, and I really enjoy China Mieville, but up till now I haven’t had a go-to China book to recommend to people. He’s not the most easily digestible author, although his stuff is fantastic. I found Railsea in the young adult section of the library, and that might be why it’s a little more accessible, but it doesn’t lack any of his trademark atmosphere and incredible world-building.
Sham ap Soorap has been apprenticed to a doctor on a mole-hunting train. The world is covered with railroad tracks, crossing, criss-crossing, coating all exposed earth. The humans live in far-flung cities on mountains and rocky islands. The reason the earth must be covered is because of giant, burrowing animals, who rule the ground. House-sized moles, hunting human-sized worms, badgers bigger than the trains that hunt them, gargantuan weasels and shrews – all of which are happy to snack on any humans that dare to touch dirt.
Sham doesn’t love being a doctor’s apprentice, and becomes enthralled with the story about what happens at the end of the rails. He’s soon embroiled in an adventure that will lead him to the end of the world and beyond.
As with all Mieville books, this is only scratching the surface. The characters, the world, the story, are all so incredibly rich and real and detailed. (Also, the captain of his train is hunting a great white mole, so I’m sure I missed lots of layers of cleverness because I’ve never read Moby Dick.) It’s great, and I think it will serve well as Mieville 101 when I try to hook friends on a new author.
Totally stealing this line from the mole-hunting captain: “Do please,” said Captain Naphi, “expedite this journey relevance-ward.”
This sounds wonderfully bizarre. Adding it to my TBR!
Oh yay! I hope you like it. China’s stuff is odd, but he does the best world-building I’ve encountered since Dune.