I read China Mieville’s The City and The City for a previous challenge (see review here). It is a strange, but rather wonderful, book and because I enjoyed it I decided to try Railsea by the same author. I don’t know when I bought it but the sticker on the cover shows me that I paid only 99p for the rather worn paperback copy I now own.
Railsea is set in what might be our world in the very distant future, or one rather like it. Towns and cities are built on stony outcrops and in the land between them great creatures roam, often underground. Across this barren land are railway tracks – many, many tracks intersecting with each other, crossing over, and covering most of the ground. People move from place to place by train, some steam and some diesel, changing the points as they go. Some of these trains pursue and capture the animals who live there, some salvage from ruins and abandoned trains, some try to police the tracks, and some are pirates who attack trains for bounty. There is, everyone knows, no land beyond where the rails go – the railsea.
Our hero is Sham, an apprentice doctor, who travels on a train which hunts moldywarpes, huge wormlike creatures who live under the earth. When they find them they harpoon them, kill them and then harvest the meat and other usable bits of the animal. Sham doesn’t really enjoy the business or his occupation, but he loves the travel and adventure. When he finds a very old memory card in a train wreck with digital pictures showing that there may be a land beyond the edge of the rails he finds himself in danger because everyone seems to want to know where this new land is.
This is an amazing story for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the idea is unusual – trains hunting giant worms ! The author has thought it through but doesn’t give you so much detail that you can pick holes in his world. It all seems plausible when you are reading the book. Secondly, the writing is brilliant. The author invents a whole new vocabulary for this world and the narration is written in short, punchy sentences which mirror the sounds and rhythm of a train. Each page has a new idea or a new word or a new way to describe something. The book is very steampunk but you can also see the similarity to Moby Dick in the Captain’s pursuit of a giant pale worm which has bitten off her arm.
I found Sham to be a great hero and a true adventurer, and I was captivated by events – the book is fast paced and there is always something new happening. I liked the wry humour of the narrator who often talks directly to the reader. I understand from at least one website that this is considered to be a Young Adult book and I am sure that they would enjoy it, but I found enough to absorb me, even though I am considerably older than YA.
I shall keep my copy of this book with other fantasy and science fiction books that I have loved on my shelves, as I am sure that I shall want to reread it.
Anne Is Reading 