This review will not be kind. But let’s not start that way. Ground lies between. Rewind.
Am I the only person to find being addressed like this intensely irritating? China Mieville’s new book Railsea is full of it.
Some books are so wrought with references, intertext, allusion that can only manifest itself through repeated syntactical anomalies, that they earn themselves glowing reviews for being incomparable, perhaps perverse. Many will read Railsea and wax lyrical about it; to do otherwise could suggest that the cleverness of it all has simply washed right over. This is a risk I am willing to take.
Railsea, I am informed, is a work of Weird Fiction. The story peters out in all directions; not a lot actually happens. Its fairly plot-less narrative is concerned with futuristic train travel. The passengers of a vessel called Medes enjoy hunting giant moles, called moldywarpes.
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