Railsea
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4.7 • 6 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Venture into the Railsea in this extraordinary novel from bestselling author China Mieville
"Fiction of the new century" Neil Gaiman
On board the moletrain Medes, a boy called Sham watches in awe as he witnesses his first moldywarpe hunt. The giant mole bursting from the earth, the harpoonists targeting their prey, the battle resulting in one's death and the other's glory are extraordinary. But no matter how spectacular it is, travelling the endless rails of the railsea, Sham senses that there's more to life. Even if his captain can think only of her obsessive hunt for one savage mole.
When they find a wrecked train, it's a welcome distraction. But the impossible salvage Sham finds there leads to trouble. Soon he's hunted on all sides: by pirates, trainsfolk, monsters and salvage-scrabblers. And it might not be just Sham's life that's about to change. It could be the whole of the railsea.
PRAISE FOR RAILSEA
"Mieville's work is thrillingly imaginative ... immensely witty and utterly unforgettable" Scotland on Sunday
"One of the most imaginative young writers around in any kind of fiction" Guardian
"Mieville's
imagined societies may be fantastic, but they are utterly coherent... wonderfully infectious"
Daily Telegraph
"Miéville presents a future world that is wondrous and believable in equal measures, while never easing the pace of a runaway train ride of a novel." Independent on Sunday
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mi ville (Un Lun Dun) returns to YA fiction with a superb, swashbuckling tale of adventure on the railsea, a vast prairie densely crisscrossed by train tracks: "Tracks & ties, in the random meanders of geography & ages, in all directions. Extending forever." Sham, an orphan, has gone to railsea as apprentice to a train's doctor. That train, the Medes, is a moletrain that plies the railsea hunting the great moldywarpes (giant moles) that live beneath the dirt, harpooning the subterranean creatures when they surface and rendering them down for meat, fat, and fur to be sold on the mainland. The train's captain, Naphi, is a strange, charismatic woman who lost her arm to an enormous ivory mole, Mocker-Jack; obsessed with killing the creature, she's willing to sail to the mythical ends of the railsea to catch him. Working variations on such classics as Moby-Dick, Robinson Crusoe, and A Wizard of Earthsea, this massively imaginative and frequently playful novel features eccentric characters, amazing monsters, and, at its heart, an intense sense of wonder. Ages 12 up.
Customer Reviews
Railsea
Thoroughly compelling & imaginative. A tale to devour, hard to put down. The world is so easy to visualize & the vernacular tunes you to the rhythm of the rails.
I can't wait for the next novel