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Jul. 26th, 2014 11:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsIf nothing else, I probably have Snowpiercer to thank for reminding me about reading Railsea, China Mieville's MOBY DICK ON A TRAIN.
...ok, Moby Dick on many trains. Moby Dick in a land where NO ONE HAS BOATS. There are only trains. And giant whale-moles that prowl the vast expanse of earth over which the trains roll , biting people's legs off. If you think 'but that doesn't make worldbuilding sense!' - yeah, OK, it kind of doesn't, but you roll with it.
I had a hard time getting into Railsea at first, in large part because of Mieville's decision to replace every 'and' with an & sign as part of his internal worldbuilding, which felt incredibly cutesy and jarring to me for about the first hundred pages.
But then we got to the part where the narrator explains that all the greatest moling captains on the great railsea spend their lives pursuing a giant animal, generally one that has bit of an extremity of some kind, and this animal is known as their PHILOSOPHY and they spend the time that they're not obsessively pursuing the animal sitting around in bars expounding on the DEEPER REPRESENTATIVE MEANING OF THEIR PHILOSOPHY, and OK, Mieville, you got me, I can't resist that level of straight-faced meta parody. YOU GOT ME. Captain Genn's Ferret of Unrequitedness! MOCKER-JACK, THE MOLE OF MANY MEANINGS.*
Also, Captain Naphi herself, with her charisma and her obsession and her facility with a spin story, is 100% fascinating and I love her entire terrifying narrative arc.
Captain Naphi is not the protagonist, and the Mocker-Jack strand, while important, is not actually the primary plot of the book; our protagonist is Sham ap Soorap, trainboard doctor's assistant, who gets swept up in a Great Adventure when he accidentally stumbles over evidence of the edge of the world (or at least the world as they know it.) I kind of expected Sham to bore or annoy me, but surprisingly he didn't! I became immensely endeared to him from the moment he rescued a pet daybat and named it Daybe. DAYBE.
And then: train pirates! kidnappings! ancient salvage! giant mole attacks! mutiny! angel trains! wildly playful worldbuilding and prose! a sudden hilarious left turn into 'BY THE WAY CAPITALISM IS THE WORST' because it's China Mieville and he can't resist! a total lack of crushing depression at the end!
This may be my new favorite of Mieville's books? No, actually, it is my favorite, no question. Though I still have Embassytown left.
* Sidenote: Actually I've never read Moby Dick. I know! I will! Someday! But Railsea was still deeply hilarious to me.
...ok, Moby Dick on many trains. Moby Dick in a land where NO ONE HAS BOATS. There are only trains. And giant whale-moles that prowl the vast expanse of earth over which the trains roll , biting people's legs off. If you think 'but that doesn't make worldbuilding sense!' - yeah, OK, it kind of doesn't, but you roll with it.
I had a hard time getting into Railsea at first, in large part because of Mieville's decision to replace every 'and' with an & sign as part of his internal worldbuilding, which felt incredibly cutesy and jarring to me for about the first hundred pages.
But then we got to the part where the narrator explains that all the greatest moling captains on the great railsea spend their lives pursuing a giant animal, generally one that has bit of an extremity of some kind, and this animal is known as their PHILOSOPHY and they spend the time that they're not obsessively pursuing the animal sitting around in bars expounding on the DEEPER REPRESENTATIVE MEANING OF THEIR PHILOSOPHY, and OK, Mieville, you got me, I can't resist that level of straight-faced meta parody. YOU GOT ME. Captain Genn's Ferret of Unrequitedness! MOCKER-JACK, THE MOLE OF MANY MEANINGS.*
Also, Captain Naphi herself, with her charisma and her obsession and her facility with a spin story, is 100% fascinating and I love her entire terrifying narrative arc.
Captain Naphi is not the protagonist, and the Mocker-Jack strand, while important, is not actually the primary plot of the book; our protagonist is Sham ap Soorap, trainboard doctor's assistant, who gets swept up in a Great Adventure when he accidentally stumbles over evidence of the edge of the world (or at least the world as they know it.) I kind of expected Sham to bore or annoy me, but surprisingly he didn't! I became immensely endeared to him from the moment he rescued a pet daybat and named it Daybe. DAYBE.
And then: train pirates! kidnappings! ancient salvage! giant mole attacks! mutiny! angel trains! wildly playful worldbuilding and prose! a sudden hilarious left turn into 'BY THE WAY CAPITALISM IS THE WORST' because it's China Mieville and he can't resist! a total lack of crushing depression at the end!
This may be my new favorite of Mieville's books? No, actually, it is my favorite, no question. Though I still have Embassytown left.
* Sidenote: Actually I've never read Moby Dick. I know! I will! Someday! But Railsea was still deeply hilarious to me.
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Date: 2014-07-26 10:34 pm (UTC)