What kind of novel might someone produce if he had been influenced by writers such as Joan Aiken, the Awdrys, Daniel Defoe, Ursula Le Guin, Herman Melville, Robert Louis Stevenson, the Strugatsky Brothers and Spike Milligan? The answer is Railsea, China Miéville's latest book, a wildly inventive crossover/young adult fantasy with elements of SF and trains, lots of trains, all done with the kind of brio of which most writers can only dream.
Those are only some of the names listed in the acknowledgments at the end of the book. Melville's influence is the most immediately obvious in a story that features a captain's obsessive quest for a great white beast, but others come to mind. The gothic weirdness of Mervyn Peake is definitely in there, but the bottom layer of this particular palimpsest might well be Frank Herbert's Dune and its giant worms. Or Tremors. Or maybe Mad Max None of this is a bad thing. Lesser writers are often overwhelmed by the anxiety of influence, but Miéville has an imagination of immense power.
The great hunter is actually the captain of a train, one of the many endlessly crossing the "railsea" of the title for the surface of this world is covered by an intricate network of railways. Beneath them the earth (or "earthsea"?) heaves with spectacularly dangerous predators colossal insects, carnivorous rabbits, and whale-sized "moldywarpes" or giant moles, including a cunning and elusive white one. Complex as this might sound, it's always credible and consistent.
Our hero is the pleasingly named Sham ap Soorap, a young man apprenticed to the doctor of the mole-hunter's train. Sham is drawn to the life led by the cool scavengers who search for "salvage". A chance discovery plunges him into an adventure of abductions and rescues, chases and escapes. He makes friends and loses them, and goes on a quest that takes him to the edge of his endurance and that of the railsea itself.
A bare plot summary does the story little justice, leaving out most of the things that make the book a great read. Fantasy and SF writers often struggle to create rounded characters, but teenager Sham has plenty of appeal, and everyone he meets is memorable. There's also loads of humour, plenty of action sequences, and enough bizarre violence to keep horror fans satisfied.
Yet for all this, the book's chief glory is its prose. Every sentence is packed with wit, strange but appropriate neologisms, and jostling clusters of consonants that are there for no other reason than sheer delight in language. Some paragraphs are almost too dense, and could be quite a challenge for younger readers.
A challenge, but worth it. Once I'd tuned into the rhythm, it wasn't long before I was happy to let the story rattle along on its rails with me clinging desperately to the caboose. The only fault I can think of is that it finally coasts into the buffers rather than crashing into them, but that's probably just to let you catch your breath before the sequel. I'll cheerfully buy a ticket for the next ride.
