One of my favourite events is when a new Mieville novel comes out - he is the author of many of my all-time favourite books and everything he has written thus far has been entertaining and very original. This novel is no exception. Although marketed for the teen crowd, this story is fairly advanced as it builds upon a strange future where people exist in isolated towns connected by a literal "sea" of railway tracks. Effectively these tracks are analogous to our present day oceans with the towns serving as "islands" somewhat. The reader must quickly learn the unique society and culture surrounding this milieu as well as the terminology and slang associated with it. This primarily makes the story a little more demanding than Harry Potter or Twilight. Is it worth it? Damn right it is. Most fantasy these days is either vampires or wizards and it is great to see some original ideas. In this story, we follow an aimless youth, Sham, as he is apprenticed as a doctor's assistant on a moler train. To explain further, trains are used similar to 19th century whaling vessels with the space between the rails acting as the ocean, and enormous burrowing animals, such as moles, the object of the hunt. As Sham's trains scuttles off to hunt its prey, he ends up getting involved with some peculiar salvage hunters and a top secret quest to find the edge of the railsea. The action throughout the book is fairly constant and the reader will not get bored. The greatest asset however is the amazing job that Mieville does with convincing the reader that this world is both possible and very real and he does this by including snippets of information and flashbacks that complete the image without boring us with endless chapters of data. This book is highly recommended and, if you have read previous works of Mieville, you will know what to expect.

China Mieville is a brilliant fantasy writer. His work takes the genre to new and exciting places and his newest, Railsea, is no exception. This book is an imaginative retelling of the Moby Dick story, but instead of a white whale there's a giant mole rat called Tracker Jack and instead of ships, there are trains. It's a crazy and intriguing premise and he totally makes it work. I haven't read Moby Dick before but I certainly want to now, just to see how this hold up against the original tale. The neat thing about this story, is instead of revealing the details of the fantasy world all at once - like you would expect - it is divulged layer but layer right up until the last few pages of the novel. I kept turning the pages, excited to see what else would be revealed to me. As an added bonus, this novel is graced with amazing characters. The main character, Sham is a delight. Adventerous and headstrong yet cautious and naive. He dreams of a more exciting life - and who among us can't relate to that? The female characters - Caldera and Captain Naphi - we're especially well written. I loved Caldera attitude and I loved how complicated Captain Naphi turned out to be. I became heavily invested in these characters and where this adventure was going to take them. If you need any further convincing that you should read this book, the prose has this rolling soothing quality to it. For a story so exciting and adventure filled, the writing was very calming. I was happy to be reading this book on an e-reader, so I could highlight all the passages I fell in love with. I have never highlighted a book so frequently. I feel that Railsea is the type of book that every time you re-read it you'll find new things to love and appreciate, and because of that it has earned a permanent place on my bookshelf. Final Recommendation: For Fantasy and Speculative Fiction fans who want a break from the same old same old and for literary fiction fans that want to be wowed. This and other reviews at Hooked on Books (http://christashookedonbooks.blogspot.com)