Railsea - M's review

Railsea by China Mieville

 

Reviewed by M

Railsea is a swashbuckling adventure about a boy who is an apprentice doctor on a moletrain pummelling across the railsea in search of monster-sized, human-eating moles. You’ll meet captains in search of philosophies, marauding pirates in search of treasures, orphans in search of answers, monstrous underground creatures, and a boy in search of something. Plus, the novel is a playful metafiction.  Railsea is a cavorting frolic and I enjoyed it immensely.

Railsea by China Mieville

From page one (atually three), Mieville, or the narrator, or both, are playing with you, the reader. He makes it clear that this is metafiction: a story about a story. Throughout Railsea, the narrator pauses the story to talk to you. I love this but as the novel progresses, it becomes infuriating.

All along, I had the feeling that the narrator was smiling and chuckling – at me, at himself and at his characters. He likes his main character, Sham ap Saroop. He likes Captain Naphi with all her multiple flaws. Indeed, I think he likes many of his characters and there are some interesting relationships between Sham and a number of other characters: Daybe the daybat, Naphi and Caldera.

As with most fantasised fiction, Mieville’s world building is taxing on readers (especially those of us more accustomed to more realist fiction). Forget ships and water waves, here we have trains on tracks traversing a sea of rails. The names of the characters are a mouthful too. Sham ap Saroop is our lovely main character.

Of course, Mieville also plays with language and style. Mieville uses plenty of made-up words in a made-up world. He also throws in lots of not made-up words that were challenging enough for me to have a dictionary close at hand. He uses ampersands (&) in sentences instead of using ‘and’.  You might ask why the ampersands. I did. Of course, they’re not there just for fun. They signify a concept. I think there’s usually a reason behind everything in Railsea – even if it’s just to have a laugh  - or even just ‘why not’?

I loved the way Mieville personifies ideas. In Railsea, a major one for me was ‘chasing your philosophy’. Anyone who’s ever been searching for ‘the one’ or who devoutly follows a hobby, lifestyle or interest will recognise themselves in these pages.  Academics and fisherwo-men especially. And if you’re neither of these, you’re sure to recognise someone you know.

Thematically, the novel also carries many underlying thoughts about nation-states and governance in a time of capitalism, and possibly about the end of the world and the afterlife. In some ways, it is a bit of a steampunk dystopia. There is no gender stereotyping in Railsea (and I’ve marked it as one for the ‘feminist’ fiction list). Animal cruelty is a strong thread in the novel. Storywise, if you’ve read Moby Dick or Treasure Island (I haven’t read either), I've heard you may spot overlaps.

A few years ago I tried to read Kraken by China Mieville, one of his adult novels. I couldn’t get into it: it was a bit too horrific in its detail for me. Likewise, this YA cover for Railsea and its plot are everything that I avoid reading. Zero appeal. But, everything else about Mieville that appeals to me is in there and the story took me way beyond its cover and the surface of the plot.

Wonderful and highly recommended for fun-loving and curious readers of any age.

 

China Mieville

 

Publication details: April 2013, Pan Books, London, paperback (first published in hardback, May 2012)

This copy: YA paperback edition received for review from the publisher

Transparent - Little M's review

Transparent by Natalie Whipple

Transparent is set in a world where everyone has some sort of superpower. During a war, a drug was created to give you a superpower. Many people wanted to keep it so as time went on their children were born with powers. Then, the first invisible human was born.

Transparent by Natalie Whipple

Fiona McClean is anything but an ordinary teenager; she is invisible, works as a thief for her father and gets almost everything she wants. But there is one thing she really wants: she wants to leave her father and start a normal life without him. Fiona and her Mum run away and start a new life in a small town somewhere in America. She starts school for the first time and meets a boy who has a secret which he won’t tell anyone, not even her. Fiona struggles to hide from her cruel brother who has come to take her back to her father but is she right about him? Is he all so bad?

I read this book during our 24 hour read-a-thon so I may have missed out some sub plots or important details. However, that shows that this book is a page turner because it kept me awake during the night.

 

 

I really enjoyed this book because I liked the sci-fi aspect and the small romance. It is an easy read so lots of teens might love it.

I would definitely recommend this book to teens but maybe not much younger than Year 7 due to the fact that the main character is a teen, there is a bit of swearing and also some of the issues e.g. romantic relationships which are aimed at older people.

 

The publishers' Hot Key Ring has given Transparent around 40% Superpowers, around 30% Romance and around 30% Kick-Ass. Personally I think the term “Kick-Ass” is not helpful because you can interpret it in many different ways like "awesome" or “I’m going to kick your ass” so you could think the book has something in it but then it doesn’t. I wouldn’t put that term on the back of the cover. Instead, I’d put Crime (thieving crime). I think Superpowers should be around 60% and Romance 20%.



Hot Key Ring showing content in the novel Transparent

 

Publication details: Hot Key Books, 16 May 2013, London, paperback

This copy: uncorrected proof received from the publishers for review purposes

We sat down for a chat...with Richard Kurti

Monkey Wars is a compelling story about warring monkey troops in the streets of Kolkata, India. More than this, it is a fable exploring power, moralities and histories. We're delighted to have asked its author, Richard Kurti, a few questions. 

 

Cemetery that inspired the setting for Monkey Wars. Photo copyright Melissa Enderle

M: Can you tell me more about the notion that we create partial histories and truths?

Richard Kurti: Absolutely. I think we’re constantly creating narratives to justify our actions. It’s how we survive, but it’s also how we delude ourselves, and it seems to be one of the mechanisms by which malign regimes hold sway over entire populations of ordinary, well-meaning people.

M: So much teen fiction is currently written in the first person. Why did you choose to use an omniscient third-person narrator?

RK: This is closely linked to the previous question. In the course of the story, the central character makes the dangerous jump from one narrative to another. In order to dramatise this, I wanted to try and show competing world views from the very first page.

The idea was to get under the skin of each character, argue passionately for their point of view, then set them all against each other in the dramatic arena to see what happened.

I was trying to show that there is some truth in each of these competing points of view; if I’d been writing in the first person, I wouldn’t have had the flexibility to do this.

M: Perhaps coincidence, but the names Hani and Castro ring bells for me...Are any of the characters based on historical figures (in the way that Animal Farm did)?

RK: The novel was inspired by numerous historical situations, from Hitler’s rise to power, to the collapse of the Iron Curtain, to the Arab Spring.

The reason I wrote about monkeys though, was that by going one step back up the evolutionary tree I could write about all these situations by writing directly about none of them. It’s the great opportunity afforded by a fable. So the characters are based on amalgams of real historical figures, rather than particular individuals.

Naming the monkeys was tricky; I was aiming at something that was exotic without trying too hard to be different. At the moment, the book is being translated into Japanese – it’ll be interesting to see how the names change!

M: Monkey Wars has inspired me to go back and read some of the political texts that (some of us!) barely skimmed in Politics 101. Are there any political or philosophical theorists/writers that Richard thinks young teens would find inspiring?’

RK: What a great idea! I think you’ve just identified a real gap in the market: an accessible book about political philosophy that could inspire younger readers. With all the apathy and cynicism there is about politics, this would be a terrific project.

For Monkey Wars, all my research was based on undergraduate texts which young teens might find too dry, things like Karl Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies, or for the military strategy, John Boyd’s lecture series.

 

Richard Kurti, author of Monkey Wars.

 

 

*****

You can read M's review of Monkey Wars here.

 

Richard Kurti has also worked in screenwriting for film and television. You can find out more about him here.

 

Monkey Wars - M's review

Monkey Wars by Richard Kurti

 

Reviewed by M

Monkey Wars was a refreshing read, quite different to many other novels that I’ve read recently.

At first glance, it is a story about monkey troops in Kolkata, India. When humans feel threatened by the mischievous Rhesus monkeys, they bring in the Langur monkeys to get rid of them. Or so the story goes....From here on, it becomes a territorial war between monkey troops. The story focuses on Mico, a young Langur monkey who is small and thinks a lot about what he sees and thinks is going on. And at some point, he has to decide which side he is on – and there are many sides.

At second glance, Monkey Wars is a fable and explores many questions about power, politics and moral decision-making. But it’s also an urban war story packed full of action, gore, military strategy, loyalties and loves, spying and insurgency.

Being a fable, monkeys and their behavioural characteristics (and ways of marking territory!) are part of the plot but they are also humanised for the sake of storytelling. At times, you recognise it’s a monkey (e.g. defecating to mark territory) but at other times, I easily imagined it was human characters. It took me a couple of chapters to get used to this idea but after that I was really into the story and it was quite page-turning. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself rooting for any particular monkey! Mico was one of my favourites, but also Papina and Hister.

Initially, the timescale of the novel seems to be a matter of days but then I realised that it became months and then most definitely years – at least a lot of monkey years (what’s that in human years?). In this sense, it’s a long story told over much of a lifetime.

The novel is divided into three parts. Part two was my favourite. The ending, for me, was slightly disappointing because it came together a bit too easily. However, it brought most threads together – and there were quite a few. The ending definitely leaves with you with a lot to think about where and how the characters who survive might end up. It might make you think about wars and situations that you know about in real life too.

Monkey Wars re-inspired me.  As much as it is a story about power, politics and war, it is also a story about how we create and use history – or rather, histories. How much of our history do we really know? Which parts have we not been told? Which parts have been colourfully embroidered or dulled? And of course, who did the telling? In Monkey Wars, the narrator is omniscient (third-person and all-knowing). I wonder if this was to give us the sense that the whole truth was being told and not just the truth from Mico or Papina or Tyrell’s point of view (author Richard Kurti tells me his reasons tomorrow)? And of course, was there anything important that the narrator may have left out?

Issues touched upon in the novel include power, politics, tyranny, strategy, genocide, war and refugees. I particularly liked the refugees aspect. I would highly recommend this novel to teens. It would likely appeal to anyone who wants to read about war, action, history, and/or ideas. And maybe monkeys. It is recommended for readers aged 11+ but I would say that younger, confident and mature readers would enjoy this novel too (note, there are some graphically violent scenes).

Monkey Wars made me (as an adult) think about:

• How many times and places this story could be about
• How the lives of animals (or even other groups of people) can go on around us/me and we don’t even notice. Or if we do, we don’t see them as part of a whole intricate life and social network.
• George Orwell’s Animal Farm

Publication details: 2 May 2013, Walker, London, paperback

This copy: uncorrected proof received for review from the publisher

 

****

Watch out for M's interview with Monkey Wars' author, Richard Kurti.