There's this old railway that runs kind of parallel to sections of our haulroad. It's part of the Coal Branch. It was used mainly in the 1920s to service the coal-mining towns . Lots of interesting history there, but of course the way my brain works I just like looking down at the twisted remnants and pretend I'm in some future Mad Maxy apocalypse where we all pilot giant robots to extract the last dead black guts from the earth. . . and hey look the future is now!  But anyways.
China Miéville's new book is called Railsea and about a whole planet where there aren't oceans but rather one vast sea of railroads. The sealife is giant moles (moldywarpes) and other burrowing creatures monsterized for the purposes of awesomeness. Trains ply the rails trading amongst nations and uncovering salvage of varying vintages. The cover says it's kind of a Miévillian take on Moby Dick (Miéville covers Melville!) but really the only other books it's actually like are other Miévilles. Which is fine by me. 
This is now the second book China has written about trains, so I imagine he's a bit of a trainspotter or train nerd or whatever but it's not like you have to be one too. Trains never really impressed me much growing up but I do love giant monsters and mysterious derelicts from another age. 
Derelicts like these, you might say:

  

I'm heading to the Calgary Expo tomorrow!  I'm gonnabe ascited! Here's some of the geeky things I'm into lately.
Game of Thrones season 2, of course. Who isn't into that?
The Legend of Korra is finally here, and cheers to Nickelodeon for making the episodes available online for free, even for us Canucks. Sometimes we have a hard time watching tv shows from American websites, something to do with CRTC rules or something. (but wait, didn't you say you were watching Game of Thrones....) Korra kicks ass!  Worth the wait (it was announced at SDCC 2010, though I wasn't in the room at the time of the announcement, I think I was just down the hall...). A perfect show for Pallas, at least as far as having strong female protagonists to emulate. We like to fight bad guys, Darth Maul being a particularly persistent foe, he shows up several times a day to get his butt handed to him. By a 3yo girl!
Darth Maul shows up in the current season of Clone Wars, looking forward to seeing that on DVD. The Cartoon Network being one of those networks that don't let Canadians watch their shows. But that's ok, I have the entire original Marvel Star Wars series in Omnibus form! Finally finished reading it. I think it's really cool that the final (and my personal favorite) run was done by a female writer and penciller, Jo Duffy and Cynthia Martin. For the mid-80s that was a rarity. Hell, it's a rarity now.
And I'm rereading Perdido Street Station, this time for book club. Loving it just as much, maybe more, this time around.

I love China Mieville but I haven't had much success yet in lending out Perdido Street Station. The prose is dense and full of words that never existed before. "I tried getting into it, and it was cool the parts I read but . . . I'm sure the movie will be amazing!" and so forth. Trust me, you're missing out. And even with all the crazy words and thaumaturgy and politics and creatures, it's just a bug hunt in the end. Everyone loves bug hunts!
I just finished his new book, The City and the City. China Mieville's main characters are always cities, whether London, Un Lon Dun, New Crobuzon, Armada . . . and now two new cities all grosstopically entwined. What? Never mind, it's funner if you see for yourself. And don't be scared, it's basically a murder mystery kind of like Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union.
And don't wait for the movie, I'm not so sure this one would translate very well. Though it would be interesting to see them try.

Finished reading Iron Council by China Mieville. I think The Scar is still my favorite of the three Bas-Lag novels, but they are all amazing and relentlessly creative. Where Perdido Street Station, for all its freshness and vividity was essentially a bughunt, Iron Council is more political, maybe not a manifesto (Mieville is a socialist) but a pretty good fable about the oppressed.
Anyways, here is a little fanart since today is Friday- some Bas Lag sketches by HomarusRex.



And a far more in-depth review of Iron Council if you want to know a bit more.

Perdido Street Station was such a good book that I needed a break from China Miéville after reading it. How's that? New Crobuzon in all its putrescent glory was so real and jarring that I almost felt I needed to let its thaumaturgical pollution work its way out of my system before tackling him again. Plus he uses a lot of big words. I had no idea he'd written a children's novel. Lucky I found Un Lun Dun at Greenwood's big sale a few weeks back. What a fantastic book, in all senses of the word. UnLondon is just as strange as New Crobuzon but considerably more whimsical and fun. If New Crobuzon is System of a Down- brilliant, frenetic, political and twisted, then UnLondon is . . . um . . . I'm sure I can complete this analogy just give me a sec . . . Beck. Yeah! Beck. Only it makes slightly more sense.
Another book we bought at Greenwood's that day was Mister B. Gone by Clive Barker. Actually Michelle picked this one out on a recommendation from Laurie Greenwood. From what Laurie said we got the impression it was also a whimsical fun tale, but it's not, really. It's more or less straight horror, but with lots of demonic angst I guess. To be honest I didn't really care for it, though there was nothing really wrong with it. Just not what I expected, I guess. Strangely, CTV has the best website for it.

This is how much I loved China Mieville's Perdido Street Station:

I took the book to work. I get to do a lot of reading at work, but coal mines are hard on books, so I usually only bring tattered paperbacks dredged from the used bookstores. But the urge to read PSS overpowered the desire to keep it mint, so my copy is now slightly soiled. On the plus side, I made an absurd amount of money reading about the bizarre denizens of New Crobuzon!
What should I tell you about said denizens? The less, the better, I think. Part of Mieville's genius is his ability to continually startle you with new and outlandish imagery. I don't want to rob you of that pleasure. But I sure look forward to discussing the Council's avatar with you, for example!
Some books you read and you think, I could do better than this guy. Other books you read and you almost want to give up writing at all since you will never be worthy. There was a bit of that latter when I read PSS but I decided to channel that energy to a positive direction instead.
So there you go- read this book! Tell me what you thought of it. And see if you can guess what tomorrow's fanart feature will be. Hint- the pic a few posts below is the only Perdido fanart I know of so your first guess is wrong.