How Bad Are Whippets?

The train of the gods - China Mieville

was for some who do not appreciate so much a novel. Where to "enjoy" I mean find myself sipping the pages, do not force me to read more than one chapter a day because I do not want the book to end.

The novel's more political Mieville. It has everything: a social movement, clandestine newspapers (the legendary Runagate Rampant ), a railway workers in revolt that eventually ownership of the train so they are building the tracks. Rails will continue to build, destroy them immediately after the passage of the stolen train, on a trip / desperate escape leads them to become legend, a symbol of social struggle against the oppressive government of the city-state of New Crobuzon.

Significant chapters of the stain cacotopica, an area subject to a fracture of the fact that warps and distorts everything that enters it. It is no coincidence that I used the word area, as did the brothers in their Strugatski Picnic on the roadside, a novel which is probably inspired by the idea of \u200b\u200bthe spot.
And in the background to these events, the world of Bas-lag. How to describe the universe created by Mieville? Impossible, because when you think you've seen it all now, turn the page and Mieville slams you in the face of another idea, an invention of an embarrassing originality that leaves you speechless. Men cactus, sentient machines, men as punishment for some crime are redone in the most perverse and unhealthy because of Thaumaturgy, villages built on the backs of giant tortoises, monks whose devotion has led them to forget their gender. All cleverly mixed with more familiar elements, taken from our reality quitidiana: factories, trains, accountants, corporations moved by the spirit of capitalism, in a dark-toned mix steampunk. The sites in New Crobuzon seem to have the names of the districts of London distorted by a perverse fantasy. Howl Barrow, Badside, Glasshouse, Dog Fenn, Smog Bend, Cockscom Bridge, Brock Marsh. The effect is nothing short of alienating the most positive sense of the term, as able to create that "sense of wonder" that every player like that look fantastic. The term weird fiction could not be more appropriate.

Everything is described with elaborate style, baroque, yet surprisingly direct, vivid and effective. Even better than he showed in Mieville Perdido Street Station (no mean feat).