China Mieville - Railsea

Railsea is a young-adult novel written and illustrated by English writer China Miéville, and published in May 2012. Miéville described the novel as "weird fiction", and io9 labeled its mix of fantasy and steampunk elements as "salvagepunk".


Plot

Railsea is set on a dystopic, dying world whose oceans, the "railsea", are deserts colonized by ravenous speed-tunneling giant naked mole rats, and crossed by endless railroad tracks of unclear origin. Its plot is an "affectionate parody" of Herman Melville's classic novel Moby-Dick,[2] but also draws on Robert Louis Stevenson's adventure novels Treasure Island and Kidnapped.[3] The novel follows the adventures of three young orphans, Sham and the Shroake siblings, who join train-captain Abacat Naphi's hunt for her nemesis Mocker-Jack, a giant burrowing "moldywarpe" mole. They eventually set out on a journey to the end of the railsea, and the end of the world.