The Last Days of New Paris

by China Miéville
210 pgs

I don’t know how to begin to describe China Miéville’s latest book The Last Days of New Paris (I feel like I say that every time I try to describe one though). It’s an alternative-history story with two separate time-lines. One takes place in Paris in 1950. Europe is still embroiled in the second world war and Paris is still occupied by the Nazis. But it’s a Paris unlike anything a normal mind could imagine. Years earlier Paris was rocked by the “S-Blast” an explosion of surrealistic energy, which brought to life unfathomable “manifs.” These manifs are surrealistic artworks, some part-human, part-machine, others, even more bizarre and impossible.

The second timeline takes place nine years earlier, in 1941 Marseille, where a group of refugees has gathered in the home of Varian Fry. These refugees are surrealist artists, and while there, they’re joined by Jack Parsons, a scientist and occultist, who believes he can capture the artists’ creative power in a battery and use it to re-create the legendary Golem of Prague. But Parsons underestimates the power he’s tried to harness and the battery sets off the S-Blast.

Nine years later, the manifs still move uncontrolled through the streets of Paris and the Nazis have been trying to create and control their own manifs, which they believe will help them win the war. It’s up to a small group consisting of a young man named Thibaut, an American photographer named Sam, and an “exquisite corpse” manif to stop the Nazis.

I’ll admit that several times while reading this book the thought occurred to me that I wasn’t smart enough to truly appreciate Miéville’s story. I’m not an Art History graduate, so I’m sure my level of appreciation for the story is only a fraction of what it could have been. Regardless, though, I enjoyed the book a lot, and was once again in awe of what Miéville accomplishes every time he tells a story. His books are unlike anything else you’ll ever read.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

This Census-Taker

by China Miéville
184 pgs

This Census-Taker is a new novella by China Miéville. It’s a fairy tale, of sorts, more the Brothers Grimm, than Walt Disney. True to Miéville’s style, it’s not clear when or where the story is taking place. It’s a story told by an older man, about when he was a young boy. The boy lived near the top of a hillside, overlooking a poor, war-torn village below. The boy’s home and the village are separated by a deep gorge with a bridge spanning it.

The boy’s father is a magic-key maker. The keys the villagers pay him to make for them can bring love, fix broken machines, change the weather, or any one of a number of things his father agrees to. It’s not made clear how his father does it, nor why. According to the man’s memory, it’s just what his father did. It’s not important to the story.

The story begins with the boy running down the hill into the town. He’s hysterical because he just witnessed his mother killing his father, or his father killing his mother; someone killed someone back in his isolated home. The authorities in town don’t believe him, and when his father comes looking for him, they return his son to him, because the boy belongs to him.

Although his father speaks kindly to the boy, and assures him he’s loved and safe, the boy lives in fear. A few time he witnesses his father brutally kill animals by beating them, and he suspects he’s killed more people than just his mother. He tries to escape, but is caught each time.

Eventually a peculiar man shows up at the boy’s house while his father’s away. He wears glasses and a tie, and carries a gun. He explains to the boy that he’s the census-taker and has come to speak to the boy’s father. He may be the only person capable of freeing the boy from his father’s care.

This Census-Taker is the Miéville equivalent of Coke Zero; it gives you a taste of the weirdness in Miéville’s mind, but it’s not the full experience. Still, it’s satisfying and well worth the day or so it takes to read it.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Railsea

by China Miéville
372 pgs

Once again China Miéville has demonstrated why he is in a class, and possibly a genre, all by himself. Railsea is yet another fantastic book by the author whose books defy adequate description and whose imagination knows no boundaries.

Railsea takes place on a world criss-crossed by innumerable railroad tracks which are used by pirates, scavengers, and hunters of the enormous rats, antlions, and other subterranean animals which inhabit the desolate landscape.

Much of the story is an homage to Melville's Moby Dick. Sham, Miéville's central character, is the surgeon's mate aboard the locomotive Medes. Naphi, the captain of the Medes is obsessed with hunting down a giant, pale Moldywarpe--a giant mole-type creature reminiscent of the sandworms of Dune, which she's been chasing for years.

On its voyage, the Medes encounters a train that had long ago been attacked and derailed. And while searching through the wreckage Sham discovers a photographic record of the the journey the train's riders had been on. One of the pictures shows a scene that changes Sham's perception of the world and alters the course of his life. It's a picture of a lone railine, stretching out across an otherwise empty landscape. It's proof that somewhere out there the never-ending tangle of railines ends. And that new reality, along with the questions it raises of where that railine leads to and what's there, become Sham's obsession and the beginning of a journey that will change everything.

I've reviewed other books by Miéville here before and talked about what a linguistic genius he is. His writing style and creative vocabulary are something else and they add an extra level of enjoyment every time I experience one of his books. Here's the prologue to Railsea as and example of what I'm talking about:

This is the story of a bloodstained boy.

There he stands, swaying as utterly as any windblown sapling. He is quite, quite red. If only that were paint! Around each of his feet the red puddles; his clothes, whatever colour they were once, are now a thickening scarlet; his hair is stiff & drenched.

Only his eyes stand out. The white of each almost glows against the gore, lightbulbs in a dark room. He stares with great fervour at nothing.

The situation is not as macabre as it sounds. The boy isn't the only bloody person there: he's surrounded by others as red & sodden as he. & they are cheerfully singing.

The boy is lost. Nothing has been solved. He thought it might be. He had hoped that this moment might bring clarity. Yet his head is still full of nothing, or he knows not what.

We're here too soon. Of course we can start anywhere: that's the beauty of the tangle, that's its very point. But where we do & don't begin has its ramifications, & this right now is not best chosen. Into reverse: let this engine go back. Just to before the boy was bloodied, there to pause & go forward again to see how we got here, to red, to music, to chaos, to a big question mark in a young man's head.

I won't explain the ampersands. I'll let you discover the reason for their use throughout the book on your own. But they're further evidence of Miéville's brilliance.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Embassytown

Embassytown by China Miéville

Miéville has said that one of the things he likes about science fiction is the feeling of not knowing what's going on that you have a lot of times when you start reading a book in the genre. I agree. It's that feeling of disorientation that you have until you start to get your bearings and figure out who, what, when, and where you are. For me it's what gives the genre a lot of its appeal.

Well, with Embassytown, he gave me that feeling in spades, and he stretched it out for the book's entirety. It's wonderfully written, it's a fantastic showcase for Miéville's creativity, but that feeling never left me. And I think that's exactly what Miéville intended. His descriptions of the characters, the setting, and the technology are very nebulous. He gives you little insights here and there, but never a complete picture. So it's not an easy book to describe.

If you've ever read one of Miéville's books, you know that he loves language. In his books he heavily uses words whose meanings can only be unlocked contextually. With Embassytown, he makes language itself the core of the story. The Ariekei are a peaceful alien species whose language is so closely tied to reality that it does not allow for lies. The restrictive nature of their language has given the Ariekei almost a lustful desire for the contrary nature of lies.

The Terre are human colonists who live on Ariekei in Embassytown. The Terre and their Hosts have long enjoyed a peaceful coexistence. The Terre have created Ambassadors, sets of cloned "dopels" bred and genetically linked together who can both understand and speak the Ariekei language. Through the Ambassadors, some of the Ariekei have slowly learned how to manipulate their language enough to resemble lying. But by doing so, they've opened Pandora's Box. Soon the first Ariekei murder takes place and chaos quickly follows.

Embassytown is not light reading. If you're looking for a book that you can pick up and read without using your brain, this is not it. But as is usually the case, things that require effort usually provide the greatest reward.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Kraken

Kraken by China Miéville

Kraken is a story about the search for a giant squid that goes missing from the Natural History Museum in London. A 60-foot dead squid in a tank of formaldehyde that was there one minute and gone the next. The plot sounds ludicrous. How could it have been accomplished? Why would someone want to do it? The answers to those questions are China Miéville's latest contribution to the growing genre of "Weird Fiction".

I hope that when China Miéville dies he will leave his brain to science. I'd like scientists to study it and find out what makes it so unique. If that could be discovered, maybe it could be duplicated and there could be more authors out there with his level of creativity and literary abilities. Miéville's books are not quick reads, meaning as I read them, I realize that I'm reading at a slower pace than I would most other books. The reason for that is the language he both uses and creates. If you try to use a dictionary to look up a lot of the obscure words he uses, you'll find that the majority of them aren't there. He makes a lot of them up. But that doesn't mean that their meaning is unobtainable. It just means you have to think while you read.

That may not sound like a resounding recommendation to read his books. So I should add that the fantastical worlds he creates and their inhabitants are unlike any you're likely to come across anywhere else in literature. They're so bizarrely unique and oftentimes disturbing that I find they're impossible to either forget and not appreciate.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆