book review: Mieville does Melville

Railsea, China Mieville. Sadly, I did not especially enjoy this book. Maybe if you haven't read The Scar and Iron Council and Un Lun Dun and Kraken you might really enjoy the creativity and atmosphere and whatnot? But I have read all those books and Railsea kind of felt like it was just pieces of them mixed together, Mieville preoccupied with his standard preoccupations again. Which seems unfair to hold against him - it can hardly be a surprise when an author writes the kind of thing they write - but I think his better books take his standard stuff and pair it with something *else*. (Embassytown is about the city as crossroads but it's also about language and narrative, Un Lun Dun is about the city as midden but it's also about quests and chosen-ones, etc.) Railsea isn't a *bad* book - this is Mieville, there's some really clever stuff here - but I never really got into the story. And there was just *too much* of it, I think we could have had all the cleverness in about half the length. That said, there's a chance Mieville is falling into an every-other-book pattern for me (Embassytown and The City and The City yes, Kraken and this one no), so I'll definitely still read his next book to see if the pattern holds. (Much as I am eagerly awaiting the tenth Bloody Jack book this fall, given that so far #s 1, 4, and 7 have been the good ones.)