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This was shelved in YA, presumably because it has a teenaged protagonist and a narrative that doesn't make you want to grab the author by the lapels and shout "But what's going on!?"
I actually prefer Miéville when he's writing for a younger audience; I think he's actually a better writer. Which is not to say that his fantasy for adults is bad - it's often wonderful in its own right - but he reminds me of an argument [auther: Diana Wynne Jones] made when discussing her one book that's billed as for adult, which is that adults are easier to write for than children because they'll forgive an awful lot that children (and young adults) won't. Your plot doesn't need to make sense, your characters don't need to feel as real. And I think Miéville recognizes this as well, that some of the stylistic acrobatics he does in books like [b:Embassytown|9265453|Embassytown|China Miéville|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320470326s/9265453.jpg|14146240] just won't fly in a story meant for kids. So he finds other ways to be acrobatic and interesting, ways that I find I prefer.
This book works precisely because it's written for a younger audience, but not down to a younger audience. The world is still weirdly intricate (Miéville does this thing where he takes the most outlandish premise you can think of and plays it completely and often brilliantly straight) with the mere premise of a rail sea (railway tracks between islands over a ground with ocean-proportions ground-dwellers) and a captain chasing a great white mole that, as someone who taught 19th century American fiction recently, had me utterly delighted. The sneaky (and less sneaky) homages to other works of literature are perfect. The narrative voice, reminiscent of the omniscient narrator of the 19th century novel who almost but not quite feels like a character, is done excellently. The weird post-apocalytic, quasi-fantastic and just comprehensible enough to remain compelling setting just works. And the story? Well, if Herman Melville's Moby Dick and Jasper Fforde's Shades of Grey had a very odd looking baby, it would be something like this book.
I actually prefer Miéville when he's writing for a younger audience; I think he's actually a better writer. Which is not to say that his fantasy for adults is bad - it's often wonderful in its own right - but he reminds me of an argument [auther: Diana Wynne Jones] made when discussing her one book that's billed as for adult, which is that adults are easier to write for than children because they'll forgive an awful lot that children (and young adults) won't. Your plot doesn't need to make sense, your characters don't need to feel as real. And I think Miéville recognizes this as well, that some of the stylistic acrobatics he does in books like [b:Embassytown|9265453|Embassytown|China Miéville|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320470326s/9265453.jpg|14146240] just won't fly in a story meant for kids. So he finds other ways to be acrobatic and interesting, ways that I find I prefer.
This book works precisely because it's written for a younger audience, but not down to a younger audience. The world is still weirdly intricate (Miéville does this thing where he takes the most outlandish premise you can think of and plays it completely and often brilliantly straight) with the mere premise of a rail sea (railway tracks between islands over a ground with ocean-proportions ground-dwellers) and a captain chasing a great white mole that, as someone who taught 19th century American fiction recently, had me utterly delighted. The sneaky (and less sneaky) homages to other works of literature are perfect. The narrative voice, reminiscent of the omniscient narrator of the 19th century novel who almost but not quite feels like a character, is done excellently. The weird post-apocalytic, quasi-fantastic and just comprehensible enough to remain compelling setting just works. And the story? Well, if Herman Melville's Moby Dick and Jasper Fforde's Shades of Grey had a very odd looking baby, it would be something like this book.