The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again - M John Harrison

 Now this was a discovery for me.   I admit, I'd not heard of Harrison, notwithstanding he was a pillar of British sci fi fantasy in the Sixties and Seventies, despite the fact he was associated with Michael Moorcock, that China Mieville is a fan, and that he qualifies (sort of, originally) as a local author.   But I know him now.   And I was blown away by this, his novel from 2020.

It's a contemporary tale of two peripheral people: Shaw, whose first name never becomes clear (it's probably Alex), and Victoria Norman.   They drift into one another's orbit in London, then drift apart again.   Victoria inherits her mother's house in Shrewsbury and Shaw gets a gig economy job, working for, in wh Tim, who keeps an office on a barge in Brent and who might possibly live next door to Shaw in the subdivided HMO in Wharf Street.   Tim has self-published a book and keeps a blog about ancient DNA.   Shaw meanwhile seeks a sort of therapy from a medium called Annie Swann, who seems to be Tim's sister.  Tim gets Shaw to record his sessions with Annie to use as material for his blog.

In Shrewsbury, Victoria gets local tradesmen in to do up the house.   They are very local - they might live next door - and are very tribal.   One of them, the roofer, is incredibly keen on The Water Babies, even keener that Victoria should read it.   Victoria makes a new friend in Pearl, who runs a cafe and turns out to be the daughter of Chris (who prefers to be called Ossie) and is the one who apparently lives next door to Victoria.   The building containing Pearl's cafe is another HMO, in which some very strange people dwell, including all the tradesmen Ossie coralled into working on Victoria's house.   Pearl disappears - Victoria sees her do it, and it is very strange.

The novel is very strange and compelling.   Harrison plays on the littoral nature of his settings and luxuriates in their psychogeography.   Despite being hopeless failures in life - because they fail to engage with life - Shaw and Victoria are characters we get to like and trust.   The secondary characters like Shaw's mum in the care home and her colourful marital backstory, Pearl and Tim and especially, all have their charm which is coupled with threat.  The fantasy element is crucial, yet downplayed.   It doesn't need to be explained, it just needs to be there.

I would have probably passed had it not been for the eyecatching cover image by Micaela Alcaino, which was right up my street, so I picked up the book, which was absolutely 100% what I'd been looking for.   An object lesson, there, in the importance of cover art.

Railsea - China Mieville

 In a post-apocalyptic world life revolves around the Railsea, a nexus of railway lines populated by mole-trains, navy trains, pirate trains and salvage trains.   Sham ap Soorap is an apprentice doctor's assistant aboard the mole-train Medes.   Giant feral animals burrow the wasteland between the rail lines of the Railsea and Captain Naphi of the Medes is obsessed with a giant mole, a Great Southern Moldywarpe known as Mocker-Jack, which she claims bit off her arm.   Mocker-Jack is Naphi's obsession; all captains have them, just as salvagers have their specialisms, the junk they know best.   Whenever a train docks, the cities buy their produce and sell them rumour.

Sham is not content with his life aboard the Medes.   He rather fancies himself as a salvager, but a chance find sends him to the Shroake siblings in Manihiki, and they, eventually, lead him on a quest for the legendary end of the line.

I love Mieville's writing style, a sort of techno-baroque.   He endows his characters with endless cheerful eccentricities.   Even the pirates here have their good sides.   He handles action like a master.   Railsea is a quest novel and a good one.   The world imagined here is convincing and the book rather peters out when the object is attained.   The object, of course, has to be obtained otherwise the whole narrative is pointless, and the good thing is that Mieville has the taste and discrimination to leave it there, without tying up every loose end as lesser authors might.

The Last Days of New Paris - China Mieville

The Last Days of New Paris is a novella, and better for it. The other Mieville novel I have read (Kraken, which I reviewed here last year) went on just that bit too long. Here, the ideas are fizzing throughout but the tighter narrative seems to help Mieville maintain the high standard of his prose.


The idea itself is a corker. Surrealist concepts are brought to life in Nazi-occupied Paris. As a result Paris is still occupied - indeed, cordoned off from the rest of the world, with the rest of the world's blessing - in 1950. These manifestations ('manifs') are predominantly on the side of the resistance (specifically the Surrealist resistance, the Main a plume) of which our hero Thibaut is a member. Thibaut wears one manif, the armour of Surrealist women's pyjamas, and joins forces with another, the Exquisite Corpse (featured on the cover) dreamt up by Breton, Lamba and Tanguy. The Nazis created the manifs with the S (for Surrealist) bomb, the creation of which in 1941 is the secondary storyline here, but the manifs naturally hate them for it. The Nazis have therefore done a deal with Hell and signed up hellish demonic monsters. Also involved is Sam, an American woman photographer, who may or may not be with the OSS, forerunner of the CIA. She is collecting photographs for a book called - typically Mieville - The Last Days of New Paris.


I enjoyed this hugely. It is precisely my cup of tea, right down to the account of how Mieville came by the story and the learned notes at the end. Just reading it inspired me. Hopefully it will do the same for you - because you have to read it.

Kraken - China Mieville

Mieville is probably the high priest of British New Weird. Kraken (2010) is not especially new but it is certainly weird. A preserved giant squid vanishes from the Natural History Museum. Its conservator, Billy Harrow, finds himself drawn into a web of cult police and kraken cults. Beneath this lies a secondary world of Londonmancers and occult gangs. On one, and one thing only, the feuding factions agree: the taking of the kraken betokens the Apocalypse.

I was instantly reminded of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, still my favourite of his. From Neverwhere springs a subset of alt-London Weird, that includes the likes of Ben Aaronovitch (Rivers of London). Mieville takes things much further but I feel he tries to cram too much into one novel. Kraken is far too long. The opening - the revelation of the mystery world - is extremely good; the apocalyptic battle at the end is masterly done; but there is a hell of a lot of middle, much of it stodge, much of it dispensable. That seems to the pitfall lurking for all such fictional constructs. Where do you draw the line? It's not for me to suggest plotlines to the likes of Mieville, however there is another spellbinding yarn waiting for the Tattoo and his unwilling host Paul.

The male characters are better drawn than the female. Mieville clearly has high hopes for his wisecracking witch-cop Collingwood. The best I can say is that she is amusing in small doses.

I seem to be listing a lot of negatives. That's not the intention. I really enjoyed Kraken and only criticise because I care. There's a lot more Mieville and New Weird waiting for me. I'll keep you posted.