Miéville, China

This riveting account offers a different aspect of the revolution that changed the course of Russian history. Recommended for all readers.

For fans of the author's previous books and enthusiasts of speculative fiction with an intellectual bent. [See Prepub Alert, 2/21/16.]

The always imaginative Hugo Award-winning Miéville (The City & the City) melds elements drawn from fantasy, fairy tales, and alternative universe tropes into an original and distinctive mix that is almost a new genre. Using his inimitable style to create distinctive, sympathetic characters, he has written a haunting novella that is bound to stay with readers.

Miéville once again shows his mastery of the astounding, and his many fans will not be disappointed.

Miéville's (The City & the City) latest novel is incisive, insightful, disturbing, and occasionally even uplifting. For its portrait of aliens that are convincing yet sympathetic, it ranks up with the works of Vernor Vinge and Candas Jane Dorsey's A Paradigm of Earth; for complex cultural interaction, with Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow. Occasionally, Miéville's worldbuilding is inconsistent, as when a culture of "property-based" marital forms gives its children to be raised by "shiftparents"; Avice's central role in the aliens' mental shift verges on excessive upstaging, and overcleverness like her ABC name can puncture the reader's suspension of disbelief. Still, overall, this is one of the best sf books of this or any decade and likely to reach beyond the genre to appeal to book clubs and other literary fiction readers. [See Prepub Alert, 11/1/10.]—Meredith Schwartz, New York