Railsea

Imagine a landscape filled with rails and switches, old trains littered here and there among “islands” of civilization. Within the land of this “railsea” are giant moles, some as big as whales, digging tunnels everywhere. Plying this railsea are moletrains and salvors, hunting moles for meat and oil, and salvaging various parts for resale. This is the world where young Sham ap Soorap finds himself, apprenticed to the train doctor aboard a moletrain with a captain obsessed with locating a giant yellow-tinged mole.
Great set-up, but I was not too enthused with the writing style. It seemed very choppy and often too vague about what was going on. Sham was a nice character, but we don't get to know him all that well. Also, I was not a fan of the author's decision to replace every instance of the world “and” with an ampersand ( & ). Just annoying. The ending felt a bit rushed as well. Not my favorite outing with this author. I still plan on re-reading both Perdido Street Station and The Scar.