And it might not be just Sham's life that's about to change. Soon he's hunted on all sides, by pirates, trainsfolk, monsters and salvage-scrabblers.

But what Sham finds in the derelict - a series of pictures hinting at something, somewhere, that should be impossible - leads to considerably more than he'd bargained for. When they come across a wrecked train, at first it's a welcome distraction.

But no matter how spectacular it is, Sham can't shake the sense that there is more to life than traveling the endless rails of the railsea - even if his captain can think only of the hunt for the ivory-coloured mole she's been chasing since it took her arm all those years ago. & tacks & yaws, switches on its way to where it’s going, as we all must do.On board the moletrain Medes, Sham Yes ap Soorap watches in awe as he witnesses his first moldywarpe hunt: the giant mole bursting from the earth, the harpoonists targeting their prey, the battle resulting in one's death and the other's glory. But it takes a veering route, up & backwards, overshooting & correcting, back down again south & west, crossing its own earlier path, changing direction, another overlap, to stop, finally, a few hairs’ width from where we began. What word better could there be to symbolize the railsea that connects & separates all lands, than “&” itself? Where else does the railsea take us, but to one place & that one & that one & that one, & so on? & what better embodies, in the sweep of the pen, the recurved motion of trains, than “&”?Īn efficient route from where we start to where we end would make the word the tiniest line. It is always switchback, junction, coils around & over our own train-trails. The lines of the railsea go everywhere but from one place straight to another. Humanity learned to ride the rails, & that motion made us what we are, a ferromaritime people. But there it is, & there is nothing we can do about it. There was a time when the word '&' was written with several distinct & separate letters. “There was a time when wen we did not form all our words as we do now, in writing on a page.

Railsea mieville