Rob Crowther

This brilliant debut novel is a western fantasy that turns on steampunk cogs greased with lots of grue.   We ride into the story with fifteen-year-old Jim, who carries the eye of his dead father in his pocket –a jade prosthetic crafted by Chinese sorcery.  Jim and his horse nearly die as they ride across the desert, but are rescued by Mutt, a Native American shape-shifter.  Mutt leads them to the mining town of Golgotha, where a Lovecraftian god is rising to undo creation (with a little help from a certain fallen angel).  Joining the battle to save the world are an undying sheriff who was hanged three times and has the scars to prove it, a woman with the blood of Lilith in a vial around her neck, a Mormon minister with an “unnatural” secret, and a taxidermist who knows death far too intimately. Every chapter is named after a Tarot card which, when interpreted, informs the narrative.  I’m putting all my chips on The Six-Gun Tarot making the short list for the World Fantasy Award. 

– Rob

“This is the story of a bloodstained boy.” So begins a thrilling, dystopian adventure by award-winning author, China Mieville, which will enthrall readers of all ages. We meet Sham as he joins the crew of an ancient diesel train which thunders across the Railsea on an endless hunt. The crew harpoons the giant moles that burrow through the wasteland, which, like the whales of old, provide food and oil. Captain Naphi, a Steampunk avatar of Captain Ahab, is obsessed with killing the great white beast that made her less than human. Sham longs to escape the horrors of the hunt, and the fearsome monsters that attack the crew. He gets his chance when he finds a relic in a derelict train that hints at a miraculous world beyond the sea of rails. On his quest to find the world, Sham becomes the hunted, and learns a secret with the power to undermine the Railsea. A cautionary tale about unbridled industrialization, and a mind-blowing feat of imagination.

- Rob