Railhead

Railhead, Philip Reeve, 333 pages

Zen Starling is a petty thief, whose sister works overtime at the factory and whose mother sits in paranoid delusions. He’s no one important, spending his free time riding the K-Bahn, that quasi-mystical railroad between planets. But when Nova, a mysterious android in a red jacket, approaches him about stealing something from the Noon train, belonging to the ruling family of the Network, Zen is plunged into a heist bigger than anything he could have dreamed of, one that will shake the very foundations of the K-Bahn and the Network.

Philip Reeve wrote one of my favorite YA series (the Mortal Engines quartet), and I’d thought I’d read everything of his. Somehow I missed out on this gem. Zen is a very good protagonist, full of street smarts and with a remarkably insightful mind. Nova could be a stock figure (the android who wants to be human), but somehow she never comes off that way. The plot is full of twists and turns, and though the climax isn’t quite satisfying, the rest of Railhead makes up for it. Reeve excels at atmospheric descriptions, giving a feeling almost of magical realism to this imaginative science fiction world. Railhead is definitely worth a read.