I finally found a China Miéville book that is not an automatic 5 for me.

That being said, I loved it.

This is a book with stories of varying lengths. Here, too, as in all of his books, China Miéville showcases how good he is at conjuring up interesting and rich premises for fantasy worlds. In this book, the worlds are all based on our own with a twist. I don't want to spoil it a lot, but just to give an idea, some of the twists that are widely advertised from this book are:

- A world where broken oil rigs come alive and start roaming the world.
- A world where Earth built huge space elevators who form their own societies.
- A world where Poker players around the world are visited by magical cards that are both wondrous and strict.

Some of the stories have more obvious points, political, aesthetic or just conversational. Others are just weird (which is to say their points or ideas are more hidden and convoluted).

One thing all stories have in common, though, which gives this collection its character, is that all of them end abruptly. The book mostly lacks resolutions, and even when they exist, stories still end abruptly. This left me with a feeling of frustration, bewilderment and wonder, but thinking back, it feels like the concepts aren't made to sustain full books or really long winding plots: they're made to be briefly explored, as flights of fancy, and then abandoned at just the right moment before one flies to the next one.

The reason I ended up giving the book a four, was that I did feel unnecessarily confused at times, and I ended up not being full captivated. Since the stories were short, though, even when a story wasn't as captivating as I'd hoped, I quickly found myself being immersed in the next one.

All in all, this book is perhaps a little niche: don't read it if you expect to understand everything, or get satisfying conclusions: read it if you enjoy clever confusion, and jumping around in fantastical constructions.