Railhead

Written by Philip Reeve

                  

The Lovereading4Kids comment

Shortlisted for the CILIP Carnegie Medal 2017 | Shortlisted for the UKLA 2017 Book Award | August 2016 Book of the Month Set in a shining future world, where trains rumble not just through towns and countryside but across whole galaxies, Philip Reeve’s new novel drenches its readers with extraordinary scenes, images and ideas. Zen Starling is a petty thief; offered the chance of a brand new life in return for carrying out one small job of course he accepts, and is immediately caught up in a war that could destroy his entire world. Beautifully written, brilliantly inventive, this gripping adventure, a combination of sci-fi utopia, conspiracy thriller and romance, will set hearts racing. Thoughtful readers prepared to take their time will find echoes of many other great works of fiction, all of which add to Railhead’s richness. And who could resist the trains – ‘the old, wise trains of the Network, barracuda-beautiful, dreaming their dreams of speed and distance as they raced from world to world’? It will turn us all into railheads. ~ Andrea Reece

A message from Philip Reeve: “There have been a lot of dystopian and post-apocalyptic stories published for children and young adults over the past decade (some of them written by me), so I thought it would make a nice change to write about a more hi-tech future where technology has answered many of our present-day problems. I’ve always wanted to have a go at an old-fashioned space opera set in a society that sprawls across dozens of different planets. But I found spaceships strangely hard to write about; flights of fancy always work best when they have a toehold in reality, and I had no store of real-world imagery to which spaceships could be anchored. While I was mulling over this problem, I was travelling all round the country doing book events, and since I don’t drive, I generally travelled by train. Watching the rails and stations go by, I started to realise that trains are far stranger and more romantic than any spaceship . . .So I scrapped my space story and rebuilt it in a new setting, the Network Empire, a future human civilisation which is built around a network of railway lines that criss-crosses the galaxy, passing from world to world through mysterious hyperspace portals called K-gates. And into this mostly peaceful, mostly prosperous empire I threw a young thief called Zen, and set about seeing what adventures he could stumble into."

A Piece of Passion from Liz Cross, Head of Publishing, Children’s Books, OUP: ‘It’s always exciting to read a book which takes you into a whole new world, sending you on a journey alongside characters who become as real to you as your own friends. Railhead does that in the most extraordinary way – somehow creating a futuristic, high-tech world which utterly convinces us at the same time that it dazzles us with its originality. It’s an epic, unforgettable, hugely pleasurable read."

One of our Books of the Year 2015 - Julia Eccleshare's Pick of the Year 2015