This Census-Taker

"This Census-Taker is the book you read when you’re looking for something that will haunt your dreams for weeks (or months) after you put it down. It is a grown-up fairy tale with a black and murderous heart, about a boy convinced that his father is a murderer. One of China Miéville’s greatest strengths is his ability to see his imaginary worlds through the eyes of his characters, not of his readers. The boy is young. He understands things as a child does — which is to say not really at all. But his is the only voice we have to hold to in a broken world filled with decaying machines, feral orphan children and war. This is Miéville at his most sparse, his most controlled and restrained."