his was the first Audible book I’d listened to after a friend cut through my quibbling about a coming car trip and bought me a Fire. Anyway, I had to test it out so I pulled down a couple of titles that looked interesting, including this one from a favorite author, China Miéville, The Last Days of New Paris. And I pretty much listened to the first section about a dozen times, trying this setting and realizing that listening in a car would be impractical (road noise) unless I came up with a solution. So fix it I did, and since I had a road trip over to Cocoa Beach the next day, I listened to this novella on the trip and then finished it up that night. 

So, back story complete, I can only say that this was one fucked up (and enjoyable) story.

In this alternate world, World War Two is still going on in 1950, with Paris still occupied, pretty ripped up with partisans and Nazis all over the place. In the opening (and over-listened-to) section, a woman riding a strange bicycle (one capped forward by a metal, living/unliving woman-thing), charges through Nazis towards a resistance barricade. The human woman, riddled with German bullets, passes an item to one of the partisans. The bike-creature turns and races away. How utterly odd. How utterly Miéville.

Shortly following, we learn how totally weird New Paris is (and why it’s new). The lower half of the Eiffel Tower lays in ruins – the upper half floating in the air. Strange plants pull fighters down to the ground. Weird creatures (apparently called “manifs”) wander about, some dangerous, some pointless.

Turns out something called an “S-bomb” was detonated in Paris. As the story continues, we get the 1941 view of where it came from. Apparently, a strange fellow has leaned how to collect and store “surrealist” energies off all the artists running about the place. These “energies” are collected into an explosive device which releases all these images into our world (yes, in the end of the book, there is a bit that explains whose paintings were used in which scenes – you can look them all up should you wish).

Anyway, our hero Thibaut, backed by a witch named Sam (with an occult camera all her own) end up doing the traditional get-into-the-enemy-stronghold trope. But I’ll say this – what they find there bent my brain. It was pure nightmare fuel, a total freak show that gave me a shiver. So yes, Miéville neatly broke out of his trope with that one.

Anyway, a very interesting novella, one that I’ll recommend to my advanced readers. If you are looking for simplistic StarWars (TM) drivel, well, thanks for keeping up until now. But if you are curious about something new and strange, have a look (or, in my case, a listen).

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