Railsea by China Mieville

I am comfortable admitting that I haven't read Moby Dick (there are too many great books out there to be embarrassed over missing a few). And I'm glad I didn't know Railsea is something of a re-do of Moby Dick before I started because I probably wouldn't have picked it up. I would have missed a great book.
This story takes place far into the future when the oceans are gone and the seabeds are lined with railroad tracks. Hunters make their livelihoods by riding trains in search of giant moles that live below the surface of the soil. Yes, there is a mammoth white mole that eludes the captain of the train our hero, Sham ap Soorap, rides, but this is Sham's story, not the captain's. Sham embarks on adventure to solve some of the greatest mysteries of the railsea - where do the tracks end? who made them? what are the great machines (called angels) that tend to them? and what does the obsessive pursuit of one white mole do to a person's soul?
I love Mieville's writing and the strange (sometimes very, very strange) worlds that he creates. I highly recommend this book (appropriate for roughly 13 and up due to complicated language and some violence). At the end of reading this I had two requests to make of the media universe: please, China, write a sequel and please, please Miyazaki make this into a movie.

Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson

Sometimes when I say that a book is movie-ready it’s not entirely a compliment, but this book is so action-packed, so creative, so visual and imaginative, so on-the-edge-of-my-seat-the-whole-time, that I’m calling it movie-ready and that means it’s great. It’s a summer blockbuster in a book (and it will be a summer blockbuster in a movie summer of 2013). I've already picked out who I think should play the various characters in this large and varied cast.
A quick description might make it seem like a rehash of The Terminator stories, but this is a robot uprising of a different sort. Yes, artificial intelligence has taken over and is at war with human beings, but that’s where the similarities end. Wilson studied robotics, so there is a very creepy reality to the way they work and move and how people interact with them. I highly recommend this for any vacation you have coming up – even if it’s just in your backyard or on your couch.

Embassytown by China Miéville

Miéville’s book The City and the City was my favorite book of 2010. One of the things that I loved most about it was that even when I was confused, I was still enjoying myself. The same is true for his latest book, Embassytown. This story takes place on a far outpost of the human diaspora (humans who left Earth to colonize other planets so long ago that they don’t even know where Earth is anymore). The indigenous creatures of this planet, the Ariekei, speak a unique language that does not allow them to lie, but they’re trying to learn. Through that (and so much more that I can’t give away) their language becomes something other than what they've known before, something other than what they've based their society on, and the repercussions are bigger than anyone could have guessed.
Miéville describes himself as an author of “weird fiction” and I think that’s perfect. Even though this particular books fits into a classic other-planet, alien-human-relations kind of Science Fiction category, I think it will appeal to readers who don’t usually like that sort of thing. It’s really about language and truth, maybe even love, and it’s about floaking. It’s perfect for someone in the mood for a unique, challenging, gripping story.

The City & the City by China Miéville

Good Science Fiction uses an altered reality to reveal something about the real world that couldn’t be revealed without that altered setting. Great Science Fiction does this and entertains as well. China Miéville’s The City and the City is really great Scifi. It begins feeling like a dark, well-written, noir-style mystery – a body has been found in the city of Beszel, detective Borlu has been assigned to investigate – but the story quickly takes a sci-fi turn. Beszel exists, somehow, in the same place as the completely separate, foreign city of Ul Qomo. The book is both about the murder and about how these two cities exist intermingled the way they are. Yes, it is sometimes a little confusing, but I trusted Miéville to make it clear as I went along and I was not disappointed. This is the best book I’ve read this year. If you’re up to it, it would make a fantastic book club selection.

Hunger by Michael Grant

Michael Grant is back with the next installment in the Gone series. It is equally violent, but darker and (thanks to fewer talking coyotes) even better than the first. The title tells you what is occupying the minds of the kids left in San Perdido. They're starving. It's not just that they don't have adults around to go to the grocery store; they're cut off from the means of distribution that we are all so used. The kids may be savvy enough to think of alternative options, but let's just say that the other strangeness (it has a name, but I don't want to give too much away) of the FAYZ makes those options not so easy.
There's more than just hunger going on in this book, though. The politics of the FAYZ aren't quite working out. It's an interesting lesson these kids need to learn. I think the teens I know (mostly customers here at the store) would have figured out how to make this work before the characters in the book, but where would the fun be in peaceful conversation?