On the one hand, we have The Line, an industrial, train-driven culture that consumes and dominates everywhere it goes, leaving behind noise, pollution, industry, and discipline. It's got elements of Manifest Destiny The Wild, Wild West The Dark Tower and China Mieville's Railsea all mashed up into a nice dark adventure.The story weaves together several arcs, but they all center on what might be contained in a former general's head. Read moreģ.5 starsI really liked this one. And either side will do anything to understand how.Īt the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied. In its rooms lies an old general of the Red Republic, a man whose shattered mind just may hold the secret to stopping the Gun and the Line. Liv Alverhyusen, a doctor of the new science of psychology, travels to the edge of the made world to a spiritually protected mental institution in order to study the minds of those broken by the Gun and the Line. To the west lies a vast, uncharted world, inhabited only by the legends of the immortal and powerful Hill People, who live at one with the earth and its elements.

Now they're just a myth, a bedtime story parents tell their children, of hope. The only hope at stopping them has seemingly disappeared-the Red Republic that once battled the Gun and the Line, and almost won. What exists has been carved out amidst a war between two rival factions: the Line, paving the world with industry and claiming its residents as slaves and the Gun, a cult of terror and violence that cripples the population with fear.

And the servants of the Line are on the march.A fantastical reimagining of the American West which draws its influence from steampunk, the American western tradition, and magical realism John Creedmoor, reluctant Agent of the Gun and would-be gentleman of leisure, travels west, too, looking to steal the secret or die trying. Now Liv Alverhuysen, a doctor of the new science of psychology, travels west, hoping to heal the general's shattered mind. But locked in his memories is a secret that could change the West forever, and the world's warring powers would do anything to take it from him. The Republic is now history, and the last of its generals sits forgotten and nameless in a madhouse on the edge of creation. The world that now exists has been carved out amid a war between two rival factions: the Line, enslaving the world with industry, and the Gun, a cult of terror and violence.

Thirty years ago, the Red Republic fought to remake the West-fought gloriously, and failed. Between the wild shores of uncreation, and the ancient lands of the East lies the vast expanse of the West-young, chaotic, magnificent, war-torn.

The half made world by felix gilman