London commuters may recognise much of this account

[alexsarll]

"Six express tracks and twelve locals pass through Palimpsest. The six Greater Lines are Stylus, Sgraffito, Decretal, Foolscap, Bookhand, and Missal. Collectively, in the prayers of those gathered prostrate in the brass turnstiles of its hidden, voluptuous shrines, these are referred to as the Marginalia Line. They do not run on time: rather, the commuters of Palimpsest have learned their habits, the times of day and night when they prefer to eat and drink, their mating seasons, their gathering places. In days of old, great safaris were held to catch the great trains in their inexorable passage from place to place, and women grappled with them with hooks and tridents in order to arrive punctually at a desk in the depths of the city.
As if to impress a distracted parent on their birthday, the folk of Palimpsest built great edifices where the trains liked to congregate to drink oil from the earth and exchange gossip. They laid black rack along the carriages' migratory patterns. Trains are creatures of routine, though they are also peevish and curmudgeonly. Thus the transit system of Palimpsest was raised up around the huffing behemoths that traversed its heart, and the trains have not yet expressed displeasure.
To ride them is still an exercise in hunterly passion and exactitude, for they are unpredictable, and must be observed for many weeks before patterns can be discerned. The sport of commuting is attempted by only the bravest and the wildest of Palimpsest. Many have achieved such a level of aptitude that they are able to catch a train more mornings than they do not."

(From Cathryn M Valente's Palimpsest, a wonderfully rich dessert of a book. I love it, but if I read more than a chapter a day it would start to overwhelm my palate)

Comments

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Oo, conflicted about that. The central idea is brilliant, and most of the text is too, but bits of it cross the line from rich into, well, babygoth-with-a-thesaurus. "Hidden, voluptuous shrines"... oh man.

I love the idea of the peevish trains gathering to drink oil, though.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the whole book teeters on that precipice. It probably helps that I Was A Teenage Anne Rice Fan, but I'm surprised at how widespread a positive reaction it had in the US SF/fantasy scene - I would have thought a lot of people would have outright hated something this decadent (in all senses).