There's a sense in which this is a return to Mieville's previous motif of the divided city. This time, it's Paris 1950, and the detonation of an 'S-Bomb' - an explosion of stored Surrealist energy - nine years previously has released scores of figures from Surrealist art well-known and otherwise made manifest (as 'manifs') in the streets of Paris, amidst which a splinter resistance group wages its campaign against the Nazi occupiers, the war having been protracted (and Paris sealed off from the rest of the world to prevent contagion) and further enlayered by a Nazi treaty with Hell which have led to a summoning of devils and demons to also stalk the city - all treated in a consistently matter of fact way despite the vivid thumbnail descriptions of the various aspects of the fantastic that come into play.
It's an enjoyable read, embedded with Surrealism and the realisation of its revolutionary and disruptive potential (there are examples on nearly every page, and they're documented in a meta-fictional section at the end of the novella), including as a force against fascism. As is sometimes the case with Mieville, the characters aren't as developed as they might be, but the book doesn't suffer too much for that because they're sufficient for the ideas and story to rattle along regardless.
