This is a book named after a book that is in this book. It describes the world in 1899 where something happened and the area between Moscow and Beijing, and now it’s an odd mystery area that isn’t hospitable to humans. But the Trans-Siberian Express still goes through there, on a fraught crossing with a lot of real and imagined perils. There are a lot of people in the first and third classes as well as a lot of crew and people representing the train company who all have to manage what they find there. I enjoyed the train descriptions and the ultimate conclusion, some of the rest of it felt a little flat.