Looking for Jake and Other Stories is a short story collection by China Miéville.
Finished on: 5.3.2026
The collection contains 11 short stories, a comic short and a novella and showcases a lot of the breadth of Miéville as a writer, both in content and form. There is a horror element to most of the stories, but other than that, they are very different from each other, and most are really good, with Miéville’s challenging, beautiful prose and his often intellectual ideas apparent in all of them. So there should be something for everyone interested in horror in this collection. That being said, I was a little taken aback because there are so few women in the stories, with only a couple actually having female protagonists. It’s been a while that I read something so focused on the male perspective.
Read more about each of the stories below.
Looking for Jake
Something has happened in London, some kind of breakdown. In it, a man writes a letter to his friend Jake, hoping to somehow reconnect with him.
Looking for Jake definitely has interesting world-building, but it didn’t quite work for me. Maybe it’s just that it’s a pretty early work of Miéville’s and he still needed to grow as a writer, I don’t know. But it is rough, albeit definitely not uninteresting or without promise.
Foundation
A building inspector who always knows exactly which walls will hold and which won’t. But how does he get that knowledge?
Foundation grows its horrors slowly but inexorably, a sharp commentary on war and its long-lasting effects. Some ghosts don’t want vengeance. Some things can’t be put right.
The Ball Room (with Emma Bircham and Max Schaefer)
There is this room in the furniture store where children can play in a ball pit. But there is something strange going on in that room.
The Ball Room is one of my favorites in the collection, a thoroughly creepy tale that also has a sense of humor. I really loved it.
Reports of Certain Events in London
China Miéville mistakenly receives a package of documents from a society that investigates something that seems to be happening to, or rather with, London’s streets.
I like this kind of „found documents“ mockumentary set-up, and I really enjoyed the unusual and creative idea that we explore here.
Familiar
A witch creates a familiar for himself, but the familiar is not what he thought it would be, and turns into something even stranger.
Reading this story, I was a little reminded of Frankenstein. They certainly share that idea of a creator rejecting his creation. This take on what a familiar is and how it works is also startingly creepy, and the story certainly didn’t go where I thought it would.
Entry Taken From a Medical Encyclopaedia
Buscard’s Murrain (also known as “Wormword”) is a strange disease with an even stranger transmission.
Another story that plays with narrative form, here we get an encyclopedia entry about a disease that is just enough on this side of implausible that we don’t need to actually start worrying about it. But it is fun to imagine.
Details
Every week, a boy brings a neighbor food at the behest of his mother. Said neighbor never leaves her apartment, but she seems to be able to answer questions that she couldn’t know the answer to. Slowly, she reveals her story.
Details is another favorite of mine from this collection, an unusual idea very well executed. It takes a rather innocuous thing and twists it into something outlandish. Really good.
Go Between
Every once in a while a package or a letter shows up, with strange instructions that he has always followed to the letter, despite not actually knowing what or who for. But then a last package arrives.
Go Between asks some interesting questions about the unknowable consequences of the smallest actions you take every day, but I couldn’t really get into it all that much, I’m afraid.
Different Skies
A man buys a colorful window pane. After installing it in his home, he realizes that he sees something strange when he looks through it.
Different Skies is written through diary entries, giving us yet another form of narration in this collection. Working from a strong idea, Different Skies explores its idea in maybe a little too predictable a manner, but it is nevertheless interesting.
An End to Hunger
When he meets Aykan, he realizes that Aykan is a computer genius. Aykan has made it his hacking mission to take down a charity site that donates food for clicks. But the charity won’t just take it.
I am not exactly sure why Aykan hated this site so much, but of course, criticism of charitable donations as tax write-offs, and the charity system in general, is well-called for. And An End to Hunger does so with a bit of a wink.
‘Tis the Season
Through a stroke of luck, a father can actually celebrate Christmas™ with his daughter, and not one of the cheap knock-offs.
What would happen if you copyrighted a holiday like Christmas? Probably something very much like this. Miéville exposes this in the collection’s funniest story.
Jack
Jack Half-a-Prayer is a legend in New Crobuzon, and his former associate is here to tell you something about him.
Jack is set in the same universe as the Bas-Lag trilogy, and reminded me of the really horrifying concept established there: remaking features strongly in this rather dark tale that has a good twist in the end.
On the Way to the Front (illustrated by Liam Sharp)
A soldier is waiting to be deployed, and he keeps seeing other soldiers.
I read this story twice and I didn’t really understand it, as in I literally didn’t understand what was being shown. After the second read-through, I figured that I wasn’t intrigued enough to invest more time in it, and left it at that.
Sholl lives in a London that has changed quite drastically after it was attacked by strange creatures. But Sholl has an idea about how to fight back.
The Tain reminded me a little of The Last Days of New Paris with its surreal imagery. The basic idea is simple and could have turned out feeling cheap, but Miéville gives it enough of a slant that it somehow becomes deeper than appears at first.
Summarizing: a very good collection.
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