"Fantasy and science fiction writer China Miéville has long been inspired by the ideals of the Russian Revolution and here, on the centenary of the revolution, he provides his own ... take on its history. In February 1917 ... Russia was still an autocratic monarchy: nine months later, it became the first socialist state in world history ... This is the story of the extraordinary months between those upheavals, in February and October, of the forces and individuals who made 1917 so epochal a year"--