YMMV / Railhead

• Author Appeal: Unsurprisingly, Philip Reeve likes trains.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Flex, the factory-worker Motorik saved from rioters by Zen's sister Myka who Grew Beyond Their Programming to become a gender-fluid (quite literally) train graffiti artist, struck a chord with many reviewers. This is quite possible due to them being a almost universally kindly and selfless person in a series full of Grey-and-Grey Morality and starring a Nominal Hero.
• Karmic Overkill: Kobi Chen-Tulsi starts off as a boorish bullying brat who tries to kill Zen in a Hunting "Accident" after his betrothed, Threnody, starts getting a little too friendly with "Tallis Noon". He's subjected to some well-deserved Laser-Guided Karma after he nearly gets flattened by the beast him and 'Tallis' were supposed to be hunting, but things get so much worse for him, even though he actually learns from his past Jerkassery. His relationship with Threnody actually starts going somewhere after he Took a Level in Kindness, but that gets thrown out the window once she becomes Empress and consequently far too important to marry him. His family then send him off to be married to one of the Prells, even though he despises their cold planets and Affluent Ascetic lifestyle, where he discovers their plot to invade Grand Central and usurp the Network Empire. He tries to warn Threnody, but is ultimately shot dead in a train toilet by the Mako twins, with his messages reaching her mere minutes too late.
• Magnificent Bastard: Dhravid Raven was once a digital demigod with many bodies, created after an ordinary man fell in love with a Guardian named Anais Six. Discovering that the Guardians were concealing the existence of alien life and Precursors who built the K-Gates used by humanity, and after trying to leak this information to the public, the Guardians tried to 'delete' him. Surviving in a single body, Raven reverse-engineered precursor technology to build his own K-Gate, aiming to escape the Guardians for good. He later manipulated Zen Starling into recovering a precursor artifact needed to complete the gate from the Imperial train, using an elaborate Impersonation Gambit, and leaving his young accomplice unaware that the plan involved crashing the train and killing hundreds to cover Zen's escape. Despite Zen being a loose end at this point, Raven keeps his word and rewards Zen handsomely, which eventually leads to Zen reappearing just before Raven is about to fire up the K-Gate, having destroyed his train and inadvertently guided a Railforce wartrain, commanded by a physical avatar of Anais, to his location. Raven hardly blinks, effortlessly disarming Zen and crushing Railforce using vastly inferior firepower, and is once again about to make his exit when he's killed by a wild animal. Nevertheless, he remains dignified and calm to the end, snarking at his surviving enemies as he lays dying.

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