Miéville is an ideal guide through this complex historical moment, giving agency to obscure and better-known participants alike, and depicting the revolution as both a tragically lost opportunity and an ongoing source of inspiration.
- Publishers Weekly (Starred Review—“Best Summer Books of 2017” & “Best Books 2017”)

When one of the most marvellously original writers in the world takes on one of the most explosive events in history, the result can only be incendiary.
- Barbara Ehrenreich

To give a new generation of readers a fresh account of the great revolution, incorporating all the post-1989 archival discoveries and scholarly research, is a singularly daunting task. To render it in vivid, oracular prose, moving across the pages with the gathering force of a hurricane, is something that only China Miéville could achieve.
- Mike Davis

Miéville sifts through the extraordinary disagreements, debates, and debacles that accompanied the Russian reds on every step of the road to revolution … He’s especially evocative when he chronicles the scenes on the chaotic streets. But much of the value of October comes in his mastery of how the intricacies of human decision-making play out in Petrograd, Moscow, and beyond.
-Christian Science Monitor

Elegantly constructed and unexpectedly moving.
- Sheila Fitzpatrick, London Review of Books