Iron Council

Awesome book. China Mieville keeps enthralling me with his vivid prose and stunning landscapes where anything goes. In Iron Council we see yet again the author's talent for imagining monsters, either human or otherwise; whether it's the rulers of New Crobuzon perpetuating horrible deeds or the actual monsters populating the countryside surrounding the city. Here we see a war between two powerful city states that sparks off a revolution which leads to one man's journey to find a legend that would inspire his fellows to throw off their shackles and rise up against the tyrannical rule of the New Crobuzon Militia and the Mayor who controls them. Judah Low, a messianic golemist, sets off into the wilds beyond the city to find the Iron Council, a train state that he helped create decades ago, and a handful of diciples follow in his footsteps. Among these are Cutter, a shopowner in love with Judah, who is one of the main and most interesting characters in the novel, a man torn between his hopeless unrequited love and the eventual destruction he envisions but is helpless to prevent. While the quest for the Council is on a young man named Ori joins a dangerous crew back in New Crobuzon intent upon more than revolution on the streets of the greatest city in Bas-Lag, while sinister forces converge that could spell the end of all he has come to know and believe in. Mieville makes use of cutting-edge narrative and brilliant plotting to make Iron Council a fast paced read, but even without the riveting prose I would still love this book. Filled with malevolent parasites in the shape of human hands, huge tortoise cities moving across fields of vine herds, sinister ambassadors planning a destructive hecatomb, the Cacotopic Stain which gives Hell a whole new meaning, caterpillar beings called Inchmen, the tragic end of the swamp-dwelling Stiltspear, and Golems created from mud, sticks, train tracks, gunpowder, sound and even time itself. All these imaginings, monstrous or otherwise, are enough to bring me back for more Mieville.

In any genre or medium, it's a great joy when a highly talented artist suddenly delivers a mature masterpiece, the work that takes the energy and raw talent you saw in their early works, combined with a maturity and zen calm that makes them move from prodigy to masterpiece. In film, it was watching Almovadar tame his crazy, scatter brained comedy into a the "screwball tragedy" of All About My Mother, a film that captures the pain of grief and loss while keeping you laughing. This occured the same year as "In the Mood for Love", where Wong-Kar Wai took the excitement of his visual language and visual storytelling to make a great tale of loneliness and longing. These moments are rare, more often than not, a talent never achieves what you hoped they would, or spirals downwards into machine like production. But don't worry, in Iron Council, China Mieville has pulled off just such an event. From day one, China has been a striking, new and unique voice within the calcified world of high fantasy. The field was trapped in Tolkien ripoffs that lacked the imagination of that original, and had even worse prose. Neil Jordan's "Wheel of Time" cycle is an example of a commercial entity that lacks any flair or characterization. Compared to this, CHina, fugaritively and politically comes from left-field. His world of Bas-Lag draws from marxist politics, victorian English atmosphere- and maybe a dash of Raymond Chandler. He is probably the best writer in speculative fiction today, and his ability to create an atmosphere is unrivalled. Hischaracters were also great, human or alien, one sees a strong difference between them. If he had one weakness before, it was his storytelling. Perdido Street Station had a basic Alien/Terminator plot, and the Scar literally drifted, like the great flotilla at the center of the action. The stories weren't the strongest, but the world and characters themselves kept you going. Now he has answered that. The story of Iron Council keeps you nailed to your seat, waiting for more, and China does with better and stronger characters than he has ever crafted before. Their motivations and desires are unique and clear. The 3-way story of rebellion both on the railline and in New Crobuzon keeps you pulling forwards, with a set of unpredictable twists and turns that are hard to match. Many readers are polarized by China's left wing take no prisoners politics, and Iron Council is no exception. But you can disagree with him, just like you can disagree with Tolkien. Besides, in the end, Iron Council is not a marxist tract, but riff on rebellion. Sexual (...), political and racial, it's a celebration of the urge for revolt and freedom of all sorts- including our own self-imposed limitations. His fantasy world is more inclusive, and multi-faceted then any of his predecessors, and he has reinvigorated a love of the genre for me. Whether you agree with his politics, it;s a damn good read. One worth checking out.

The myth of the Iron Council has kept hope alive in the city of New Crobuzon. While corrupt political leaders force the city-state into a war without ending, while unemployment mounts and fascist gangs terrorise everyone who doesn't agree with them--and anyone who supports any kind of rights for the non-human or remade humans, dreams of the commune are fired by the story of the Iron Council. Once, it was simply a railroad--engineers, bed-layers, builders, engines, cars, [prostitutes]. But when the wages stopped coming, when the corruption of the railroad's management grew too strong, the workers struck, the [prostitutes] struck, and finally the remade slaves refused to scab on the human workers and the strike became revolt. The revolt was the beginning of the Iron Council--the train that pulled its rails up behind it as it dragged itself across a continent--to freedom. Author China Mieville combines three related stories--that of the revolt that led to the Iron Council, the revolt of the New Crobuzon commune against the corrupt political leadership, and the epic voyage of the Iron Council as it attempts to return to New Crobuzon to join in the uprising. The powerful unifying character of Judah Low, who saw the birth of the Iron Council and helped birth it's return, along with the train itself unite the three strands of the story. IRON COUNCIL takes a while to get, uh, rolling. But once Mieville gets on track, he drives the story forward with compelling style and imagery. Mieville combines strong, if occasionally overly-heroic figures with a fully developed and fascinating magic system, compelling images from our own history, and a political slant that is far to the left of center but that stays embedded in the story rather than becoming preachy. If you enjoy fantasy, but want to try something different, something with a strong social theme, IRON COUNCIL is definitely worth the investment.

First off, for those of you new to China Mieville, I would recommend that you begin with "Perdido Street Station" (or "King Rat"), followed up by "The Scar", and only then tackle "Iron Council". While the three books don't form a trilogy in the traditional sense, they nonetheless draw on shared themes and a common setting and history. As such, while "Iron Council" can certainly be read and appreciated by a newcomer to Mieville's writing, there are numerous small references and commonalities that will be missed. Fans of Mieville, however, will find in "Iron Council" perhaps his most nuanced and sophisticated writing to date. As usual, the author defies genres, and has produced what would best be described (if one was forced to use labels) as a gothic-western-political-thriller. At the same time, he continues to subvert traditional fantasy elements as well as co-opting elements from other traditions and grounding them in his reality. However, Mieville has also tackled a more challenging structural approach in this novel, as he uses three different voices and two time periods that, while connected by plot threads are separated by decades. Furthermore, the chronologically earlier section comes 130 pages into the book, which in the hands of a less gifted writer would be horribly jarring, but which Mieville pulls of with style. The primary story (which is elaborated upon by the flashback) is set some twenty years after the events of Perdido Street Station, and finds New Crobuzon at war with distant Tesh, with discontent at home mounting as the casualties mount and the economy falters. It is a time of turmoil and political dissent bordering on civil war; as options are weighed, one man, Judah Low, goes in search of a near mythical construct whose time may be at hand, Iron Council. To say more would risk severe spoilers, but the real joy of "Iron Council" is that the plot is served so deftly by the underlying themes, and vice versa. And those themes are legion, the most obvious one being New Crobuzon's war with Tesh as a parallel with the Iraq war. Likewise, there are economic factors that are akin to the bursting of the .com bubble of the late 1990's. However, Mieville has made it abundantly clear in numerous interviews that he has no interest in spreading his political views (he is a Socialist who has run for Parliament) through his writing, and that holds true here. Rather, these elements serve to ground the story in a believable reality, which allows the reader to accept at face value the fantastic elements. Moreover, even as he subverts everything that is a "norm" of fantasy, Mieville also casts his own views in a realisitic light. For example, the political activists (with whom he obviously sympathizes) frequently make capricious, even brutal decisions, and display very un-liberal traits such as disdain for homosexuals. However, as I said, these groundings are mere jumping off points for a much more intriguing exploration, for at i

The Iron Council is not quite as good as The Scar or Perdido Street Station. There, it's been said. But that is a fairly meaningless statement due to the colossal heights Mieville's first two Bas-Lag books climbed. The Iron Council is a marvelous book, with all the imagination, the rich social commentary, the wildly creative monsters, and the textured characters we've come to expect. The plot rips along at high speed, with converging storylines and the "I wonder what happens next?" anticipation that really good, really fun books share in common. The Iron Council is probably the best structured of the three Bas-Lag novels, and there is a real confidence in the writing. Is familiarity breeding contempt for me with Mieville? It must be, because I think he's a better writer and storyteller than Tolkein, who I like. Only time will tell if Mieville is as great a world builder and fantasy architect as Tolkien. But it's time we start thinking of Mieville in terms of how great he is among all fantasy writers in history, not just how good is this or that book. So with this adulatory review, what is wrong? Nothing really, it is just not quite as amazing as his first two in this world. I'm willing to write this off to knowing Bas-Lag and not being blown away by the sheer audacity as I had before. Some readers will be annoyed by Mieville's overt socialism, but that's a matter of personal taste. Personally I enjoy the change from - well, every other fantasy book I read. There are great ideas (smokestone, the whispersmith), creatures (Inchmen, Handlingers) and characters (Toro, Cutter), but Bas-Lag is becoming an eccentric old friend, rather than that wild guy you had a blast with once at a party. But no matter how wild Mieville got, I was expecting him to top himself at every corner, and he did. Maybe it's the comfort of knowing the book is going to be fantastic that was a slight let down. With Perdido Street Station, I kept thinking "I can't believe how good this is, he can't keep this up." With The Scar it was "Oh my God! It's actually better than Perdido Street Station!" Since I was expecting perfection, there could be no match to my hopes, but I adore this book. There are rich veins of fantasy storytelling here and you would be foolish to pass up reading The Iron Council. I guarantee nothing in your "to read" pile is as good. If you like Mieville's other work, you will enjoy The Iron council. If you have not liked Mieville before, then you won't like this either. Perdido Street Station was a wonder, The Scar a miracle and The Iron Council a proclamation that Mieville has arrived as a truly great fantasy writer. His career will be fascinating to track starting about now.