Iron Council

danny writes "I haven't stopped writing book reviews, it's just been a while since I wrote any suitable for Slashdot. Read on for my review of China Mieville's Iron Council." Iron Council author China Mieville pages 471 publisher MacMillan rating 5 reviewer Danny Yee ISBN 0345464028 summary an inventive but disappointing fantasy

The world of the New Crobuzon city-state is loosely based on the European industrial revolution's "steam age", mixed together with an extraordinarily inventive range of fantastic features. People are "remade" into strange forms in punishment factories, there are all kinds of nonhuman sentients -- cactus people, insect-like kephri, and more -- and there are a diverse range of magics. The Mayor and Parliament rule through a brutal Militia, but revolutionary factions abound and a draining war with Tesh is fueling discontent.

Cutter leads a band of insurrectionists from the Caucus, looking for the golem creator Judah. They fight a series of battles as they travel across a war-torn landscape, seeking the semi-mythical Iron Council, a group of railway workers who rebelled and escaped into the wilderness. Meanwhile Ori is involved with the shifting revolutionary factions in New Crobuzon. He joins one of the more violent groups, which eventually launches a plot to assassinate the Mayor.

Much of the "colour" of Iron Council comes from politics, with allusions to historical groups and events, most obviously to various socialist and anarchist movements and to the Paris Commune. It attempts to harness the pathos and power of revolutionary myth and history, but the result is mostly poor pastiche, nowhere approaching the drama of real history. The historical links are weak, often mismatched with the peculiar features of New Crobuzon, and unable to carry the sentiment Mieville tries to invest them with. And there's not enough background for anyone to actually care about the New Crobuzon revolution in its own right: Iron Council has neither actual political philosophy nor social detail nor real people.

Another annoying feature of Iron Council is that everything is subservient to the special effects of the moment. At one point, for example, we read:

"With a thumb of chalk, Spiral Jacobs drew the shape that had given him his name, whispering while he did, and it was of astonishing perfection, a mathematical symbol. And then there were smaller coils coming from its outer skin, and Jacobs ran his hand over it and walked on.

It began to rain as Ori reached the mark Jacobs had made. It did not smear."

But though Ori and Jacobs continue to roam the city, the rain never features again -- it's just a completely ad hoc device to highlight the mysteriousness of the spiral symbols. This is a trivial example, but this kind of thing recurs at different levels throughout Iron Council: strange wondrous monsters are invented, new magics deployed, characters introduced and then disposed of, new words coined -- all to help enhance a single encounter, battle, scene, or piece of dialogue.

Mieville's characterisation is weak. The three central characters manage to get less and less interesting as time goes by, to the point where the deaths of two of them are of no moment. The plot and Mieville's dazzling invention hold Iron Council together and kept me reading to the end, but the overall effect is, apart from a few novel ideas, unmemorable and unlikely to bear rereading. It was no doubt unwise of me to expect more, but the fuss about Mieville and the recommendations of friends had raised my hopes.

Note: I haven't read Mieville's earlier books set in the same world -- Perdido Street Station and The Scar -- but Iron Council is entirely self-contained.

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Comments

Self-contained?

[zyklone]

No wonder you don't understand the city if you havn't read Perdido Street Station.

Read the first two books and I might take you seriously.

Re:Self-contained?

[Thenomain]

There are two ways to take Iron Council:

1) As the next book in the series.
2) As a book set in the world.

If you take it as 1, Iron Council is a decent book. I admit I don't like it as much as the previous two, but I didn't throw it across the room in disgust.

If you take it as 2, I can see why you might. A lot of the inner workings and horrors of the world (and especially the city) are well laid-out in Perdido Street Station. You can get a pretty good idea from reading The Scar, too.

However, this review goes on about things not being "interesting" without giving any idea of what kinds of standards he is putting them against. Regardless if the reviewer came from Point 1 or Point 2, he didn't attempt to make the review meaningful. It was a horrible review, yeah, but not for the fault of "he shoulda read the other books first".

He should have, yes. But he should have at least told us he didn't.

I disagree

[spiffy_dude]

China Mieville is one of the most creative authors I have had the fortune to hear of. Rather than base a world on Tolkien or folklore, his world is almost completely his own creation. IMHO, Perdito Street Station especially deserves reading and The Scar (his second book) is also very good. Iron Council is definitely the weaker of the three.

Iron Council is *not* self contained.

[kmcrober]

The reviewer is wrong; Iron Council is not a self-contained work. All of this is only my opinion, of course, but the trilogy seems to be about the city of New Crobuzon as much as it's about any social or political themes. Even The Scar, which takes place entirely outside the city limits, revolves around New Crobuzon, its people, its culture, and its history. Each of the books builds on the backstory and moods set in the predecessors; the plots aren't interwoven so that you'd *need* to read the others, but you're definately missing a lot of the meat of Iron Council if you haven't read PSS or The Scar.

I did not enjoy Iron Council nearly as much as PSS or The Scar, not least because Mieville seemed to be shifting the focus more to less interesting characters and politics and away from the city itself. The external events were weak, in comparison to the city-centered parts of the plot, and the political themes seemed forced.

That's a small complaint, though, in the end. Mieville writes up a storm, and what we do see of New Crobuzon is as compelling and original as ever. I can't wait for his next work; I hope that it's set in the same universe, whether it's another NC exposition or set somewhere else entirely.

I should mention that I enjoy his non-Bas-Lag fiction as well. I liked King Rat much more than Gaiman's Neverwhere, which is roughly similar but less interesting. King Rat explored some of the same political themes as Iron Council, but in subtler and more interesting ways.

All in all, read Iron Council only if you're particularly interested in Mieville's political themes or are a dedicated fan of his settings. Given how he builds on the settings and moods of his prior works in the series, you'll enjoy and appreciate the next Bas Lag book more if you've read Iron Council, even if it doesn't float your boat all on its own.

Inconsistency

[ChatHuant]

Another annoying feature of Iron Council is that everything is subservient to the special effects of the moment.

I liked the book (though it's clearly not as good as Perdido Street Station), but I have to agree with this comment. I generally prefer my SF (and horror) to be internally consistent. You accept the initial premise (and if you don't, why are you even reading this book, or seeing this movie?), but everything else should flow logically from here. Most horror flicks, for example, fail miserably at that - one of the reasons why most horror flicks are so bad.

Some authors can get away with internal inconsistency through continuous invention - Douglas Adams is a good example. Also Terry Pratchett, who, when asked about contradictions between different books in the Discworld series, said that there are no contradictions - there are however alternate pasts.

China Mieville doesn't even try; he invents new rules, brings in machine gods and joyfully contradicts himself anytime he needs to solve a problem. He's almost like Wile E. Coyote: never twice the same trick. This said, his writing style (which I quite like) hasn't changed much, and he does keep throwing new and interesting things at the reader, so Iron Council is IMHO quite acceptable.