Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} by China Miéville Iron Council. I have a confession to make: I tried to read but found Miéville's vision of New Crobuzon so claustrophobic that I had to give up. After that experience I didn't even attempt . However, one thing particularly impressed me about Perdido Street Station -- Miéville's sheer creativity. I have been a sucker for that sort of thing ever since I first read Stapledon's Starmaker , so when Iron Council was published I decided to give Miéville another chance. Iron Council certainly does not disappoint when it comes to creativity. It is every bit as richly detailed as Perdido Street Station , with many of the same species reappearing here -- khepri, garuda, cactaceae, etc. But many more strange new creatures make their appearance as Miéville continues to map out the world of Bas-Lag. It seems the very landscape is infected with the same cancerous mutability that characterizes its animal species. Even solid stone cannot be relied upon to retain its form -- it might be smokestone, which can turn to vapour and solidify again without warning, engulfing unwary travellers even more swiftly than a sudden lava flow. And at the heart of the continent lies the Cacotopic Stain -- the 'bad place' that is the epicentre of the reality distorting strangeness afflicting Bas-Lag. Of course, no one creates in a vacuum and Miéville is no exception. Students of mythology will recognize the Egyptian roots of his khepri and the Russian origin of his vodyanoi. Other elements evoke memories of earlier science fiction and novels. For example, the Iron Council itself, a mobile community travelling through a strange landscape on rails it picks up behind and lays before itself, reminded me of Christopher Priest's Inverted World . However, Miéville never merely lifts ideas from mythology or elsewhere. Everything is transformed by the strange alchemy of his own creativity. Miéville's use of language is worth a special mention. It is, I think, a deliberate reflection of the strangeness of the world of Bas-Lag. He makes frequent forays into the most inaccessible parts of the Oxford English Dictionary to create a vocabulary that is rich, dense, even baroque. The combination of baroque language and vivid descriptions of one fantastical creature or environment after another makes for an exhausting roller- coaster of a story. It gives the story a dreamlike quality -- but I am talking here of a fever dream or a nightmare. There is no subtlety about it. Miéville's prose grabs you by the . throat (!) and drags you into the world he has created. By contrast, the story line is relatively straightforward. New Crobuzon is beset by civil unrest and war with the Tesh. The main story line traces Cutter's pursuit of Judah Lowe (his lover) who has gone in search of the mysterious Iron Council to warn them that the New Crobuzon authorities have discovered their hiding place and intend to destroy them. Woven into this is a second story line describing the gradual descent of New Crobuzon into civil war through the eyes of a young dissident (whose own progress from acting in anti-government plays to urban terrorism reflects the growing violence of the society around him). Eventually the two strands merge as the Iron Council decides to return to New Crobuzon to support the dissidents and in doing so uncovers a plot by the Tesh to use the dissenters to destroy New Crobuzon from within. The plot is foiled and Tesh sues for peace but the revolution fails and the New Crobuzon authorities clamp down on the dissidents. In spite of this, the Iron Council hopes that its return will reignite the spark of rebellion and bring much needed change to the city. The ending could so easily have been an unbelievable triumph of the progressive democratic Iron Councillors over the authoritarian and increasingly imperialist forces of the New Crobuzon elite. Or it could have been the all too believable final destruction of the Iron Council by the forces ranged against it. But Miéville steers the story between these unsatisfactory options to a third, quite unexpected ending in which the Iron Council's apparent betrayal by one of its founding members manages to keep alive the hope that one day the dissidents will see New Crobuzon reborn. Given China Miéville's credentials as a left-wing political activist, other reviews will doubtless focus on the political aspects of the story. However, I was particularly struck by the religious or quasi-religious elements to be found here. I have already mentioned two major strands in the story, but there is a third strand interjected into the story in a very striking way. The story is divided into ten numbered parts, but between parts 3 and 4 (i.e. immediately after Cutter and Lowe reach the Iron Council) there is an eleventh unnumbered part. This part is entitled 'Anamnesis' and tells the story of the creation of the Iron Council. 'Anamnesis' ('remembrance' or 'recollection') is a theologically loaded term, being the term used to describe the central part of the Christian Eucharist -- the moment at which Christ's words at the Last Supper are recalled and participants are enjoined to do what they are about to do in remembrance of him. Memory plays a central part in this story. The memory of the Iron Council's defiance of the New Crobuzon authorities is a continuing inspiration to the New Crobuzon dissidents. Like Christ deliberately returning to Jerusalem to confront the Roman and Jewish authorities, the Iron Council chooses to return to New Crobuzon. And again, like Christ, the Council is betrayed by one of its most trusted supporters (whose name, I suggest, is by no means irrelevant). Finally, that betrayal leaves the Iron Council is in an ambiguous state of being -- it retains a presence that can inspire hope in believers but it has not yet come to New Crobuzon in all its fullness - - a state of being not identical with but certainly comparable to that of the risen, ascended and not yet returned Christ of Christian theology. In short, the Iron Council might be interpreted as a strikingly original Christ figure. I began with one confession. I might as well end with another -- Iron Council has made me see why so many people have been making such a fuss about China Miéville. I'm a convert and as soon as I can find the time I'm going to try Perdido Street Station again. Iron Council. Perdido Street Station -- brilliant, unique. The Scar -- hard to imagine how this exceptional novel could be better. Iron Council -- well, let me resort to an analogy. If Perdido Street Station was Mieville's Revolver and The Scar was his Sergeant Pepper , this third novel is his Magical Mystery Tour . I mean, how do you follow The Scar ? The scene: New Crobuzon is teeming with political intrigue and revolution, there is war threatened with the distant Tesh, the militia are out on the streets . in fact, it's chaos. Meanwhile, far away on a western frontier, a surreal train, the Iron Council--that perpetual train--is moving on tracks torn up from behind it and forever re-used. Out here we meet a number of characters, notably Judah Low the golemist, and Ann-Hari the political revolutionary (and, it could be argued, extremist). In New Crobuzon we meet Ori, and we also meet Spiral Jacobs -- "Are you a doubler? Are you proscribed?" -- who is wandering the city drawing helixes on walls. The novel is split into two, those sections based in New Crobuzon, focussing on street protest and revolution, and those based around the Iron Council. It is these latter sections that let the novel down, for while this is a fine book, enjoyable, readable, original, bizarre and thoroughly Miévillish, the author has this time gone too far in trying to evoke something of our world -- the American frontier west of a century or so ago -- and so has stepped away from Bas-Lag. A mistake, I think. These sections are flabby and ever so slightly self-indulgent. They describe background, not plot. And they contrast markedly with the taut brilliance of the New Crobuzon sections, which are as gothic, great and gripping as anything in Perdido Street Station . Perhaps it is also the characters that let this book down. In The Scar we met an extraordinary collection of people -- Bellis Coldwine, The Brucolac, The Lovers, Uther Doul. In this new novel, the characters, with the possible exception of Judah Low, are somewhat grey and ordinary. Other reviewers have noted that this book is Miéville's most political, and that may be true, but an examination of the politics does not bear much scrutiny. Many of the characters are revolutionaries and little else; that's so nineteenth century. Toro, who could have been so much, disappointingly turns out to be motivated by mere revenge, in a narrative side-step that irritates the reader rather than amazes. Perhaps Mieville himself was aware of this, since the sexuality of two of his characters seems gratuitous rather than genuine, as if added only because it was next on the menu of minorities. Having said all that, any first-time author would be delighted to have produced a novel as original and readable as this. The latter sections in particular are gripping. The beasts and creatures are of a very high order, and the landscape is often fabulous. However, this is Miéville, and he will be judged on his record. Is this unfair? Possibly. No author can keep on producing Sergeant Pepper works. And taking the Beatles analogy to its conclusion, we should perhaps be hoping for a White Album in a year or two . Miéville has however created one of the great SF catchphrases: reading the book simultaneously, a friend of mine and I sent everybody in our workplace mad with our constant cries of, "Are you a doubler?" Try it -- it's great! Iron Council by China Miéville. All reviews and site design © by Thomas M. Wagner. SF Reviews.net logo by Charles Hurst. Wink the Astrokitty drawn by Matt Olson. All rights reserved. Book cover artwork is copyrighted by its respective artist and/or publisher. Anyone who's read this site over the last few years knows of the high esteem in which China Miéville is held around here. I think he's probably the most important new fantasy writer of the new century, and his novels Perdido Street Station and The Scar are masterful exercises of the imagination that will go down as classics. So it's with an almost physical sense of pain that I must pronounce Iron Council the Crushing Disappointment of 2004. While Miéville's dazzling and unfettered creativity is on display as ever, the story he has told here — the third set in the mad Heironymous Bosch landscape of Bas-Lag — is a meandering and, dare I say it, dull affair that only occasionally captures the freshness and the spark of its predecessors. In my review of The Scar I voiced the hope that Miéville would move away from Bas-Lag for his next novel, and try a little something new, if only to keep the whole thing fresh. My fears seem to have been borne out. Iron Council , while not a bad book by any stretch, is by Miéville's standards a dismayingly routine and mediocre one. Its characters inspire little sympathy and the story, while it does tackle the weighty subject of the potential fall of the city-state of New Crobuzon itself, is nonetheless aloof for much of its length. Whereas Perdido and The Scar were genuinely haunting and eye-opening epics that broke new ground, Iron Council just feels like one of those overstuffed mega-budget Hollywood blockbusters that's all special effects and no heart. Even Miéville's crazy knack for creating endless menageries of bizarre creatures has lost its power to impress. "Oh look, a man with half another man's body grafted on," or, "Oh look, a centaur person with his head facing backwards" pretty much sums up one's reaction to the almost conveyor-beltlike parade of weirdities trotted out in Iron Council . Do I still think China Miéville is a freaking genius? Yes I do. Do I also think geniuses are fallible mortals like the rest of us? Yup. The story this time is set around 25 years or so after the events in the previous two volumes. I do admire the way Miéville resists the temptation — which he may have had thrust in his face relentlessly by his editors— to follow the routine pattern of series fiction, writing sequential novels in an ongoing saga that requires readers to start at a beginning volume. Miéville has had the extraordinary good fortune of being so good at what he does that most of his bibliography will remain in print for years based upon its merits, as opposed to someone like, say, Modesitt, who only has half of his in print because he's worked out the Piers Anthony formula for never letting a series end. But Iron Council , while it is a stand-alone story like its predecessors, will almost certainly be inaccessible to new readers who haven't read those books. It isn't particularly accessible to hardcore Miéville fans (he said, speaking as one). It literally takes about 200 pages for this book to get interesting, which is something I'm much more used to saying about Terry Goodkind. We begin at a time when turmoil is the order of the day in New Crobuzon. A war — and no one is sure how it started — has broken out with a neighboring city-state called Tesh, and it effects are bleeding out into the countryside surrounding New Crobuzon. Meanwhile, economic strife in the city is fomenting dissatisfaction among its mercantile class that is a hair's breadth away from turning into outright revolution. Within the city, a disenchanted playwright named Ori Cuiraz is growing sick and tired of the "all talk no action" policy that the Caucus, a loose group of merchants opposed to the government, seems intent on following. Ori seeks out a popular rebel figure named Toro, who, word has it, actually plans to assassinate New Crobuzon's mayor, and toward this end meets up with a curious tramp named Spiral Jack, once a follower of another legendary rebel hero. Outside the city, another group of desperate figures led by Judah Low — who has the magecraft to create golems out of almost anything, including — and his merchant/rebel lover Cutter seek another possible resolution to the building crisis at home: the Iron Council, a nearly-mythic gang of renegade railway workers who, years back, successfully fought against the heartless working conditions their employers kept them under during New Crobuzon's expansionist fever. Now the survivors of the rebellion roam the distant landscape on the train they hijacked, which has now mushroomed into a little city all its own. If the Iron Council is found and can be persuaded to return to New Crobuzon, it is believed, it would be a triumphant boost to the morale of the rebel forces in the city, a sign that it is truly possible to fight against corrupt leadership and win. Judah Low was with the Iron Council at its inception, and holds out hope he can win them over. The backstory of the Iron Council, which is also the backstory of Judah Low, is the book's most compelling sequence, and one that at its best moments lives up to the achievements of The Scar . Certainly Miéville brings his own socialist leanings into his world-building with a passion. In about 150 pages Miéville covers a broad swath of story, detailing Judah Low's own history, his discovery of his golem-creating art, his joining the railway gangs, and the incident (a simple thing: the pay is held up) that starts with a strike and eventually erupts into a full-blown war. It's a terrific, eye-popping piece of storytelling — and the image of the runaway Iron Council, a "perpetual train" traveling a makeshift track that is constantly being built ahead with the rails that are pulled up from behind, is a deliriously inspired bit that is pure China Miéville. But nothing that comes after in the book lives up to it. You might have noticed plot elements in the synopsis up to now that would seem to be commentary on numerous real-world events, both current and historical. There were times reading Iron Council when I wondered if Miéville intended New Crobuzon here to represent America. One could certainly draw parallels between New Crobuzon's expansionism via railroad with America's own in the 19th century, and it would certainly jibe with Miéville's anti- laissez-faire -capitalism politics. But any relationship between New Crobuzon's war with Tesh and American military misadventures like the war in Iraq or the "War on Terror" is probably coincidental (although Tesh is rumored to have some weapons of magical destruction up its sleeve). Miéville has never been one to trade in obvious social commentary via transparent metaphors. But he's also never been one to bore the daylights out of readers with tedious, drawn-out battle scenes that lack strong protagonists you can root for, either. There's no one in Miéville's rogue's gallery of unlikely heroes who is all that appealing this time. In fact I barely noticed at one point when one major character died. For the most part, despite the occasional setpiece in which Miéville reminds us just how compelling and vital a writer he can be, much of Iron Council comes across as the sophomore slump one book late. Miéville seems to be going through the motions, and now and then, the novel suffers implausibilities, something Miéville's never had before. I couldn't really buy that the Iron Council would still, after all these years, be thought of by New Crobuzon's government as such a threat that the city would continue to send militia thousands of miles across the landscape to hunt them down — especially at a time when New Crobuzon is having to deal with both civil insurrection and war with a neighbor. ("General principles" isn't a good enough reason.) One reader — not a Miéville fan — said to me recently, "I think he's about ten years ahead of his time." Whatever the case, I'm confident it won't be nearly that long before Miéville once again astonishes me as he has before. China Mieville. 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: 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. Iron Council. Following Perdido Street Station and The Scar , acclaimed author China Miéville returns with his hugely anticipated Del Rey hardcover debut. With a fresh and fantastical band of characters, he carries us back to the decadent squalor of New Crobuzon—this time, decades later. It is a time of wars and revolutions, conflict and intrigue. New Crobuzon is being ripped apart from without and within. War with the shadowy city-state of Tesh and rioting on the streets at home are pushing the teeming city to the brink. A mysterious masked figure spurs strange rebellion, while treachery and violence incubate in unexpected places. In desperation, a small group of renegades escapes from the city and crosses strange and alien continents in the search for a lost hope. In the blood and violence of New Crobuzon’s most dangerous hour, there are whispers. It is the time of the iron council. . . . The bold originality that broke Miéville out as a new force of the genre is here once more in Iron Council : the voluminous, lyrical novel that is destined to seal his reputation as perhaps the edgiest mythmaker of the day. China Miéville's novel Iron Council is the tumultuous story of the "Perpetual Train." Born from monopolists' greed and dispatched to tame the western lands beyond New Crobuzon, the train is itself the beginnings of an Iron Council formed in the fire of frontier revolt against the railroad's masters. From the wilderness, the legend of Iron Council becomes the spark uniting the oppressed and brings barricades to the streets of faraway New Crobuzon. The sprawling tale is told through the past-and-present eyes of three characters. The first is Cutter, a heartsick subversive who follows his lover, the messianic Judah Low, on a quest to return to the Iron Council hidden in the western wilds. The second is Judah himself, an erstwhile railroad scout who has become the iconic golem-wielding hero of Iron Council's uprising at the end of the tracks. And the third is Ori, a young revolutionary on the streets of New Crobuzon, whose anger leads him into a militant wing of the underground, plotting anarchy and mayhem. Miéville ( The Scar , Perdido Street Station ) weaves his epic out of familiar and heavily political themes--imperialism, fascism, conquest, and Marxism--all seen through a darkly cast funhouse mirror wherein even language is distorted and made beautifully grotesque. Improbably evoking Jack London and Victor Hugo, Iron Council is a twisted frontier fable cleverly combined with a powerful parable of Marxist revolution that continues Miéville's macabre remaking of the fantasy genre. --Jeremy Pugh.