Paulclem
04-11-2011, 06:06 PM
I read this novel whilst waiting to read The City and The City, also by Mieville, with the Book Club earlier in the year. I had been impressed by his Perdido Street Station which is set in the same city and universe as The Iron Council.
It’s a brilliant book. I have read quite a few in the fantasy and sci fi genre, but none seems to combine such a lush descriptive power as Mieville does. He writes really well about large cities, and New Crobuzon fairly teems with life. You sense that he is an urbanite who has a lot of experience of London and perhaps an Asian metropolis like Mumbai. You can almost smell the fetid humidity of the less salubrious areas of the city. The damp seems to steam off the page. His city is a cosmopolitan melting pot of many species including the Vodyanoi – amphibious frog like beings who work the docks– Khepri – humans with insectile heads - and the Remade – criminals whose bodies are cruelly reworked into variously useful or useless forms with machines, insect parts, extra limbs and tools, and then utilised by the authorities as slaves.
The Iron Council itself is a train that slips from the grasp of New Crobuzon’s despotic government during a great rush to build the railway outwards into a sparsely populated land. I feel his use of the Western genre, including similar spoken language, is weaker than the urban parts of the book, yet it is again populated with a surprisingly fertile array of characters and species. It certainly works better than the limited amount of reading I’ve done on the Dark Tower series by Stephen king. It’s of the Western genre, but it’s not constrained by it. It really spans genres, being as a whole Steampunk, Fantasy and Western, yet with much much more within it.
The characters are also rich creations. Judah Law is the main protagonist who develops his thaumaturgic , (magical), powers into Golem creation. He supports the escape of the Iron Council, and returns to help the radicals who agitate amongst the slums of new Crobuzon, giving hope that there is an escape from the despots who run the city state.
Ori is an idealistic young radical who eventually hooks up with a subversive revolutionary group led by a mysterious, time shifting, bull headed leader called Toro. He also finds a wrecked old radical called Spiral Jacobs, who eventually becomes the key to a plot to overthrow the New Crobuzon government.
We see the novel through with Cutter, the lover and devotee of Judah law, who travels out to find The Iron Council and bring it back to support the uprising that eventually erupts in new Crobuzon. Cutter vies for the affections of Judah with Ann-Hari, an ex-prostitute who becomes the de facto leader of The Iron Council in its years of independence.
As a novel The Iron Council works right up to the end. The tension Mieville builds into the return of the train to support the new Crobuzon uprising is as good as I’ve read anywhere. It tops off a very rewarding novel.
So if you want a Fantasy, Steampunk and Western genre novel in an urban and wilderness setting, with radical politics and social rights, a cornucopia of characters and species, revolution, war, magic, plot twists and surprises, written in an engaging style that delights in the description of all these, then look no further. I couldn’t recommend it more highly.
It’s a brilliant book. I have read quite a few in the fantasy and sci fi genre, but none seems to combine such a lush descriptive power as Mieville does. He writes really well about large cities, and New Crobuzon fairly teems with life. You sense that he is an urbanite who has a lot of experience of London and perhaps an Asian metropolis like Mumbai. You can almost smell the fetid humidity of the less salubrious areas of the city. The damp seems to steam off the page. His city is a cosmopolitan melting pot of many species including the Vodyanoi – amphibious frog like beings who work the docks– Khepri – humans with insectile heads - and the Remade – criminals whose bodies are cruelly reworked into variously useful or useless forms with machines, insect parts, extra limbs and tools, and then utilised by the authorities as slaves.
The Iron Council itself is a train that slips from the grasp of New Crobuzon’s despotic government during a great rush to build the railway outwards into a sparsely populated land. I feel his use of the Western genre, including similar spoken language, is weaker than the urban parts of the book, yet it is again populated with a surprisingly fertile array of characters and species. It certainly works better than the limited amount of reading I’ve done on the Dark Tower series by Stephen king. It’s of the Western genre, but it’s not constrained by it. It really spans genres, being as a whole Steampunk, Fantasy and Western, yet with much much more within it.
The characters are also rich creations. Judah Law is the main protagonist who develops his thaumaturgic , (magical), powers into Golem creation. He supports the escape of the Iron Council, and returns to help the radicals who agitate amongst the slums of new Crobuzon, giving hope that there is an escape from the despots who run the city state.
Ori is an idealistic young radical who eventually hooks up with a subversive revolutionary group led by a mysterious, time shifting, bull headed leader called Toro. He also finds a wrecked old radical called Spiral Jacobs, who eventually becomes the key to a plot to overthrow the New Crobuzon government.
We see the novel through with Cutter, the lover and devotee of Judah law, who travels out to find The Iron Council and bring it back to support the uprising that eventually erupts in new Crobuzon. Cutter vies for the affections of Judah with Ann-Hari, an ex-prostitute who becomes the de facto leader of The Iron Council in its years of independence.
As a novel The Iron Council works right up to the end. The tension Mieville builds into the return of the train to support the new Crobuzon uprising is as good as I’ve read anywhere. It tops off a very rewarding novel.
So if you want a Fantasy, Steampunk and Western genre novel in an urban and wilderness setting, with radical politics and social rights, a cornucopia of characters and species, revolution, war, magic, plot twists and surprises, written in an engaging style that delights in the description of all these, then look no further. I couldn’t recommend it more highly.