Name: Michael Springer's review of Iron Council by China Miéville
Item: Iron Council
Rating: 3
Author: Michael Springer

China Miéville

A new cast of characters shares mythical adventures in the sprawling, phantasmagoric city of New Crobuzon.

Iron Council

China Mi'ville

Focuses on the fabulous city of New Crobuzon and its very special world. It is a time of revolts and revolutions, conflict and intrigue. New Crobuzon is being ripped apart from without and within.

Michael Springer

So, here we are in Bas Lag again. According to interviews, Mieville sounds like he has every intention of returning to the world of Bas Lag in the future, so I won't refer to this as "the last Bas Lag novel." But, as of 2009, it's the most recent.

I found the experience of reading Iron Council markedly different from the first two books set in this world. For one, in this book the story isn't as localised. We have met the city of New Crobuzon in Perdido Street Station and the pirate collective of Armada in The Scar. Now, we're in New Crobuzon again, along with tons of other places. 

Iron Council chronicles the war between Tesh and New Crobuzon, a war that is occuring at the same time that citizens of New Crobuzon are attempting to overthrow the political party in power. The Iron Council itself is a essentially a runaway train--a train that was intended to link New Crobuzon to other large cities. But, when the government refused to pay the workers on this train as they traveled along, building the tracks, the workers stole the train. They began picking up the tracks behind them, and the train passed off the border of any maps. They went so far that New Crobuzon was afraid to follow. 

Well, rumor has it that the Iron Council is returning. In an already heated political climate, the return of the Iron Council is gunpowder. 

The novel has a very compelling plot, and some of the most poetic and fantastic scenes in the whole Bas Lag sequence. As his characters travel through uncharted regions, bizarre creatures we haven't seen before show up regularly. 

Also, this story has the most optimistic ending I've yet read from Mieville. It's not exactly a "happy" ending...but, aren't those just boring anyway?

This book had a lot of things going for it. However, it wasn't as satisfying or engaging of a read as P.S.S. or The Scar for two main reasons. First, the main characters weren't as engaging. With one exception, the main characters weren't as complex as those from the other books. Character complexity is always a very big thing for me. Usually, it's the most important thing. Here, the main characters tend to have one motivation, one inspiration, and their actions follow logically from it. The characters don't act in ways that surprise me. 

The other reason this book wasn't as engaging is the writing just wasn't as clear. In a book where the fantastical and unusual is happening on a regular basis, it really helps if the writing puts a clear picture in the reader's head, and if new concepts aren't just tossed in without explanation. Through much of the book, I wasn't quite sure who was talking or exactly what was happening. I found myself frustrated on numerous occasions by the obscuring word-choices that Mieville made. 

Despite everything that I liked about this book, I gained no momentum while reading it. At no point was I particularly compelled to keep reading, and at no point did I really care how things would turn out for anyone involved. Although I thought the end was strong and moving, it didn't make up for all of the non-engaging passages that had come before. 

So, by no means was Iron Council a bad novel. But, it could've been as great as the other Bas Lag books, and it wasn't.

Hm. 3.5 stars to 4 stars? Can't decide if I'm being lenient because I loooove China Mieville or if this is actually a 4 star book...

This was, however, really bizarre. Not necessarily bizarre in a horrible way, but also not necessarily bizarre in a spectacular way. The (admittedly subjective) view I have of the New Crobuzon books looking back is that Perdido Street Station was great, The Scar was AMAZING, and Iron Council is kind of back at the great mark, if not maybe slightly worse than PSS. That said, it's still China Mieville. It's still great.

It's so weird because it's usually the opposite arc that trilogies (??? the vibe I got from this book made me feel that this is not at all trilogy-like, just a series that happens to be 3 books long, though, which is maybe something that I didn't like, but I also have no clue if it was meant to be a trilogy...maybe I just think it was) follow. Usually authors have a sophomore slump of a novel (see also the Mistborn books, the Scott Lynch books (even though RSURS was still to die for), whatever, I could go on) and then are back at it with their third book, but I have the (somewhat unpopular?) opinion that the Scar was the best Mieville book in the series. 

Anyway. There's no question Mieville is a talented writer, because he does have a serious gift.

  And the Weaver pulls in all its arms and drops lightly unreeled from its turning point in the air still sucking in what light there is and bloating on it as if it is the only real thing and Judah and the ground he stands upon and the threadbare trees he clutches are all old images, sun-bleached, on which a vivid spider walks.


(I excerpted something as representative but as vaguely not-quite-plot related as possible)

Whereas I fell in love with the Scar pretty much instantaneously, it took a little longer for me to love Iron Council, but I still ended up being glued to the last 300 pages or so. I read it in one fell swoop on a cross-US flight. I love Mieville's political leanings and how loud and proud he broadcast them in this book. 

So I guess where Iron Council just didn't do it for me was that it wasn't as focused, plot-wise, or even character-wise, as the other two books were. Ori's story in New Crobuzon seemed to jump up and then absolutely fizzle, and not even in the this-non-ending-is-more-realistic-than-a-grand-one way but just in a way that didn't make me feel anything at all. And meanwhile we were keeping up with two Iron Council stories set in different times, which I did like better than Ori's story because Judah and Cutter and Ann-Hari are such compelling characters, but it felt like we were being bounced like ping-pong balls based on the trajectory of where everyone was heading. Cutter and Judah and Drogon (what was the...point of Drogon?) and that flock head out to the Iron Council, and then it turns around to go to New Crobuzon, but then also there's the backstory of Judah going from New Crobuzon out with the original track of the Iron Council so long ago, and then there's Ori in New Crobuzon. 

Anyway. This is still a great read, though, so I'm not not recommending it. Especially if you've finished PSS and The Scar. You might as well, right?

Eric Jacobsen

Konrad Lischka

John

Hannah Swithinbank

The third novel in his amazing imaginative sequence focused on the fabulous city of New Crobuzon and its very special world It is a time of revolts 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 metropolis to the brink. In the midst of this turmoil, 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, an undying legend. In the blood and violence of New Crobuzon's most dangerous hour, there are whispers. It is the time of the Iron Council.

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Iron Council by China Miéville

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