Iron Council 72
| 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:
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."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."
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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Quick Review (Score:4, Interesting)
I had previously read Perdido Street Station. PSS was a little hard to get into. But Mieville's writing is such that you can't help but be drawn into the strange milieu of New Crobuzon. I ended up liking it enough that I bought Iron Council on the spot when I saw it.
I am reading Iron Council now. Again, it is quite hard getting into. The story at the start jumps around temporally and in location. About a third of the way in it settles into a more linear narrative which I find easier to get involved in. After reading PSS I am probably getting more out of the writing than someone hitting New Crobuzon for the first time. With the second book I think Mieville is better able to 'toss off' a fleeting reference to something and for that to actually mean something to the reader.
Right now I'd say I'll persevere to the end. I like Mieville's writing style. I like the setting. I would prefer I cared a bit more about the characters. And it would be nice if the plot felt like it were building somewhere. I'm driven to finish mostly to find out where the story is going. And a little by wanting to find out more about New Crobuzon. 6/10 so far....
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Perdido Street Station and the Scar (Score:3, Interesting)
Although not reading an author's previous works allows for a more objective point of view I do believe it would be helpful in setting up New Crobuzon as a back drop. Also, I think the reviewer needs to do a little more analysis on regarding why two of the central character's deaths "are of no moment." The bells and whistles should be going off. Why does it evoke this feeling? How has it evoked this feeling? Is Mieville trying to say something about how the world, other characters, or the readers as an audience react? Or doesn't it matter? Is the lack of "characterization" an allusion to a greater departure of self or in fact a lack of meaning in the world? There are so many questions that a reviewer should ask his/herself before commenting on a work.
Needless to say, I loved Perdido Street Station and the Scar, however, I do think that Iron Council is a work within itself and what it lacks in an externally driven world more than makes up for it when it unites the two in the "revolution."