Iron Council - Mille feuilles

No cover — Iron Council (2005, Pan MacMillan)

400 pages

Published July 8, 2005 by Pan MacMillan.

ISBN:: 978-0-330-49252-2

(1 review)

Following Perdido Street Station and The Scar, acclaimed author China Mieville 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 …

Following Perdido Street Station and The Scar, acclaimed author China Mieville 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 Mieville 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.From the Hardcover edition.

10 editions

4thace@books.theunseen.city reviewed Iron Council by China Miéville

A dense, hallucinatory read

3 stars

I listened to this audiobook on the advice of someone who'd read the trilogy it is part of. I had mentioned to them that I found the second book The Scar lacking to the point where I failed to finish reading it and they said this third volume had more in common with the first book Perdido Street Station, which I had liked. The action takes place after these other books in a setting that has elements of the weird and of magical realism with a set of characters distinct from those other books. It is more overtly political as it depicts the struggle between the upper classes of New Crobuzon who use the city militia to maintain their dominance and the working classes. The sympathis are with the revolutionary sentiments of the latter. The story bounces between a number of revolutionaries, taking place both in the city and across …

I listened to this audiobook on the advice of someone who'd read the trilogy it is part of. I had mentioned to them that I found the second book The Scar lacking to the point where I failed to finish reading it and they said this third volume had more in common with the first book Perdido Street Station, which I had liked. The action takes place after these other books in a setting that has elements of the weird and of magical realism with a set of characters distinct from those other books. It is more overtly political as it depicts the struggle between the upper classes of New Crobuzon who use the city militia to maintain their dominance and the working classes. The sympathis are with the revolutionary sentiments of the latter. The story bounces between a number of revolutionaries, taking place both in the city and across the continent, over a span of years. the Iron Council is a train which has been hijacked by a crew of leftists (they lay track in front of it and pull up the track behind it so the thing can travel to any part of the land) which has become a powerful symbol of the opposition to the elites. There are various forms of magic, strange intelligent species living in tension with one another, and the mutilation of convicts to produce an enslaved class of workers, all of which combines to give the impression of a dream world. There are also disturbing scenes of sex and violence along the way. It is all a heavy load for the reader to make sense of and there were stretches where I would lose my way as the lush prose just carried on. By the end, though, all the machinations did combine to produce an emotional climax that does not try to reach a settled verdict on who was good and who was evil.

I would say that I admired parts of this book, more than enjoyed it as a whole. Perhaps it would have been easier for me to digest presented as a set of linked stories rather than as a hulking novel. There might have been a single theme buried among the axtravagance on display but it wasn't on the surface as far as I can tell.