A profoundly beautiful novel, perhaps the best speculative fiction that I've read, but likewise certainly enriched by reference to its close companion text, The Scar, which parallels it in important ways, as well as to Perdido Street Station, which introduces its setting.As in The Scar, the narrative here involves a group of outcasts who travel on a more or less traditional quest to find something in particular. Both books involve a renegade, mobile city that interacts weirdly with a bizarre breach in the fabric of the setting (here, the Stain, there, the eponymous Scar). Both involve ambitious plans by the outcasts with broad geopolitical implications. Both testify to the abject failure of grand plans.The master figure of the writing is intervention. The terms appears expressly on very many occasions, referring most prominently to the golemetry of the foremost protagonist, who takes his name directly from the czech legend (a connection that is not frivolous, considering that the lengthy anamnesis section, itself a rhetorical intervention into the regular flow of narration, is a marxist retelling of the biblical Exodus); to the anarchist leader's nifty trick, an "ontic abomination" (397) that intervenes through space (327); to political puppet shows (306); and to numerous other items, including the cacotropic intervention of the Stain into normal space.The golemetry stuff is almost always an "intervention," and is very compellingly contrasted with the art of the elementarii (500 ff). Golemetry is "an argument, an intervention, so will I intervene and make a golem in darkness or in death, in elyctricity, in sound, in friction, in idea or hopes?" Rhetoric is golemetry, then, as is political praxis. The golemetrist here undergoes a transition, from a railway scout, engaged in genocide; to an amateur-xenologist-gone-native, whereupon he acquires golemetry skills; to radicalized railway worker; to senior revolutionary; and to several other roles, none insigificant. His trajectory is complicated, but memorable.Only slightly less important figuratively is puppetry, of all things. We're keyed into this figure early in the narrative, when a leftwing activist involves himself in a provocative (and perhaps Brechtian) puppet show, as part of his transformation from a traditional socialist (concerned with labor unions, strikes, parliamentary procedure, learned discussions about the "toil concept of worth" and "graphs of the swag-slump tendency" (96)) to a propaganda-of-the-deed anarchist who lacks both Hoffman's wit and Alinsky's cleverness. Groups are revealed to be unwitting puppets of other groups on several occasions. While this is business as usual on the bourgeois side, the revolutionaries regard this type of malappropriation to be worthy of execution in both instances where it occurs among their own leadership, working nicely with the discussion of Garuda law at the end of PSS.Another, the museum: the text presents several--a dead culture (167), a venereal grotesquerie (410), and impoverishment amid bourgeois excess (366). The denouement itself creates a unique museum, as part of a singular intervention. This last represents the ultimate in propaganda-of-the-deed tactics.The denouement makes plain its judgment over which leftwing strategy is superior, regarding the tactical disagreements between some anarchists and some socialists (not to suggest that those terms are necessarily or always mutually exclusive, of course). It nevertheless defers judgment on the issue of which internal socialist tendency is superior. The text's "to the Finland Station" moment is perpetually deferred at the novel's conclusion--and thus the very Soviet post-February-pre-October dyarchy of the city resolves itself without the arrival of the setting's Lenin. (The ending's deferral-of-a-difference, a chiasmus of difference-that-defers, is a slick Derridian joke, for those who like that stuff, incidentally.)The text sounds a pair of warnings: a revolution can become the tool of its own ruling class, and it can become the fifth column of another state's ruling class. Each of these possibilities is noted, insofar as railway industrialists might be able recapture their long-awaited profits, and as propaganda deeds can distract as much as they can awaken, even contrary to the intentions of the revolution.There's more to be said about many other items; every page is pregnant--but this should suffice.Recommended for sinistrals, fans of subversive puppet shows, and committed golemetrists.
This book was fantastic. I picked it up with some hesitation because of reviews I'd read, which said that Iron Council was "the weakest" of the series, that the plot and setting were a far cry from the complex, violently magical and Victorian-inspired backdrops of the previous two books. Other reviews simply said the book was too slow.And to some extent it is all true. Iron Council takes the reader much farther from the brilliant magics, sciences, and mythologies depicted in Perdido Street Station and The Scar. It explores less of the amazing creatures and races that were first introduced in those two books. And it also takes a much longer time to develop and for the motives of the main characters to become apparent. However, while I agree that Iron Council is the weaker of the Bas-Lag books for these reasons, it is still an incredibly powerful story for those very same reasons, and because of it, Iron Council stands alone as one of Mieville's most meaningful works.The focal point of the story is the titular Iron Council, the constantly moving train manned and lived in by former railroad workers turned renegade. Many of these railroad workers had once been criminals, jailed, then brutally (surgically) remade by the government into horrific mutilations of flesh, gear, steam, and engine, as eternal reminders of their crimes and lives as outcasts to be spat upon by society. It is this government of New Crobuzon that the workers, prostitutes, and renegades rise against, and from whom they steal the Iron Council. In doing so, the Iron Council becomes a beacon of necessary and long-sought freedom for all the people of back in the city-state of New Crobuzon, who themselves are caught in the chaos of political turubulence, as well as in war with the distant and fearsome land of Tesh.New Crobuzon itself is a city to explain all cities. In Perdido Street Station we are immersed in it, its sheer size and incredible diversity, and also its gruesome, horrifying underside. The Scar is set far away from New Crobuzon, but also further explores those people Remade by the government. But it is only in Iron Council that all these things are brought to a culmination. Its tremendous cast is what keeps this story amazing. They are shopkeepers, loom-workers, minorities, and Remade criminals. They are the commonality, they are you and I, oppressed by a government that is so ferociously bureaucratic, so sprawling, sick, and massively apathetic, that the appalling Remaking of its citizens has become accepted. Rebel organizations fill the streets of New Crobuzon, to debate, plan, and put into motion some way to subvert this despotism, to end the bloody, meaningless war with Tesh which is bringing home their soldiers maddened and horribly disfigured. They are stymied again and again, but with growing hope they speak about the the Iron Council, which is making its return, they say, to bring change to New Crobuzon. To renew and remake the city.Iron Council is a much more realistic book than its predecessors. I say "realistic" not because I mean that it features less of the fantastical. What I mean is that it places at the forefront issues which speak directly to our own society's struggles. The nature of freedom and visionary ideals are so beautifully explored in this story. While Perdido Street Station bespoke redemption and The Scar, possibilities, Iron Council is a testament of hope as well as challenge. The Iron Council must live on.
What do You think about Iron Council (2005)?
Dear China,It’s not you, it’s me.I wanted to like Iron Council, and there were parts of it I really did like, but the old magic was just not there.I remember first meeting you on the pages of Kraken, and your fantastic images, scenes and people made me want to spend more time with you.Then we spent some time together stepping in between Besźel and Ul Qoma and I realized the depth and virtuosity was more than a flash in the pan, you were on to some heady stuff, THE NEW WEIRD. I was hooked.Then I came to visit you in Bas-Lag. I was impressed by Perdido Street Station and blown away by The Scar.When I came back to Bas-Lag by way of the Iron Council, I was again impressed. A western? Steampunk fits that genre, sure! Only China could imagine that and then pull it off. And the politics, why not? Leftist political issues are important to you and so why not throw some of that in, the subversive intrigue would add a Joseph Conrad element to the narrative.All of the world building ingredients of your impressive imagination was there: the cactusae and the Vodyanoi – even an appearance of the Weavers.And yet …The narrative tended to drag, the action waxed and waned and bless your heart, you went on and on and on. Some editing, a hundred or so less, would have been more.You’re still a weird genius, still a bright star in the speculative fiction genre, and we can still be friends.Love,Lyn
—Lyn
‘El Consejo de Hierro’ es una novela ambientada en el fantástico mundo de Bas-lag, donde también transcurrían esas obras maestras que son ‘La estación de la Calle Perdido’ y ‘La cicatriz’. No cabe duda de que China Miéville es un escritor único, del que a duras penas puede ser comparado con ningún otro. Su visión de la fantasía, de naturaleza New Weird, oscura y pesadillesca, se aleja de todo lo conocido hasta el momento.En ‘El Consejo de Hierro’, de nuevo volvemos a Nueva Crobuzon, esa ciudad más allá de la imaginación donde cohabitan la taumaturgia, las razas alienígenas, los rehechos, los constructos, etc., bajo un gobierno corrupto. La novela se divide en tres hilos narrativos, y resulta imposible abarcar todo lo que acontece a lo largo de la historia. Cutter ha huido de Nueva Crobuzon junto con varios compañeros, en busca de un antiguo amigo. Miéville empieza fuerte el libro, con un principio plagado de criaturas y amenazas mágicas, todo ello con un claro aire de western. Otro personaje importante es Ori, un joven de Nueva Crobuzon que cada vez se encuentra más involucrado en un grupo extremista que lucha contra el gobierno vigente. Y por último está Judah Low, que se nos da a conocer a través de un largo flash-back, que nos sirve a su vez para saber del mítico Consejo de Hierro.La lectura de esta novela es un descubrimiento tras otro, y es que China Miéville posee un sentido de la imaginación prodigioso. Elementales de la naturaleza, gólems, seres vivos rehechos con partes mecánicas como castigo por sus crímenes, razas alienígenas a cual más extraña, taumaturgia cohabitando con ciencia y tecnología. Pero Miéville no se queda en lo fantástico, sería muy fácil quedarse en lo puramente aventurero, él va más allá, y nos muestra el conflicto político entre la ciudad y sus milicianos, y los grupos rebeldes, o la realidad existente ante la homosexualidad y la unión entre diferentes razas.Imaginativo, desmesurado, China Miéville es el gran escritor de literatura fantástica del momento, que se reinventa en cada novela.
—Oscar
December 2008Gods and Jabber, I don't know why I love this one the most. It's not necessarily better than the other Bas-Lag Books (don't you dare call them a trilogy, don't you dare. Old China says he'll always come back to this; there's more to come), and it's nowhere near the worst. There's just something about this that feels so radically different, so alien, so apart from the others. Perdido Street Station was new and fresh and amazing, yeah, but it felt familiar enough--while still being strange and fantastic, of course--that you still felt just-so comfortable reading it (or as comfortable as you could be reading about sex with bug-people), and The Scar was a fun old adventure story, exotic and equally fantastic but still an ab-sequel to PSS.But here, here, Iron Council rips us away from mid-1700s (Anno Urbis) New Crobuzon and tosses us thirty, forty years into a city that barely remembers the Midsummer Nightmares, and what's this? No more constructs? Jack's dead? Ben Flex is just a name? The fucking Militia's out?You want the same old city, you wish it could stay frozen in time, but New Crobuzon is different. Changed. It's darker, uglier, more cynical. And even when Cutter and the others escape, chasing the near-prophet Judah Low on his quest for the Iron Council, the city still clings to them like an oil slick. The city in Isaac's day was hardly bright and cheerful, but back then it still echoed with adventure. Now the militia are out, and everything else had to go into hiding. It's time to go west to bring the Iron Council home.That long out-west adventure-quest itself, and the long-ago middle piece detailing the uncertain gestation and sudden, violent birth of Iron Council, make up the bulk of the story, mixed with snatches of back-home reports of the small revolutionary movements taking place in the city, and this jump back and forth from cynical near-despair to hopeful optimistic questing is what makes this a hard, weird novel. It jumbles in places, it tosses about; it's not always a pleasant read, or an easy one. It's tougher, more political, more insistant. But it's so good. So rewarding. And even the end, that fat and unnatural anticlimactic-climax, that so-wrong final meeting of the Council and the City, even as you want to yell "that is not how it should have happened!" you cannot help but think "Yes, yes, that is how it was, how it is, how it should be." There is something strange and wonderful about Mieville's works that both frustrate and inspire.Mieville likes playing with cities. New Crobuzon is exotic enough already, and the ship-city of Armada from TS was plenty awesome. Here we have Iron Council itself, the perpetual train, ungrateful child of New Crobuzon. Makes you almost giddy wondering what Old China will give us next.
—Jacob
