Iron Council

This is the third novel that Mieville has published set in the world of Bas-Lag, centred on the city-state of New Crobuzon, a city of dreadful night in the mould of Viriconium or Dickensian London, a place of contending political groups and many alien races.
Although the stories’ gravitic centre is New Crobuzon, the second novel (The Scar) took the reader away to sea, and the third involves a number of journeys, aligning itself with the western at times - because in this particular case a railway is being built. It is a huge undertaking purpose is to further political and economic cause. But far away from the city and the militia, a rebellion happens.

The railway workers turn against their masters, free the Remade (prisoners who have had strange and capricious things done to their anatomies as a punishment) and take over the train which they name the Iron Council. Chief among the characters in this part of the story is a golemist, one whose power - learnt among a swamp-dwelling humanoid race that the train is later to destroy - is to animate dead matter and make it walk. Mieville gives him the name Judah Low, like the Prague rabbi who legendarily made a man of clay and animated it with a written word in its mouth. The Iron Councillors have to come up from scratch with a world which they themselves control, though there is still work to be done and platelayers still lay plates. The whores seem to stop being whores though.

Another string of the story involves the rebellion in New Crobuzon itself, where Ori, a disaffected youth, joins an underground newspaper called Runagate Rampant. Inspired by the legendary rebel and martyr Jack Half-a-Prayer, he seeks more direct action and may be led to it by a mysterious old man who draws spirals on the walls and tells him, 'Less yammer, more hammer.' To him and his comrades, the Iron Council becomes another legend, and the dream is that when they rise up against the rulers of New Crobuzon, the train will return home, presumably something like Lenin arriving at the Finland Station at the start of the Russian Revolution. While this is happening, though, the city is under attack from outside as well as from within, and although the rebels don’t want to be conquered by the alien Tesh they also don’t want their city-state to win. It is a revolution, not The Revolution in which many believe, like fundamentalists believing in The Rapture, but a revolution still.

While all this is going on, and the politics does tend to assume centre stage at times, Mieville’s imagination is in full cry, with a panoply of aliens (‘xenians’ is the term used here), some of which we have seen before and others less so. The garuda, who were significant in Perdido Street Station, are all but absent here, but the humanoid/insectile Khepri, the cactus-like Cacatacae and the amphibious human-descended Vodyanoi make an appearance. As does a Weaver; but it is now no longer a truly vast creature living in a parallel world into which it abducts people. Less than it was, a giant telepathic spider, but still pretty rare - not something that most people would expect to encounter in a lifetime, it is very nearly a god. There are flying men and handlingers and places where the land itself has gone bad and sprouts monsters, and other strange and wonderful things many of which, when the Iron Council arrives among them, have already been killed off by the Militia who are hunting them down. It is a fearsome thing, to have an imagination like that.

Turmoil is growing in the city-state of New Crobuzon. The people are being exploited by industrialists and suppressed by the government. One man sets out across the continent to find the illusive Iron Council. Another man, not content to simply distribute leaflets, joins a gang which has a bigger plan.

This is China Mieville's third novel set in Bas-Lag, a sort of fantasy-cum-steampunk world. While the first novel, Perdido Street Station, spent a lot of time exploring the city of New Crobuzon, this one assumes you are already familiar with the surrounds, so it doesn't spend much time building atmosphere. It doesn't even have the feel of Armada from The Scar. My suggestion would be to read Perdido Street Station first; and, if you find it merely mediocre, don't bother reading the other books, because each novel in the series gets progressively worse.

In a couple of ways, Mieville has improved as a writer. Firstly, his politics are now part of the story rather than blatant lectures in the narrative. Secondly, he no longer needs to rely on such a large group of characters to keep his story going, which gives him more time to spend on the ones he does use. Unfortunately, most of the characters in this story are either boring or else extremely boring. That means we get to spend a great deal of time with a bunch of dull, passive, whiny people. There is one that isn't too annoying, and he does have a prominent part, but Mieville sort of forgets about him towards the end. While I originally listed this as an improvement in his writing ability, it seems to have backfired on him. He should probably stick the the multi-character writing.

Another source of annoyance is the narrative. Mieville loves his thesaurus, no doubt about that. He also loves to over-write. While I hate to use the term, "purple prose" seems an apt description of Mieville's style. "Clumsy" and "awkward" are also good words to use as well. And I've successfully read several Philip Roth novels, so I don't use those terms flippantly. Here's an example of what Mieville feels passes for good writing:

Only the opalescence in the air was left. It began to thicken, moving and congealing like eggwhite in hot water, into a stinking solidity. It inspissated, fell in clots, mucal rain, and the sky and air was empty.
　　A silence gathered, then ebbed, and Cutter heard the shoot-sounds of the war again.