Iron Council - China Miéville

   2004; 564 pages.  Book 3 in the “Bas-Lag” trilogy.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Steampunk Fantasy; Sword and Sorcery; Weird Fantasy.  Laurels: 2005 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel (winner).  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

 

    Three men, all of them believers, all of them revolutionaries, all of them searching for something.

 

    Cutter is wandering through the wastelands, searching for Judah Low and the Iron Council.  He wants to warn them that the city-state mega-power, New Crobuzon, has dispatched forces to seek out and destroy them.

 

    Judah Low is the Iron Council’s somaturge (their what??).  He’s dedicated his life to the overthrow of New Crobuzon.  He’s searching for others that share his rebellious passion.

 

    Ori is a resident of New Crobuzon, and a jaded member of the underground resistance there.  He’s tired of his compatriots talking the talk, but not walking the walk.  He’s searching for a way to light a spark of action amongst his fellow dissidents.

 

    New Crobuzon can be summed up by three M’s:  Militia, Magisters, and the Mayor.  Maybe even add a fourth, Mages.  They can crush any and all of the resisters.  If only they can locate them.

 

What’s To Like...

    Iron Council is the closing book in China Miéville’s fantastic Bas-Lag trilogy.  The first two books are reviewed here and here.  The three novels are all standalones; the storylines are not connected and the characters are completely different in each tale.  What ties them together is the setting – New Crobuzon, the main city in Bas-Lag.

 

    For the most part, we follow the lives of the three men mentioned in the introduction, primarily how they impact and relate to the Iron Council, which is a group of dissident railroad-builders that have seized one of the government’s trains along with its rail-laying equipment.

 

    China Miéville’s superb writing skills are once again displayed here: incredibly detailed world-building, deep and fascinating character development, a masterful vocabulary, and a complex and compelling storyline.  Our trio of rebel protagonists are pitted against a well-equipped and numerically superior foe, and they find it hard to keep their followers, and themselves, from giving up and running away.

 

    Iron Council is written in English, not American, which is always a treat for me.  It’s both a steampunk and a sword-&-sorcery tale, with weapons such as pistols, crossbows, blunderbusses, rive-bows, and motor-guns.  The magic/thaumaturgy is on a par with the weaponry: you can “glamour” someone, be a whispersmith, or make use of verity-gauging.  Judah Low is a somaturge, a rare magic art that enables him to conjure up golems out of just about any substance, and which he learned while staying with the stiltspears.  Stiltspears and golems are just a smattering of the strange and interesting creatures that you’ll meet along the way in this story.

 

    I liked that the revolutionary heroes portrayed here are not perfect.  They squabble, get depressed, get mad, and have to contend with situational ethics.  One example of the latter is the tagline that appears below, right after the two excerpts.

 

    The ending is both hopeful and sad, as well as brilliantly unexpected while at the same time slightly anticlimactic.  Judah Low conceives and constructs it, and it's a wonderful answer to the dilemma of what to do when one is up against overwhelming odds.  It leaves the door open for a sequel, but China Miéville has not penned one in the 19+ years since Iron Council was published, so I think we can safely say the series is complete.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Cacotopic (adj.) : of an imaginary place where everything is as bad as it can be.

Others: Chaverim (n., plural); Boscage (n.), Somaturge (n.); Gurned (v.), Hadal (adj.); Tain (n.); and dozens more.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.1/5 based on 964 ratings and 170 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.72/5 based on 15,293 ratings and 1,077 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “Toro’s out there and he’s doing something, yeah?  He’s fighting, and he’s not waiting like you keep waiting.  And you sit and wait, and tell him he’s getting ahead of himself?

    It’s not like that.  I won’t snip at anyone fighting the magisters, or the militia, or the Mayor, but Toro can’t change things on his own, or with his little crew, Jack . . .”

    “Yeah but he’s changing something.”

    “Not enough.”

    “But he’s changing something.”  (pg. 76)

 

    “We have a responsibility,” Ann-Hari said.  Cutter never felt eased in her presence.  The fervour in her unnerved him—it made him tired and uncertain of himself, as though she might win him over against his will.  He knew he was jealous—no one had had such as effect on Judah Low as Ann-Hari.

    “We’re a dream,” she said.  “The dream of the commons.  Everything came to this, everything came here.  We got to here.  This is what we are.  History’s pushing us.  (pg. 514)

 

If one death’ll stop ten, ain’t it better?  If two deaths’ll save a city?  (pg. 370)

    There are some quibbles.  China Miéville has never shied away from using cusswords in his novels, and here I counted 34 cases in the first 10% of the book.  That doesn’t include the clever use of “faux cussing”, including terms like “for Jabber’s sake”, “godsdamn”, and “in Jabber’s name.”  There’s also several instances of several types of sex—hetero, homo, manual—and a bit of cross-dressing.

 

    There’s an extended backstory/flashback section early on telling how the Iron Council came to be.  It comes without any warning to the reader, which confused me at first, but you’ll know you’ve hit it when the new chapters are no longer numbered.

 

    China Miéville is an unabashedly left-leaning activist (read the Wikipedia article), and a lot of readers seemed to be upset that this is reflected in the Iron Council storyline, which may explain how a Locus Award-winning novel can have such mediocre ratings at Amazon and Goodreads.

 

    Some of the vocabulary the author utilizes will keep you resorting to Google for enlightenment.  Personally I had fun discovering which words were incredibly obscure (such as “tain”), and which were made-up ones by Miéville (such as “somaturge”).

 

    Finally, and repeating a quibble from my reviews of the previous two tales, this series screams for a map and a Cast of Characters.

 

    I thoroughly enjoyed Iron Council, and the Bas-Lag trilogy as a whole.  Those quibbles just mean Miéville is treating the reader as an adult, and the lushness and complexity of the text and storyline mean that he also assumes that the reader is reasonably intelligent and imaginative.  This was my ninth China Miéville book, and none of them have disappointed me.

 

    9 Stars.  China Miéville is renowned and respected enough that the definitions for even his made-up words can be found by googling them.  “Somaturge” was confusing me until I looked it up.

The Scar - China Miéville

   2002; 578 pages.  Book Two (out of three) in the “Bas-Lag” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Steampunk Fiction; Weird Fantasy.  Laurels: 2003 British Fantasy Award (winner); 2003 Locus Award (winner); nominated for 2002 British Science Fiction Award, 2002 Phillip K. Dick Award, 2003 Arthur C. Clarke Award, 2003 Hugo Award, and 2003 World Fantasy Award.  Overall Rating : 9½*/10.

 

    Bellis Coldwine is going on an extended cruise.  She boarded the ship Terpsichoria in the capital city of New Crobuzon and is headed for the distant port of Nova Esperium.

 

    The Terpsichoria is not your typical cruise ship though.  It’s primarily used to transport slaves throughout the empire although paying passengers such as Bellis are also welcomed.  But this is not a pleasure voyage for Bellis; it’s one of desperation.  Her friends and acquaintances in New Crobuzon have been “disappearing” in the middle of the night, and it's not hard to figure out that it won’t be long before whoever the abductors are, probably the New Crobuzon militia, will soon be coming for her as well.

 

    Alas, Fate has a detour in store for Bellis.  The open sea is a dangerous place, and the Terpsichoria has just been captured by pirates.  They’re freeing the slaves and press-ganging both them and passengers into becoming residents of the floating pirate metropolis of Armada.

 

    Oh well.  Any port in a storm is fine by Bellis.  What’s important to her is where she’s fleeing from, not where she is, or where she’s going.

 

What’s To Like...

    The Scar is the second book in China Miéville’s “Bas-Lag” trilogy.  It’s not really a sequel, but it’s set in the same world as Book One, Perdido Street Station, which I read more than ten years ago and is reviewed here.

 

    China Miéville’s world-building in The Scar is both ambitious and masterfully done.  Most of the story takes place on the giant ocean-borne city of Armada, which has citizens dwelling both above and below the water surface.  The city itself is made up of dozens upon dozens of watercraft seized by the pirates, welded together, and converted into an urban area.  That may sound a bit contrived, but in Miéville’s hands it works perfectly.

 

    The character development is equally dazzling.  For the most part, we follow Bellis's adventures and intrigues, as she struggles to come to grips with the fact that Armada is both her new and permanent home.  We meet all sorts of sentient species that have found a haven in, under, and around Armada, including crays (half-human/half crayfish), cactacae (“cactus people”), dinichthys (“bonefish”), vampires (called “vampir”), anophelli (“mosquito people”), scabmettlers, grindylow, and the bizarre, artificially-fashioned “Remade”.  Who knows, maybe we'll even spot a creature called the godwhale, otherwise known as the "mountain-that-swims".

 

    Lots of species means lots of spoken languages, and Bellis finds herself in a key position of a translator due to her working knowledge of some of the more arcane tongues.  She may not be fluent in all of these, but for now she’s the best resource the wandering pirates have got.

 

    The storyline is complex, which is typical for China Miéville novels.  The reasons for Bellis’s fleeing New Crobuzon remain obscure for a long time, as does her determination to eventually return there.  Other press-ganged passengers from the Terpsichoria have their own reasons for wanting to contact New Crobuzon officials and some pirate leaders have their own agendas for steering Armada to uncharted waters.  It was a fun challenge to figure out who was using whom, and what ulterior motives the various main characters had.  It takes a while for the action to kick in alongside the intrigue, but once it does, you are treated to several exciting, chapter-long battle scenes.

 

    There is some magic (called “thaumaturgy”) present in the tale, including some very useful charmed artifacts, but it doesn’t overwhelm the storyline.  I liked the concept of “probability mining”, and chuckled at the fact that book-hoarding was considered a serious crime in the Garwater sector of Armada.  Miéville's choice of words is a vocabulary-lover’s delight: my favorites are given below, but there were lots more.

 

    Everything builds to a suitably exciting ending, including several twists to keep you on the edge of your seat.  In the end, Armada and its inhabitants are saved from a dire fate.  Or did they chicken out and miss a chance to gain unprecedented power?  That remains for the surviving characters, as well as the reader, to ponder.  Only China Miéville knows the answer.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Gurned (v.) : made a grotesque face (British).

Others: Disphotic (adj.); Integument (n.), Adumbrating (v.); Fatuous (adj.), Raddled (v.); Delimited (v.), Pusillanimous (adj.); Tup (v.), Detumescent (adj.); Bathetic (adj.), Benthic (adj.); Kitted (v., British), Blebbed (adj.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.5/5 based on 527 ratings.

    Goodreads: 4.17/5 based on 29,260 ratings and 1,817 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    In New Crobuzon, what was not regulated was illicit.  In Armada, things were different.  It was, after all, a pirate city.  What did not directly threaten the city did not concern its authorities.  Bellis’ message, like other secrets, did not have to strive to be covert, as it might back home to avoid the militia.  Instead, it sped through this wrangling city with ease and speed, leaving a little trail for those who knew how to look.  (loc. 6141)

 

    “They knew how to pick at the might-have-beens and pull out the best of them, use them to shape the world.  For every action, there’s an infinity of outcomes.  Countless trillions are possible, many milliards are likely, millions might be considered probable, several occur as possibilities to us as observers—and one comes true.

    “But the Ghosthead knew how to tap some of those that might have been.”  (loc. 6703)

 

Kindle Details…

    The Scar is presently priced at $11.99 at Amazon.  The other two books in the series go for $9.99 (Perdido Street Station) and $10.99 (The Iron Council).  China Miéville has another dozen or so full-length e-books for your Kindle, most of them fiction, ranging in price from $7.99 to $13.99.

 

Let’s help you come up with my plan.  (loc. 3646)

    It’s hard to find anything to quibble about in The Scar.  It took me a while to figure out what the main plotline was, but I suspect this was a deliberate on the part of Miéville, since it allows the reader to soak up the mesmerizing atmosphere of life on Armada.

 

    There’s a fair amount of cussing, with the f-bomb and variations of damn being the most popular choices, although the fabulous word "shat" also makes an appearance.  Cusswords involving deities are common too, with a majority of them invoking a local god called “Jabber”.  There are a couple rolls-in-the-hay by Bellis, one allusion to auto-eroticism, and repeated instances of "statuary-eroticism".  I'll let you muse on that last one.

 

    My final gripe is also the nit-pickiest: there are no maps, at least in the Kindle version of The Scar.  Given all the seafaring travel that Bellis and the pirates do, my brain was screaming for a chart showing this world.

 

    9½ Stars.  I’m of the opinion that, since the passing of Kurt Vonnegut some years back, the most skilled contemporary author is now China Miéville.  The Scar did nothing to change my viewpoint.  I have two more of his books sitting on my TBR shelf: Iron Council, which is the final book in this Bas-Lag trilogy, and October, a non-fiction historical account of the Russian revolution in October, 1917.  It’s a pleasant quandary to decide which of these I should read next.

King Rat - China Miéville

1998; 318 pages. New Author? : No. Genre : Horror Fantasy; and the more generic "New Weird". Awards : Nominated for the Bram Stoker Award, and the International Horror Guild Award. Overall Rating : 8*/10.

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Saul Garamond's father takes a dive out of the window in his high, top-floor apartment. Inspector Crowley thinks Saul might have given him a push. Saul quickly finds himself cooling his heels in a London jail, while the police continue their investigation. But a strange being, King Rat, shows up and teaches him how to squeeze through the jail door and effect a miraculous escape. Ah, but the adventure is only beginning...

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What's To Like...

The tension starts quickly (the police are already banging on Saul's door at page 20), and builds throughout the rest of the story. The storyline itself, a strange goth fairy tale, is masterfully done. The relationship between Saul and King Rat is complex and changing. But best of all is Miéville's descriptive skill. When he has finished detailing some seedy part of London, you just want to grab a towel and wipe the soot off your arms.

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There are a few rough edges. The characters of Inspector Crowley and Loplop (the Bird King) are developed nicely, only to see both of them fizzle into oblivion before the climax. And when Saul saves Loplop from certain death at the hands of the Ultimate Evil, you'd think the method used would give our heroes a clue as to how to win the day. It doesn't.

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There also are a lot of pages devoted to a music genre called "Drum and Bass"; including a six-page sermon on pages 206-211. I'll grant that D&B is an important part of the story, but I frankly didn't need to be told all the technical minutiae of it.

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Kewl New Words...

There were Britishisms, Cockney slang, and Miéville's fabulous vocabulary. Whids : slang for a line of malarkey. (I think). Kip : to sleep. Glutinous : sticky, gooey. Crepuscular : dim, like twilight. Entresol : a mezzanine; an intermediate floor in a building. Cynosure : something that provides guidance. Sardonically : sarcastically. Scran : a collection of things to eat. Cagoule : a lightweight parka. Solipsism : the (self-centered) philosophy that the self is all you need to know to exist. Skedge : a lookout (?) Here, "on we trog, slower now, on the skedge for a place to set us down". Cosseting : pampering. Gormenghast : a fictional castle of enormous proportions. Used here in a figurative sense. Darkmans/Lightmans : the dark/the light. Funambulism : walking on a tightrope. Subaltern (adj.) : lower in rank or position. Ineluctably : inescapably. Insouciance : the cheerful feeling you get when nothing is troubling you. Bathetic : effusively or insincerely emotional. Shufti : a quick look around (slang). Fe : slang for ??. I never did figure out exactly what.

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Excerpts...

He read Lenin's exhortations that the future must be grasped, struggled for, molded, and he knew that his father was trying to explain the world to him. His father wanted to be his vanguard. What paralyzes is fear, his father believed, and what makes fear is ignorance. When we learn, we no longer fear. (pg. 27)

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"You can't go back, you know." King Rat looked at Saul from under his eyelids. ...

"I know it," he said.

"They think you did your pa, and they'll do you for that. And now you've slung your hook from their old Bucket they'll have your guts for garters." (pg. 53)

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I'm the one that's always there. I'm the one that sticks. I'm the dispossessed, I'll be back again. I'm why you don't sleep easy in your bed. I'm the one that taught you everything you know, I've got more tricks up my sleeve. I'm the tenacious one, the one that locks my teeth, that won't give up, that won't ever let go.

I'm the survivor.

I'm King Rat. (pg 319; closing sentences)

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"...let's put the 'rat' back into Fraternity" (pg. 317)

This is a horror story told in comic-book hero style; and it works beautifully. The tale's the thing here, therefore the few technical flaws ought to be winked at. King Rat is a great first-effort by China Miéville, and by all accounts, he gets even better in stories like Perdido Street Station and The Scar (neither of which I've yet read), and Un Lun Dun (which I have). Eight Stars.