Jayaprakash Satyamurthy
Knivesout no more
NOTE: Mild spoiler potential. If you're really picky about such things, come back after you've read the book. Cheers.
The revolution is dead. Long live the revolution.
Upon finishing China Mieville's 4th novel, Iron Council, I found myself reminded of Geroge Orwell's chronicle of his experiences as a partisan in the Spanish Civil War, Homage To Catalonia. The dissidents of New Crobuzon, with their factions and differences, their heady sense of purpose, all reminded me of Orwell's description of the socialist militias in Spain. Somehow, despite all the hardships, reverses and adversities, there was a sense that, for Orwell, the very fact that such a struggle could have existed was a sign of hope in itself.
Iron Council is a book about such hope, about such dreams.
The Iron Council is a renegade party of railroad workers, whores and assorted vagrants and hangers-on who break away from the continent-girding Transcontinental Railroad Trust when wages are delayed. This motley band steal the train they were working from and escape though the edges of the Cacotopic Stain - a place where the fabric of reality is torn - to establish Iron Council, nomad city, with its perpetual train, forever moving onwards. It is a symbol of freedom and hope to the embattled commoners of New Crobuzon, now labouring under an even more oppressive regime, one that is dedicated to an ongoing war with the Tesh, outlanders with strange powers.
The book follows two main narrative threads.
In the first, a party of Caucasist dissidents leave New Crobuzon to find Iron Council. They are following Judah Low, maker of golems, and a veteran of Iron Council who returned to New Crobuzon to tell its people about the perpetual train and its crew of free workers, somewhere out there in the wild.
The other main track follows Ori Ciuraz, casual labourer and revolutionary, who moves from the academic concerns of the Runagate Rampant faction and the avant-garde artistic protests of the Nuevists to the more extreme faction led by Toro, a mysterious figure who wears a thaumaturgically charged helmet in the form of a bull's head. He is introduced to them and given the means to enter their inner sanctum and join in asassinating the Mayor of New Crobuzon by an old derelict named Spiral Jacob, apparently a veteran of earlier dissident actions.
Midway through the book, we travel back in time with Judah Low, to witness the TRT's destruction of primal wilderness and tribal cultures, and the revolt that results in Iron Council.
The rest of the book ties the two threads together, with Judah's party reaching Iron Council and a decision to turn the perpetual train around, and head back to New Crobuzon. As they grow closer, they learn that all is not well in that gargoyled city. The revolution is in trouble, reduced to small pockets of dissent holding out against the might of New Crobuzon's militia. Worse, the Tesh are preparing to unleash a final strike against the city, an arcane attack which will destroy New Crobuzon forever if it is not stopped.
In the last parts of the book, this threat is halted, but the revolution is broken. The overlords of New Crobuzon resume their hold over the metropolis, while Judah Low ensures that the Iron Council will forever remain suspended in time, a symbol of hope to the common people of the city.
The moral divides in Iron Council are much simpler than the subversion of Socialist egalitarianism that Orwell witnessed in Spain. The rulers of New Crobuzon and the paragons of progress who spearhead its tentacled spread across the continent of Bas-Lag are shown as irrevocably power-drunk and corrupted. In that sense, Mieville is not breaking new moral ground for fantasy.
What he is doing, in some part, is examining aspects familiar to our own real world through the lens of a baroque, fecund and questing imagination. There are parallels to be drawn between the TRT, the was on the Tesh and our own world. And there's a message - that hope itself may be more important than the realisation of hope, that as long as we can dream of a better day, we still have a chance, somehow. Not an innappropriate message for a work of fantasy.
This third Bas-Lag novel can be read out of sequence from the other two, although the events described occur some two decades after Perdido Street Station and The Scar. It shares much with the other works though - not just the shared secondary world, but a blast of almost manic invention and rich description that continues to overwhelm the narrative at times, though less so than before. Mieville continues to write like a man drunk with words, but his storycraft has progressed. The multiple viewpoints, the more driven and complex plot, all offer a real sense of growth in one of the most exciting new writers in the genre. The prose is as complex and dense as before, but there are times when it takes on a syncopated, stacatto rhythm that is even more compelling.
Mieville has finally delivered on the potential of depicting a worker's revolt in a fantasy world. He has taken neither of the easy routes available to him - the triumph of good over evil or the 'say hello to the new boss, same as the old boss' aftermath. I'm not certain if this his best book - apart from the fact that one hopes that a favourite writer's finest work is always just around the corner, I somehow find that I slightly favour the urban fantasy of King Rat over the bas-Lag novels. Perhaps the constraints of an existing setting compelled Mieville to deliver a more focussed narrative, in that novel. In any case, in Bas-Lag, the three novels set there, and most of all, New Crobuzon, Mieville has created a secondary world and a set of thought-provoking adventures that amply reward the effort of exploration.
Long live the Iron Council. The perpetual train will never stop.
The revolution is dead. Long live the revolution.
Upon finishing China Mieville's 4th novel, Iron Council, I found myself reminded of Geroge Orwell's chronicle of his experiences as a partisan in the Spanish Civil War, Homage To Catalonia. The dissidents of New Crobuzon, with their factions and differences, their heady sense of purpose, all reminded me of Orwell's description of the socialist militias in Spain. Somehow, despite all the hardships, reverses and adversities, there was a sense that, for Orwell, the very fact that such a struggle could have existed was a sign of hope in itself.
Iron Council is a book about such hope, about such dreams.
The Iron Council is a renegade party of railroad workers, whores and assorted vagrants and hangers-on who break away from the continent-girding Transcontinental Railroad Trust when wages are delayed. This motley band steal the train they were working from and escape though the edges of the Cacotopic Stain - a place where the fabric of reality is torn - to establish Iron Council, nomad city, with its perpetual train, forever moving onwards. It is a symbol of freedom and hope to the embattled commoners of New Crobuzon, now labouring under an even more oppressive regime, one that is dedicated to an ongoing war with the Tesh, outlanders with strange powers.
The book follows two main narrative threads.
In the first, a party of Caucasist dissidents leave New Crobuzon to find Iron Council. They are following Judah Low, maker of golems, and a veteran of Iron Council who returned to New Crobuzon to tell its people about the perpetual train and its crew of free workers, somewhere out there in the wild.
The other main track follows Ori Ciuraz, casual labourer and revolutionary, who moves from the academic concerns of the Runagate Rampant faction and the avant-garde artistic protests of the Nuevists to the more extreme faction led by Toro, a mysterious figure who wears a thaumaturgically charged helmet in the form of a bull's head. He is introduced to them and given the means to enter their inner sanctum and join in asassinating the Mayor of New Crobuzon by an old derelict named Spiral Jacob, apparently a veteran of earlier dissident actions.
Midway through the book, we travel back in time with Judah Low, to witness the TRT's destruction of primal wilderness and tribal cultures, and the revolt that results in Iron Council.
The rest of the book ties the two threads together, with Judah's party reaching Iron Council and a decision to turn the perpetual train around, and head back to New Crobuzon. As they grow closer, they learn that all is not well in that gargoyled city. The revolution is in trouble, reduced to small pockets of dissent holding out against the might of New Crobuzon's militia. Worse, the Tesh are preparing to unleash a final strike against the city, an arcane attack which will destroy New Crobuzon forever if it is not stopped.
In the last parts of the book, this threat is halted, but the revolution is broken. The overlords of New Crobuzon resume their hold over the metropolis, while Judah Low ensures that the Iron Council will forever remain suspended in time, a symbol of hope to the common people of the city.
The moral divides in Iron Council are much simpler than the subversion of Socialist egalitarianism that Orwell witnessed in Spain. The rulers of New Crobuzon and the paragons of progress who spearhead its tentacled spread across the continent of Bas-Lag are shown as irrevocably power-drunk and corrupted. In that sense, Mieville is not breaking new moral ground for fantasy.
What he is doing, in some part, is examining aspects familiar to our own real world through the lens of a baroque, fecund and questing imagination. There are parallels to be drawn between the TRT, the was on the Tesh and our own world. And there's a message - that hope itself may be more important than the realisation of hope, that as long as we can dream of a better day, we still have a chance, somehow. Not an innappropriate message for a work of fantasy.
This third Bas-Lag novel can be read out of sequence from the other two, although the events described occur some two decades after Perdido Street Station and The Scar. It shares much with the other works though - not just the shared secondary world, but a blast of almost manic invention and rich description that continues to overwhelm the narrative at times, though less so than before. Mieville continues to write like a man drunk with words, but his storycraft has progressed. The multiple viewpoints, the more driven and complex plot, all offer a real sense of growth in one of the most exciting new writers in the genre. The prose is as complex and dense as before, but there are times when it takes on a syncopated, stacatto rhythm that is even more compelling.
Mieville has finally delivered on the potential of depicting a worker's revolt in a fantasy world. He has taken neither of the easy routes available to him - the triumph of good over evil or the 'say hello to the new boss, same as the old boss' aftermath. I'm not certain if this his best book - apart from the fact that one hopes that a favourite writer's finest work is always just around the corner, I somehow find that I slightly favour the urban fantasy of King Rat over the bas-Lag novels. Perhaps the constraints of an existing setting compelled Mieville to deliver a more focussed narrative, in that novel. In any case, in Bas-Lag, the three novels set there, and most of all, New Crobuzon, Mieville has created a secondary world and a set of thought-provoking adventures that amply reward the effort of exploration.
Long live the Iron Council. The perpetual train will never stop.
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