Iron Council

It's Mieville. You came here to read about New Crobuzon and the world -- ok, you get a pass there. What a shame it's locked behind one of the most dense, self-indulgent writing styles around.Mieville invents a new word every page, litters in a dozen 10-letter-plus english dartboard picks, and calls it a day until the next page. Unreadable garbage designed to stroke his ego and make it as difficult as possible to navigate his story. The "Ulysses" of his books. Completely unnecessary.The characters are either shallow or draw your utter contempt; with the major character described in early going as "cynical" and then completely failing to show any such worldview; another beatific man of mystery who is arrogantly inscrutable and unlikeable (and happens to change his mind every so often, very useful so we can follow the plot -- yuck!); a revolutionary city-dweller who dies off-screen; another who 50 pages from the end who turns out to be a SURPRISE! traitor. Just horrible all around.Don't waste your time with this book. I read it to the end and regret it.

3.5/5 • Once again Mieville displays his trademark creative and literary flair. IRON COUNCIL brims with ideas, so much so in fact that it sometimes seems as though he’s struggling to cram them all in. As with the other Bas-Lag novels, this is outlandish stuff. And I love it for that. Mieville has an imagination to die for. He creates worlds that are mindboggling not only in their strangeness but it in their vividness. His is a fertile mind, that’s for shizzle. So why only 3.5/5? Well, when compared to The Scar, and Perdido Street Station, IRON COUNCIL has a less fulfilling story. It just isn’t quite as compelling as it could be and feels rather ponderous at times. Also, the two parallel storylines didn’t come together as effectively as I would have liked. Don’t get me wrong: this isn’t a dull or bad story it’s just not up to Mieville’s usual standard (although it does have a rounded ending, unlike some of his other books). Good, but not his best.

I raced Through PSS and The Scar - loved them and couldn't not put them down. I have been reading Iron Council for ages. I'm only third through and am seriously struggling. I have no idea what is going on. It's really hard to follow the plot and as far as I can see it's a load of disconnected people having random sex. I have no idea what CM was aiming for on this but if he had me hooked on the first two he has totally lost me on this one.

Mieville's conclusion to the Perdido Street Station trilogy is dense, magical, bewildering and brilliant. Out in the wastes beyond New Crobuzon a rag tag band searches for the legendary Iron Council, a train taken by rebels into the wilderness when the City refused to pay their wages. In New Crobuzon unrest is rife and the people are in covert revolt against their authoritarian rulers, themselves at war against the mysterious Tesh, and the two strands come into painful contactMieville introduces us to an incredible cast: Remade, people punished by the authorities by being surgically altered to be part machine; their rebel counterparts the fReemade; magicians; golems; all manner of creatures part bird, bat and insect; stomach churning spells, the visceral urban grit of New Crobuzon and the bewildering landscape outside where smoke turns to stone petrifying its victims and nothing is fixed. And all this in an opaque bewitching language that often had me reaching for the dictionary. Worth the work though.

If you are a fan of China Miéville, then you will know what to expect. Without a doubt, some of his writing is truly brilliant, and some of his plot twists are equally unexpected.However, sometime it seems the reader is drawn in a nightmare labyrinth of prose. I have yet to decide whether this is a flaw, or simply just the author writing at a level that is beyond me.Having said that, this book struck me as being more accessible that previous novels by this author.Treat this as an exotic meal, complex, and not entirely digestible, but at the same time, novel and the opposite of bland, and I am sure that you will appreciate the read.