Review of "Iron Council" by China Mieville

Though never delineated in any descriptive sense, Mieville’s first two books in the Bas-Lag world were set within a loosely-shaped, unspoken corral of ideas.  Potentialities certainly existed, but were not endless; Mieville came across as too erudite for the possibilities of the world to be infinite.  After all, Bas-Lag was not some washed out D&D setting or 46th generation Star Wars sequel that was desperately trying to refresh itself.  The ideas of Perdido Street Station alone so unique, whole series of books and stories could have been told within the confines of New Crobuzon.  One’s head still spins with the plethora of phantasmal notions contained between its covers.  With Iron Council, unfortunately, Mieville unlatches the gate and turns his story loose in the pastures of the infinite beyond.

Telepathy, warlocks casting spells – err, hexes, teleportation, psychic mind control, and a variety of other ill-timed, poorly described, and feebly connected plot devices flood the plot of “Iron Council” and leave it a wet, muddled mess.  Sixty pages til the end and Mieville is still introducing new ideas – miasmas, air elementals, time golems, an “onrushing skeletal insectoid animal thing”, etc.  It’s overdone.  Where he was selective in Perdido and The Scar, balancing elements from the real world with the fantastic, Iron Council’s scales tip heavily in favor of the convoluted.  On all too many occasions I found myself asking: “Well, why didn’t the mind controller just use his skill to stop that…”, or  “That’s funny, nobody thought of using that in Perdido, but here it is so obvious…”  And so while Judah’s golems, the Inchmen, and a few other original ideas fit seamlessly within the scope of Bas-Lag, the vast majority feels like filler intended to impress, but in effect does no more than overwhelm. 

The fact that the book is spilling over with ideas of the fantastic is ironic considering it is the most overtly idealized and political of the Bas-Lag books.  In a return to New Crobuzon, the Vodyanoi’s bloody strike on the River Tar in Perdido has moved to the next degree in Iron Council.  The working class interests of railroad workers versus the corrupt authoritarianism of their overlords is the ideological struggle of the day.  Obviously bringing to bear his Marxist background, Mieville nevertheless treats each with relative equanimity.  Characters on both sides make moral sacrifices, and the resolution of their conflict is not what the reader expects.  That being said, the narrative is heavily weighted in favor of the point of view characters displaying socialist tendencies, while the authoritarian characters fight only in hordes, their evil of the purest black and white.

Story-wise, Iron Council is the tale of Judah Low, an ordinary young man working for the railroad until seeing the effects of Manifest Destiny on the native population.  Learning their magic (in Dances with Wolves style), Judah goes on to use his skills as a golem animator (golemist??) to help the railways workers - cactacae, Remade, and humans among them - fight against the oppressive mercantile backing the railroad’s development.  These first sections of the novel set in untamed and unchartered lands, Mieville reserves the second setting for familiar territory.  Seeming alien and unfamiliar this time around, New Crobuzon is once again the scene of action.  Volunteering at soup kitchens is Ori, a young man with a revolutionist’s heart who feels “there’s too much talk and not enough action” in politics.  The activist group he becomes involved with and their resistance efforts balance what is otherwise a narrative fully occupied by the railroad digging ever deeper into the wilderness, internal conflict abound.  Mieville is able to draw these two settings together to close out the novel, but at the expense of plot plausibility.

Beyond dividing setting, Iron Council also finds Mieville experimenting with style.  Minimalism the desired effect, the story is continuously punctuated by short, staccato blasts of sentence in an attempt to emulate the masters of simplicity (think McCarthy, Gibson or Chandler).  But while The City & the City sees Mieville in perfect stride, the tone suitably sparse yet smooth, Iron Council is unfortunately his baby steps in the arena, every bump felt along the road.  Novel structure is also toyed with.  The best part of the book may in fact be a 150 page flashback in which Mieville performs a nice bit of storytelling, laying out the history of the Iron Council and its perpetual train.

In the end, had Mieville toned down the number of new ideas forced into the plot, been more consistent in style, and more sparing with thematic content, Iron Council could have lived up to the expectations generated by the first two books of Bas-Lag.  Instead, the novel comes across as an unfocussed effort lacking the impact and wholly original worldbuilding of its predecessors.  For thematic aim, however, Mieville cannot be faulted, his intentions pure.  If such inconsistencies are not a bother to you, then Iron Council may be highly regarded.  Otherwise, with iIts devices and themes unnecessarily convoluted, sadly, Iron Council is a train gone off its tracks. (The number of similar elements significant, readers of this novel maybe interested in Ted Chiang's Seventy-Two Letters, and vice versa.)

Review of "The Scar" by China Mieville

A knock-out punch on the 21^st century fantasy scene, Mieville had some big expectations to live up to following the success of Perdido Street Station.  The Scar does not disappoint.  The fresh perspective, the imagination, and the social commentary in Bas-Lag have all been taken to the next level.   Where Perdido aimed at setting, plot, wordplay, The Scar takes the same elements and more evenly balances them across theme and character, producing another quality fantasy novel for the times.

Like Perdido, The Scar tells the story of a variety of characters.  Stage time, however, sees itself returning more often than not to Bellis Coldwine, a linguist by trade, and Tanner Sack, a Remade prisoner.  The beginning of the novel finds the two sharing a transport across the sea, the former in capacity of translator to the captain, and the latter part of the prisoner cargo being delivered.  In the wake of unforeseen events, the lives and expectations of Bellis and Tanner are quickly turned upside down, the characters finding themselves the latest pressganged into living on a massive floating city known as Armada.  The ugliest, motliest collection of battleships, stolen cargo boats, tugs, and clippers ever found in fiction, Armada is the libertarian dream of every pirate. 

What New Crobuzon is to Perdido, Armada is to The Scar.  Seeming to love every stroke, every letter, every grotesque word, Mieville goes into a similar level of detail in describing the massive floating city.  This time around, however, he seems to have relaxed a little.  Instead of wadding description, fistfuls of thesaurus at a time, onto the narrative, his style is more comfortable.  Words are chosen carefully to convey deeper meaning but in a paucity of number, rendering the novel a less gnarled, smoother read. 

There are readers who have complained about the ending of The Scar, claiming it’s either weak or anti-climactic.  However, such is the maturity – and daring - of Mieville’s sophomore novel.  The joy in the journey, the novel’s ending more than fits the events preceding it.  Many readers of the second half of Le Guin’s Earthsea Cycle (Tehanu, Tales from Earthsea, and The Other Wind) likewise complain of the soft manner in which she finished the books.  But must every fantasy novel have a blood-and-guts clash of titans to finish it off?  Like Le Guin, Mieville should be lauded for the mature fashion in which his conflict is resolved through rational rather than explosive or macabre means.  Readers lauded the manner in which Mieville broke the mold with Perdido Street Station, why not be gratified by the atypical note on which The Scar ends? 

Further comparisons are needed.  Though not wooden, Isaac’s portrayal in Perdido was nevertheless inconsistently human.  Yes, he got angry when Motley kidnapped his girlfriend, but his chasing of slake-moths around the city was never properly motivated.  His moral indifference killing creatures while studying the mechanisms of flight did not match the profound sense of moral urgency he felt saving the world from those terrors of the sky.  In The Scar, on the other hand, Bellis, Tanner, and most of the other characters are more consistently rendered as living, breathing humans.  Background and character insight are related properly in motivating his “heroes”.  Bellis not an especially amiable person, the fact that readers dislike her rather than feel no emotion at all indicates Mieville is doing something right.  Not all protagonists can be altruistic saviors defending honor - a fact the author thankfully relishes in.

Mieville has been quoted as saying: “I think that all science fiction or fantasy has inevitably allegorical aspects, but I also think it's important not to suggest that that's what the book is ‘about’: you have to give the fantastic permission to be its own end, to follow its own dynamic.” Nothing could exemplify this more than The Scar.  For readers who prefer the supernatural, the monsters, and the creativity of what fantasy is on the surface, then it is all there on the page, one claw, huge eyeball, and squid creature at a time.  One original idea after another, the cray-men, avancs, and new varieties of the Remade add to the species of Bas-Lag. 

For those who prefer to see their characters and story grounded in concepts more fundamental, Mieville likewise offers a mature look at the themes of possibility, separation, cultural stance, and acceptance.  The titular theme is not an idea Mieville approaches from a single line of attack.  One of the characters can be quoted as saying “A scar is healing.  After injury, a scar is what makes you whole.”.  Following this single line of thematic reasoning would have Mieville stepping in the footprints of countless previous writers, and so it is when learning of Armada’s leaders, a couple who scar themselves anew daily to symbolize their love, that another dimension is added.  And there are two other major fashions in which Mieville explores the theme.  Thus, in addition to being an appropriate title, the novel also represents itself well in the world of literary fantasy.

In the end, The Scar finds Mieville exploring new territory as a writer while expanding his familiar world of Bas-Lag in plausible, visceral fashion.  Unique imagination and thematic output on strong display, readers of both literary and genre fantasy will find something to like about the novel.  Certainly one of the voices the beginning of 21st century fantasy will be remembered for, the novel comes highly recommended.  (A word of advice: though Perdido Street Station need not be read before, it would certainly serve as an excellent introduction to the world of The Scar.)

Review of "Perdido Street Station' by China Mieville

Perdido Street Station, British author China Mieville’s second novel, is an original work of fantasy that’s sure to turn heads.  Whether homage or theft, elements from a wide variety of sources present themselves in the book.  The visceral descriptions of character and place are in the spirit of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast works or Michael Swanwick The Iron Dragon's Daughter. The monsters are in the vein of H.P. Lovecraft, an overt Gene Wolfe, or any comic book.  And the story elements draw upon a wide variety of sub-genres--steam- to cyberpunk, horror to epic fantasy.  That being said, Mieville is able to combine these disparate elements into such an enticing mix of monsters and mayhem that the setting, characters, and the storyline plumbing their depths form a cohesive whole unique in fantasy.

Perdido Street Station resides at the heart of Mieville’s fictional New Crobuzon.  Like London or New York’s main terminals, its trains disperse into surrounding suburbs, boroughs, and neighborhoods that have a unique cultural, economic, or social status.  Home to a wide variety of human and xenian species, Mieville goes to great lengths, particularly in the first third of the book, to properly set the scene.  The cactus, frog, and insect-esque peoples populating the city are all detailed.  There are also lengthy descriptions of the crusty grime and stagnant filth that saturate the dark alleys and narrow streets, the smoke languoring ominously overhead, and the polluted sludge calling itself a river flowing through the city.  While this may not appeal to readers with a weaker stomach, the dystopian disgustingness nicely compliments the ever-evolving mix of steampunk tech that the city’s population depends on, produces, and exploits. 

Playing a witting - and sometimes unwitting - hand in New Crobuzon’s propagation of technical advancement and knowledge is the book’s main character, Isaac Grimnebulin.  Having left the university where he was teaching on moral grounds (the school was openly performing experiments that even Goebbels and Hitler would have nightmares about), Isaac is a rebel in more ways than one.  Involved in a taboo relationship with a khepri artist named Lin, a half-human, half-insect woman, Isaac’s liberal views also allow him to take on the commission of a garuda, a bird man who has had his wings removed for committing the crime of “choice-theft” in his own community.  An interesting moral concept, one that plays itself out nicely in the novel’s denouement, it is in solving the puzzle of how to get the garuda to fly again that the plot really starts to takes shape, corrupt government, crime-ridden underworld, and the seedy side of society complementing the story nicely. 

Needing a wide variety of birds, insects, and unnamable creatures which fly to go about his research, one day Isaac receives a mysteriously colored caterpillar that refuses to eat any of the food it is given.  It is the accidental discovery of the sustenance the caterpillar desires that springs the book to life, action thereafter moving in an ever gosh-wow direction.  Fascinating visuals and jaw-dropping scenes steadily take over the pages, bringing the reader on an exciting joyride of mud and slime, unearthly creatures, and scenarios that defy description out of the book’s context.  Dogs fly, spiders sing, dance, and play with scissors, and corpses are animated by powers all too tangible.  While pace may suffer at the novel’s outset as Mieville sets the scene, Perdido Street Station picks up steam like a freight train on its way to delivering a wonderfully satisfying, exciting, and unpredictable conclusion that is the reward for those who stick it out.

Mieville’s sixth novel, The City & the City, had a high degree of polished, focused prose effortlessly moving the story forward.  Published at the inchoate stage of his publishing career, Perdido Street Station instead features a more workmanlike command of language, flashes of true understanding of the craft escaping only here and there.  Viriconium and Gormenghast acknowledged by Mieville in the intro, readers should expect a lot of adjectives and descriptive elements as Mieville goes about worldbuilding - the setting a character unto itself.  (For my money, however, I would put The Iron Dragon's Daughter as Mieville's greatest influence--right down to "puissant" and "thaumaturgy", but that's for another day.)  His imagination worth the effort, memorable images and ideas with finite color and shape will hang in the mind long after the novel is finished despite the more than occasional clumsy or pretentious passage.  It goes without saying readers who don’t mind visuals more implanted than suggested will probably enjoy the novel the most, but will have to forgive Mieville the inability to match the mood of Viriconium.

In numerous interviews Mieville has deflected the question “Is there a political agenda to your writing?”, with the response “Not really.  Genre, plot, character are of foremost importance.”  Constantly hanging around the edges, tinting the story are, however, a number of elements which can be nothing less than class struggle, commentary on economics, and cultural relativism.  One never quite sure whether these elements amount to a thematic whole, sheer storytelling and visuals are the workhorses of the novel.  As such, it may be best to sit back and take the dirty, visceral, utterly weird ride Mieville has created to Perdido Street Station.  It is wholly original genre work for the 21st century--a feat increasingly difficult to pull off.   

Review of "The City & the City" by China Mieville

Despite finding itself only marginally within the genre, it’s no coincidence that The City & the City took home every major sf&f award for 2009-2010 (except the Locus).  Mieville’s seventh novel is a brilliant pastiche of detective noir, Orwellian vision, and Kafkian undertones.  In need of introduction to high school classrooms and university syllabi for its examination of stereotyping and the inadvertent manner in which we code differing people and cultures, the book is truly deserving of the accolades it has received.  

A nod to Raymond Chandler and the other writers of detective noir, The City & the City is on the surface a near perfectly told mystery of murder and political intrigue.  From the first page the dead body of a young woman is found by the workaday police detective Tyador Borlu, and the story moves from there.  Finding its way through various layers of government, rebel political factions, and goons, Borlu’s road gets riskier and more tricky in discovering the killer.  But where The City & the City earns its points for originality is in the singular nature of its setting.  Unlike any book written before, Detective Borlu’s troubles truly begin when he discovers the young woman was murdered in the other half of the city – the forbidden half.  Forbidden perhaps too strong a word, Beszel’s sister city, Ul Qoma, is an entirely separate political entity with its own laws and regulations.  And despite that they often share the same streets, buildings, and parkland, the two cities remain separated by invisible walls called “crosshatching” that people are taught from birth not to cross.  The citizens of both sides are likewise taught to “unsee” the other, even if they are walking within arm’s length.  Upon sight of foreign clothes, places, people, etc., they must look away lest a procedure called “breach” is invoked.  A mysterious political entity that enforces laws and monitors the crosshatch areas, Breach looms over everything Borlu does in tracking the young woman’s killer to the other side.  The danger Borlu faces in invoking breach is perfectly balanced with the threats he faces investigating the political figures, building to a perfect climax.  

Mieville has stated that The City & the City is an examination of the “divided city.”  Places like present day Jerusalem, Istanbul, Nicosia (Cyprus), and Kirkuk (Iraq), as well as the historical cities of Berlin, Belfast, Mostar (Bosnia), or any Jewish ghetto all served as real world examples of cities separated along cultural or racial lines.  Mieville handling the subject of cultural perception and the resulting social issues with maturity, Detective Borlu becomes a lens through which the reader sees more than just an everyday police officer as the novel progresses.  That he tells a gripping story in the process, isn’t that the definition of a great novel?

(For those who have read the novel and are interested in additional commentary, please see the article "Seeing the Unseen: The Cultural Significance of China Mieville's The City & the City" from this blog.)