About this title: China Miéville and his baroque prose stylings return for a third epic science fantasy set in the city of New Crobuzon. New Crobuzon is threatened by enemies both foreign and domestic. The decision to war with the city-state of Tesh has proved ill-advised, as Tesh possesses horrific weapons unfamiliar to New Crobuzon. Meanwhile, the citizens are ...
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Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Del Rey
Date Published: 2004-07-27
ISBN-13:9780345464026ISBN:0345464028
Description: Good. A former library book in protective mylar cover with the usual library markings. (Even though we list all former library books as only good, most are good+ or VG condition! ) No writing or highlighting noted inside. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Macmillan
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780333989722ISBN:0333989724
Description: Good. **SHIPPED FROM UK** We believe you will be completely satisfied with our quick and reliable service. All orders are dispatched as swiftly as possible! Buy with confidence! read more
Description: Good. Ships from the UK. Flyleaf Missing Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Your purchase also supports literacy charities. read more
Edition: Book Club (BCE/BOMC)
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: N.Y. : Del Rey / Ballantine, 2004, Book Club Edition
ISBN-13:9780345464026ISBN:0345464028
Description: David Stevenson & Carl D Galian Cover Art. Near Fine in Very Good+ jacket. .......................hardcover, Near Fine in a Very Good+ dustjacket, Mieville creates worlds, characters and stories that are simply unlike anything you will ever read, any image directly beside this listing is the actual book and not a generic photo. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Del Rey
Date Published: 2005-07-26
ISBN-13:9780345458421ISBN:0345458427
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780345458421. read more
Edition: First Edition
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: N.Y. : Del Rey / Ballantine, 2004, 1st Edition, 1st Printing
ISBN-13:9780345464026ISBN:0345464028
Description: David Stevenson & Carl D Galian Cover Art. Near Fine in Near Fine jacket. .......................hardcover, Near Fine in a Near Fine dustjacket, unread, no remainder mark, not price clipped, Mieville creates worlds, characters and stories that are simply unlike anything you will ever read, any image directly beside this listing is the actual book and not a generic photo. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Del Rey
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9780345458421ISBN:0345458427
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Description: Very good; Collectible. 2004 FIRST EDITION HARDBACK. LOVELY CLEAN FIRM TEXT AND ENDPAPERS. NOT WRITTEN IN. NOT PRICE CLIPPED. GOOD UNFADED SHINY DUSTJACKET. NEXT DAY POST FROM UK. read more
Edition: 2nd Printing
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Del Rey, NY
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780345464026ISBN:0345464028
Description: Fine in Near Fine jacket. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. (USA) No markings, Fine in unclipped Near Fine dust jacket. Bds, 564pp. This is the eagerly awaited new novel by the award winning author of Perdido Street Station. A heavy book. (2.5 JM FO 16/0B. read more
Description: Very Good. 0345464028 First edition, first printing, full number line, book and dust jacket in excellent condition, 1" tear in back cover dj at edge of spine, otherwise it looks new, hardcover. Shop & Save With US. read more
"So, here we are in Bas Lag again. According to interviews, Mieville sounds like he has every intention of returning to the world of Bas Lag in the future, so I won't refer to this as "the last Bas Lag novel." But, as of 2009, it's the most recent.
I found the experience of reading Iron Council markedly different from the first two books set in this world. For one, in this book the story isn't as localised. We have met the city of New Crobuzon in Perdido Street Station and the pirate collective of Armada in The Scar. Now, we're in New Crobuzon again, along with tons of other places.
Iron Council chronicles the war between Tesh and New Crobuzon, a war that is occuring at the same time that citizens of New Crobuzon are attempting to overthrow the political party in power. The Iron Council itself is a essentially a runaway train--a train that was intended to link New Crobuzon to other large cities. But, when the government refused to pay the workers on this train as they traveled along, building the tracks, the workers stole the train. They began picking up the tracks behind them, and the train passed off the border of any maps. They went so far that New Crobuzon was afraid to follow.
Well, rumor has it that the Iron Council is returning. In an already heated political climate, the return of the Iron Council is gunpowder.
The novel has a very compelling plot, and some of the most poetic and fantastic scenes in the whole Bas Lag sequence. As his characters travel through uncharted regions, bizarre creatures we haven't seen before show up regularly.
Also, this story has the most optimistic ending I've yet read from Mieville. It's not exactly a "happy" ending...but, aren't those just boring anyway?
This book had a lot of things going for it. However, it wasn't as satisfying or engaging of a read as P.S.S. or The Scar for two main reasons. First, the main characters weren't as engaging. With one exception, the main characters weren't as complex as those from the other books. Character complexity is always a very big thing for me. Usually, it's the most important thing. Here, the main characters tend to have one motivation, one inspiration, and their actions follow logically from it. The characters don't act in ways that surprise me.
The other reason this book wasn't as engaging is the writing just wasn't as clear. In a book where the fantastical and unusual is happening on a regular basis, it really helps if the writing puts a clear picture in the reader's head, and if new concepts aren't just tossed in without explanation. Through much of the book, I wasn't quite sure who was talking or exactly what was happening. I found myself frustrated on numerous occasions by the obscuring word-choices that Mieville made.
Despite everything that I liked about this book, I gained no momentum while reading it. At no point was I particularly compelled to keep reading, and at no point did I really care how things would turn out for anyone involved. Although I thought the end was strong and moving, it didn't make up for all of the non-engaging passages that had come before.
So, by no means was Iron Council a bad novel. But, it could've been as great as the other Bas Lag books, and it wasn't."
"A mix of role-playing games, the cities of Mary Gentle, the history of the building of the American railroad and much civil unrest.
The first few pages are written in an abstruse style that had me worried it was going to be painful reading, but happily within a few pages he forgets all the pretension and gets on with story.
The main character is the city itself and its unseen rulers, which has a vigour and life that most of the characters don't. It seems to be named after Mary Gentle's famous Architect, in fact there are nods to all sorts of other writers, the name of the enemy city for instance is very familiar too :)
There are lots of good ideas about violent revolution and how it fails, it all seems quite Parisian."
"I was angered by this book. Angered, discomforted, distressed, and emotionally drained. I, like Ann-Hari, felt robbed; as though the ending of my journey had been stolen and turned into a tourist destination. I was..no..I AM angry at Judeh, the self taught thaumaturge golemist, who with a clever use of deus ex machina stopped history in its tracks.
It is one of the few books where when I was finished, I had to go have a cry; I lamented the end as I have grieved for very few imaginary characters. And unlike most books, I haven't been able to pick up another book immediately. Rather, I've wandered around in a fugue for a day or so, replaying the book in my mind, trying to tease the threads that have so upset me.
Perhaps the stage for the book is better set if you are familiar with "To the Finland Station", written by Edmund Wilson in 1940. In it, historian Wilson defines the thoughts and theories expressed on train ride of Jules Michelet, Henri de Saint-Simon, Robert Owen, Mikhail Bakunin, Anatole France, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Leon Trotsky, and Vladimir Ilich Lenin--who arrived at Petrograd's Finland Station in 1917 to lead the Bolshevik revolution. This book could very well have been titled "To Perdido Station".
That Miéville is also speaking of the state of perpetual war that we find ourselves in cannot be overlooked, but the overwhelming theme of the book is the impact of revolution, sedition, and self proclaimed saviors who ride out of mythology to change the face of history. That it leaves the reader feeling hopeless and incapable of fighting the powers that be; well perhaps that's just my reading of it. I took away a particularly existential feeling, but perhaps that reading is more impacted by the current state of American politics than the book itself. I may be over-thinking this.
The voiceless hero of the entire book is the Train, which itself encompasses the Iron Council; a train-town of former slaves and indentured workers who decades ago revolted against their masters and carved out a path into the unexplored wilds of western Bas-Lag. It constantly moves, putting down new track as it rips up the old, over and over, the first to cross the continent, in a never-ending journey of freedom and hope. As such, it is the most powerful revolutionary tool in New Crobuzon. The government wants it crushed before it can return to the city as a beacon of hope, and the revolutionaries want it to arrive for the same reason.
But in the end; is the Iron Council more valuable as myth?
This book is very dense, filled with Miéville's signature linguistic style, extraordinarily violent, and extremely political. It is not an easy read. It isn't even necessarily a fun read. It is, however, absolutely stunning in its genius. I do not regret the investment of time and emotion that I put into reading this book.
Truth be told, despite being terribly disturbed by the book, even days after finishing; I would venture to say that this is my favorite Miéville book to date."
"This book was fantastic. I picked it up with some hesitation because of reviews I'd read, which said that Iron Council was "the weakest" of the series, that the plot and setting were a far cry from the complex, violently magical and Victorian-inspired backdrops of the previous two books. Other reviews simply said the book was too slow.
And to some extent it is all true. Iron Council takes the reader much farther from the brilliant magics, sciences, and mythologies depicted in Perdido Street Station and The Scar. It explores less of the amazing creatures and races that were first introduced in those two books. And it also takes a much longer time to develop and for the motives of the main characters to become apparent. However, while I agree that Iron Council is the weaker of the Bas-Lag books for these reasons, it is still an incredibly powerful story for those very same reasons, and because of it, Iron Council stands alone as one of Mieville's most meaningful works.
The focal point of the story is the titular Iron Council, the constantly moving train manned and lived in by former railroad workers turned renegade. Many of these railroad workers had once been criminals, jailed, then brutally (surgically) remade by the government into horrific mutilations of flesh, gear, steam, and engine, as eternal reminders of their crimes and lives as outcasts to be spat upon by society. It is this government of New Crobuzon that the workers, prostitutes, and renegades rise against, and from whom they steal the Iron Council. In doing so, the Iron Council becomes a beacon of necessary and long-sought freedom for all the people of back in the city-state of New Crobuzon, who themselves are caught in the chaos of political turubulence, as well as in war with the distant and fearsome land of Tesh.
New Crobuzon itself is a city to explain all cities. In Perdido Street Station we are immersed in it, its sheer size and incredible diversity, and also its gruesome, horrifying underside. The Scar is set far away from New Crobuzon, but also further explores those people Remade by the government. But it is only in Iron Council that all these things are brought to a culmination.
Its tremendous cast is what keeps this story amazing. They are shopkeepers, loom-workers, minorities, and Remade criminals. They are the commonality, they are you and I, oppressed by a government that is so ferociously bureaucratic, so sprawling, sick, and massively apathetic, that the appalling Remaking of its citizens has become accepted. Rebel organizations fill the streets of New Crobuzon, to debate, plan, and put into motion some way to subvert this despotism, to end the bloody, meaningless war with Tesh which is bringing home their soldiers maddened and horribly disfigured. They are stymied again and again, but with growing hope they speak about the the Iron Council, which is making its return, they say, to bring change to New Crobuzon. To renew and remake the city.
Iron Council is a much more realistic book than its predecessors. I say "realistic" not because I mean that it features less of the fantastical. What I mean is that it places at the forefront issues which speak directly to our own society's struggles. The nature of freedom and visionary ideals are so beautifully explored in this story. While Perdido Street Station bespoke redemption and The Scar, possibilities, Iron Council is a testament of hope as well as challenge.
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