Iron Council by China Miéville

Rudewood teemed. Birds and ape-things in the canopy spent the morning screaming. In a zone of dead, bleached trees, an ursine thing, unclear and engorged with changing shapes and colours, reeled out of the brush toward them. They screamed, except Pomeroy who fired into the creature's chest. With a soft explosion it burst into scores of birds and hundreds of bottleglass flies, which cricled them in the air and recongealed beoyond them as a beast. It suffled from them. Now they could see the feathers and wing cases that made up it's pelt.

"I've been in the woods before," said Pomeroy. "I know what a throng-bear looks like."

I let the man speak for himself. China Miéville has maybe the most imaginative and amazing mind of any writer whose works I've ever read, and by goddess when I said I was expecting to be blown away I suffered no disappointment. I thought my book of the year would probably be Altered Carbon or Broken Angels, but Iron Council has blown them both out of the water, hands down.

I was told that the best way to read this book is to know nothing about it, not even as much as the back cover says, so that's how I went in, and I'm not going to spoil it to you by telling anything anything about the plot. The only thing I knew was that it would take place in New Crobuzon after about 30 years after the events of Perdido Street Station, and to be honest that was all I needed to wet my apetite. I liked The Scar - but I think Miéville is at his best when describing cities, cities like London or New Crobuzon which is London to the power of n. And does he do that, Godspit, does he ever.

A succession. The loud sound of fiddles. Wealthy men slumming it with downtown whores fell out of the doors of drinkhalls, walking oblivious past tsotsis who eyed them and fingered ill-concealed weapons. Up now toward a militia tower, the thrum of the skyrails as a lit pod passed over. Crowding under slowworms of lit glass spelling names and services, simple animations - a red mouthed lady drawn with the light, replaced stutteringly with another who raised her glass, and back again in autistic illuminanant recursion. Narcotics on the corners sold in twists by macerated youths, militia in aggressive cabals, their mirrors sending the light back around the street. Anger, drunk and stupid fights, and serious fights, too.

Not only does Miéville has an imagination out of this world, he's also the best example I can give of the school of "show, don't tell" - for example here:

"You ain't the only one with your ear to the ground, who knows what he is. But listen, we ain't got time: it ain't just him who's being followed. This lot were after your man - they don't know any more than we do already - and there's others are after you. Been tracking you since Rudewood. And they're gaining. And they ain't just militia, either."

"What? What's coming?" And what Cutter heard he repeated in terror.

"Handlingers," he said.

Here we hear first time of creatures called handlingers but it's only 300 odd pages later that we actually learn what handlingers really are. Same with everything else - you're explained just what is necessary to understand what's happening at the very moment, but what it all means might only be revealed much later. But although rewarding, this is also a very difficult book in more than one aspect. First of all, Miéville uses quite complicated peculiar language - I'm no novice in English, or even fantasy or sci-fi, but I had to look up several words during this book. I can't even remember when's the last time I've done that even once, and with this book I did it daily. I mean non-native speakers, honestly can you tell what throng or susurration mean? (And those are some of the more common words.)

But the language wasn't what made this book difficult. It was the plot and the athmosphere - "kick him when he's down" or "lyö lyötyä" was definetly the theme where things keep endlesly going from bad to worse, until you think it can't get any worse, and it does. I cried twice while reading this book, and after havining finished I was emotionally empty and drawn out. So much so that once I got home I needed to get this entry from my chest before doing anything more pressing. It's one of those rare books where I wanted to actually skip to the end and check what was going to happen as I just couldn't take the emotianal pressure (suffice to say I didn't do it... that would be just plain wrong). But what was in the end - even in my wildest dreams would I have been able to get even close to what actually happened.

It's possible - although I'd have to read the other book again (hint to Quitu if you're reading this) - that Iron Council is even better than than Perdido Street Station... and that's not a praise I give lightly as Perdido Street is one of my all time favourite books. I need to digest this book for a while now and maybe read it again - I think there are parts of this book that don't open up first time. For Jabber's sake, this book is a must read.

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