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There's also an interview with Mieville in this morning's (*spit*) Metro, in which he indicates that he doesn't hate everything about Tolkien and was just being a self-aggrandising young punk.
So, to carry on talking about Iron Council...
SPOILERS from here on in, chaver.
I like it more the more I think about. Maybe it's because I was at the ESF this weekend, but I think it might be the best novel ever about left-wing politics - specifically the internal fractions within. (Ori: "We need to wake people up!" Someone else: "They're already awake." Ori: "No they're not!") He really captures the beauty and excitement of a certain kind of political movement, nowhere more so in the conceit of the Councillors calling each other "sister". But he also ends by concluding that the good guys can never win. That final image of the train is incredibly haunting because although part of the power is the idea that it will always be there to threaten New Crobuzon, you know it never will - it will inspire people anew, but the revolution is in a state of permanent deferment: forever delayed.
Although I know it's foolish to try to extract a workable political strategy from a novel like this, I do find myself wondering whether Mieville believes that the left can never win, but it's still a fight worth fighting (like the last ever episode of Angel) - all you can do is go back to the printing press and start all over again - or whether he believes that there is a way, and it's just not found in this novel. I can't help wondering whether he believes that the only solution is to go off and found these autonomous communities and make sure they don't develop their own power structures (as in The Scar).
I really don't see how Cutter's sexuality is skirted when his relationship with Judah is what drives his entire story, and when so many characters in the book are cottagers...
Having said that, IC does have some problems. The final fifth or so is pretty bleak and drawn-out, which I think is intentional, but makes for hard going. Unfortunately there are also some passages near the end that, for the most time, are not particularly well-written: Mieville doesn't able to do action sequences that don't place either in a city or at sea, so the whole IC/militia elemental confrontation just comes across like a poor re-write of the Armada/Morning Walker battle in The Scar. Plus, some of the final betrayals are a little predictable: I was impressed on re-reading a section of PSS to see that we're basically given a huge clue to Spiral Jacobs' identity in that book, but Drogon's a baddy, you say? Gosh, I would never have suspected that!
Another problem is that Judah only comes into focus during the flashback section. Now, first time round, this works brilliantly, because he's been set up as this kind of Christ-like figure in a very sketchy way, and so it's fascinating to really get to know him and see how he became who he is. But when we cut back to the present day, we lose him again: it's deliberate in the sense that he's meant to be that detached, and unknowable (especially to Cutter), but it makes the reader a little bit more alienated. Especially when you add the fact that there are two many secondary characters in this book we don't care about, because they're cyphers: I'm thinking mostly of Cutter's group, who are there to provide a bodycount and that's about it - this contrasts badly with the previous two novels in which almost every character we meet has something interesting about them.
In fact maybe the biggest problem with Iron Council is that the section telling the story of how the Council came to be is by far the best section of the book. I guess that could be deliberate too - because that's the legend, that's the glorious revolution that was once achieved, and the present is never going to live up to that. Makes a problematic structure for a novel, though.
Still - some amazing images in the rest of the book, really haunting moments that linger, from Cutter waking up in the forest and saying "I'll come find you", to Ori stumbling out through a hole in reality after missing a few days, and seeing the city not as he left it... Great stuff. |
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