I just got turned onto Mieville via this board a few months ago, and devoured “Perdido Street Station” and “The Scar.” But I just started “Iron Council,” and I’m having a hard time getting into it. For some reason, it seems like the entire tone and writing style is completely different - I’d even swear it was a different author.
Did anyone else notice this? Is it just the beginning? (I’m about 80 pages into the book). Is it deliberate? Effective? Or just weird?
I don’t see what you’re saying. I thought Iron Council was consistent with the previous two books in the series. In fact, I liked it a hell of a lot. Recently reread it and *The Scar * and I have trouble deciding which I like better. The protagonists of *Iron Council * are easier for me to sympathize with, but The Scar has more action and breadth, so it’s a tough call.
Give it a chance-- it’s well worth it.
It may be more apparent to me because I’m reading them in absolute succession (I literally finished the last sentence of “The Scar,” set it down, and picked up and began reading the first page of “Iron Council” last night), but there’s a definite difference in tone, style, presentation, etc. over the first two books.
The first thing I noticed is Mieville’s descriptions; they’re nowhere near as self-indulgent and run-on as they were before, which is something that I’ve loved about his writing. He usually just goes nuts with the place descriptions and world-building, but the first ~60 pages of the book are basically “some people are in the forest” and then a whole bunch of action. Even when we finally return to New Crobuzon, Mieville’s treatment of the place and of the setting doesn’t have the same feel, the same “Dungeon Master in love” obsessiveness and painterly approach that he takes with New Crobuzon, with Armada, with the Gengris, and so on.
The characters feel much more sketched and simplistic than in the previous two books as well, and the dialogue seems strangely stilted. This may be, again, because I’m only 80 pages into the book, but none of the protagonists feel as immediately idiosyncratic and nuanced as Isaac, Lin, Bellis, Tanner, Yagharek, etc. - they just feel sort of generic, like placeholders.
Ditto for the creatures and monsters - where Mieville would go on in intricate description of Khepri headlegs, the feudal system that the cray live in, and the mating rituals of garuda, here he knocks out hotchi and their mounts in one sentence - “The hotchi, a hedgehog man, was astride his mount, a horse-sized rooster.” What?! Where’s Mieville, the insane dungeon master going on for pages about how those roosters evolved, were cultivated, domesticated, how they’re bred and tamed, etc.?
I’m definitely going to read the book, but something feels strangely amiss and incongruent with the previous two.
Digging around online, I just found several reviews that reiterated exactly what I’m feeling, and this nugget from a Mieville interview with the Believer:
[QUOTE=Believer Interview]
BLVR: Last summer, lunching in Aqua Blue in San Diego’s Gaslamp, you told me you were concerned about potential reader reaction to Iron Council because you had deliberately crafted certain sections of prose to prevent readers from identifying too strongly with the work…
CM: Iron Council has had the most profoundly contradictory response that any of my books have had, and it’s been absolutely fascinating to watch it unfold. If you look at the response to Iron Council, you have people saying, “This is Miéville’s breakthrough book. He’s moved to a different level.” And then you’ve also had it described as “the crushing disappointment of 2004. Completely lost it.” To the extent that I can generalize, the critical reception at the pro level has been quite, quite good; the critical reception at fan level has been troubled. I could fliply and glibly say that if you have that kind of reaction then you’re doing something right, but I don’t want to play fast and loose. There is clearly something going on here and to be honest with you, I don’t know what it is. The prose is very, very different from the previous two books. I think it’s to do with bringing the prose under control. The previous two books were very baroque and meandering.
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You can read the whole interview here. It’s a good one.
[QUOTE=VCO3]
Did anyone else notice this? Is it just the beginning? (I’m about 80 pages into the book). Is it deliberate? Effective? Or just weird?
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Different, yes. Deliberate, apparently so. Some successful authors suffer from “What edit me?” bloat (Rice, Jordan, King…), Mieville seems to have gone the other way.
Effective, yes, for me, definitely. I like Iron Council and wasn’t disappointed.
I think China was still shaping Bas Lag in his mind at the start, and sort of describing it to himself at the same time as he did to us. Now he’s settled it in his mind, he can focus on the important stuff - politics. Since its politics I largely agree with, I’ve got no problem with the focus
Anyway, it picks up later, so don’t think there’s no description later if that’s what you crave, but never as much as you sound like you’d like. But the main New Corabuzon enemy in this is never outlined in anything other than sketchy terms, for instance.
Iron Council is the most political of the three books, addressing trade unionism, gender politics, and capitalist imperialism in great depth. It focuses far more on the unrest in New Crobuzon and the resistance movement inside the city. Also, Cutter, the protagonist for part of the book, is very much on the margins of the main action he is discussing, unlike Bellis and Isaac in the first two books.
My feeling, having read it twice now, is that Mieville was commenting on larger, more universal themes than he was in the first two books, which were more character-driven. Nonetheless, I found *Iron Council * quite moving and affecting.
When you finish IC, open a thread. I’d love to discuss it.