Forgive the terrible pun, but with Iron Council, China Mieville seems to have finally run out of steam. Iron Council is set in the same disturbing, gothic world as two of Mieville's other outstanding novels, Perdido Street Station and The Scar. The story is told through three characters: Cutter, who searches the wastelands surrounding New Crobuzon for his lover, Judah Low; Ori, a political revolutionary in New Crobuzon who takes up with a strange militant group; and Judah himself, a golem-creating thaumaturgist who is desperately re-seeking a mythical group of rebels out in the desert. Those rebels are the titular Iron Council, so named because they were former railroad workers who several years ago hijacked the railroad project and escaped with it into the reality-bending cacotopic zone, where the train they inhabit chugs along in an infinite loop. (An aside: For some reason, science fiction writers seem to be really taken by the idea of perpetual trains where scurrying workers tear up the tracks as the train passes over them, races ahead of the train, and lays down the track again. Cf. Alastair Reynolds's Absolution Gap and Christopher Priest's The Inverted World.)

As usual, Mieville has cranked up his imagination for his novel, sometimes overwhelmingly so. He introduces a nearly endless stream of grotesqueries throughout the story: from handlingers, to burning chelonas, to Judah's flesh golems. I could almost imagine Mieville turning giddy when the Iron Council veers into the cacotopic zone, where the book's already morbid and violent reality becomes several degrees worse. It's wonderful stuff: Mieville could singlehandedly stock the entire speculative fiction industry with enough ideas for a year of books.

But it's not enough. In contrast to the tight, disciplined narratives of his previous New Crobuzon novels, Iron Council's plot is sprawling and sketchy. Too much of the book is exposition, told in too short snippets that jump around in time and never focus on the characters. Mieville isn't writing a story here; it sounds more like he's writing a history book, with all of the lack of intimacy and emotional detachment that that genre presupposes.

Even worse, Mieville's so damned serious about it all too. Now, Mieville has never been the cheeriest of writers. But his previous novels have all been filled with a sort of giddy creativity that is sadly lacking here. It quickly becomes apparent that Mieville doesn't want to write just any speculative fiction novel: he's writing a political novel, about a revolt by common workers against the monopolist-capitalists of New Crobuzon. Hey, I'm on board. I just don't understand why the basics of storytelling--emotional involvement, multifaceted characters, etc.--have to be subverted to the Marxist cause. As it is, there are a few high spots in the story--including Cutter's confused but affecting love for Judah--but that's about it. Everything else is just a revolutionary chronicle, told in the deadly serious tone of a true believer.

It's still fun to sightsee in Mieville's twisted imagination. Let's just hope that next time, he remembers to make us care.

Copyright © 2004 Steven Wu