SpiderFarmer

Iron Council by China Miéville

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
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.

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The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow

This little novella was much more fun than I remembered it being. Irving’s text is a brilliant example of that period’s style; while remaining humorous and a bit subversive.

I hadn’t remembered the ending correctly at all, probably because of the various cartoons throughout the years which have lost the true meaning of the story.

This is a fabulous Halloween read, and I recommend that everyone spend a few minutes with the spooky denizens of Old America.

Book is available in paperback, or can be downloaded free here in multiple formats. (Also available on google books as well as a host of free public domain book sites.)

Perdido Street Station by China Miéville

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book is a phantasmagoria of brilliant fantasy, philosophy and steampunkery. Miéville paints with some of the most carefully crafted language and semantics I’ve ever seen. His word choices are extraordinary…psoriatic instead of flaking, cossetted instead of enclosed…his prose is poetry.

Acknowledged by the author, and obvious to anyone who has ever been exposed to that classic of fantasy fiction, is Perdido Street Station’s debt to Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast. Both Miéville’s New Crobuzon and Peake’s Gormenghast inhabit the texts that spawned them like living creatures: they are not only settings, they are characters. Both works also show a predilection for baroque — and oddly evocative — names. Perdido Street Station is no mere imitation, though; it is a work of relentless inventiveness.

New Crobuzon and Perdido Street Station defy easy categorization. They are the mesmerizingly complex creations of China Miéville’s intricate imagination. They are seductive and perverse, beautiful and menacing.

I found the end troubling, and have had trouble reconciling it with the characters I’d built in my head. My friend who was rereading it at the same time, saw the end as something more hopeful than I did; whereas I found it nihilistic and disheartening. But that is the wonder in Miéville’s work, that two people can read the same words and come away with such radically different impressions.

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Currently reading China Miéville and PG Wodehouse. Two authors who have nothing in common other than their ability to engage the reader. But Wodehouse makes a nice change when China breaks my brain. No review for Perdido Street Station (which is free on the Kindle right now) yet, I’ve only just gotten to Part 4. But here’s my take on My Man Jeeves.

My Man Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse

Project Gutenberg is my fave place for OOP and public domain books. I adore Wodehouse, and who can forget our beloved gentleman’s personal gentleman, Jeeves, who ever comes to the rescue when the hapless Bertie Wooster falls into trouble. Pithy buffoonery, moronic misunderstandings, gaffes, and aristocratic slapstick. It reads considerably more satirically now than it probably did in the heydays of 1919…but it hasn’t lost a bit of its humor.

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