by Erika Livingstone

Created on: July 14, 2009

I must first announce a bias: This is my favourite book of all time.

This is the third book in a "series" of three so far, and Mieville's fourth work of fiction. I use the term "series" lightly as the three books "Perdido Street Station", "The Scar", and "The Iron Council" all occur in the same universe, but take place in different points of time and all revolve around different characters. It is not necessary to read them in any particular order.

The Iron Council was written in 2004, and became the recipient for the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2005. It was also nominated for the Victor Hugo award and the World Fantasy Award that same year.

The subject matter of the novel is left-wing in nature. One of the chief characters is a homosexual, another bi-sexual, a third a prostitute. So, in that sense, a sensitive reader may have issues empathizing with the characters. It is a novel that is afraid of absolutely nothing. Keep that in mind if you decide to pick it up.

Mieville, though writing in an often difficult to classify mixture of science-fiction and fantasy, always uses a steam-punk aesthetic in his writing style. His other book "Perdido Street Station" is one of the top 10 best steam punk novels of all time. Steam-punk refers to a nostalgia for the Victorian age, where everyone could be an expert on anything after reading a few books. The creative mind was able to embrace science. In the nineteen seventies, a group of kids invented the Apple computer in their garage. An invention this significant can only be expected after several years of school and only within strict parameters. Steam punk is, in part, a back-lash to this. In a simplistic form, steam-punk often uses goggles, blunderbusses, trains, steam-cars, wires, tubes, gears, type-writers, top-hats, corsets, beasts of burden, and combinations of the above to create the new within the old.

The Iron Council also borrows Western motifs, as well as portions of Jewish mythology, Victoriana, theoretical science, racial tension, and several ideologies. Of these socialism, capitalism, colonialism, and globalism.

After all those lists, getting onto the story will be fun.

The Iron Council itself is a train stolen from the London-esque metropolis called New Crobuzon. Ann-Hari, who lived as a prostitute within New Crobuzon becomes a leader of the literal run-away train. All who ride the train were downtrodden members of society and become free as long as the train keeps moving, escaping the forces from the

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