New Crobuzon has seen better days

It seems appropriate that I started this year’s Cannonball with Perdido Street Station (Bas Lag book #1) and end achieving my half-Cannonball with Iron Council (Bas Lag book #3), after falling madly in love with The Scar (Bas Lag book #2) during last year’s Cannonball.

China Mieville books are always so hard to review. Usually at least a couple unlikeable characters, often a semi-unhappy ending, lots of terrible things happening…and yet. The writing, the world-building, the vocabulary, the atmosphere – all SO GOOD.

This one takes place about 20 years after the events of Perdido Street Station, but you don’t have to have read either of the other books to follow along. I caught a very few (and surely missed a few) references to the first book, but nothing necessary to the plot. The city/state/vast powerful entity of New Crobuzon is at war with the nation of Tesh, and also on the brink of internal revolt. Its citizens are tired of the war, tired of the militia patrolling the streets, and looking for heroes. Throw in a few charismatic rebels and the search for the possibly-mythical Iron Council, who stood up to the powers-that-be many years before, and you’ve got disaster within and without.

Several characters introduce us to the underworld of New Crobuzon and its revolutionaries, and the search for the Iron Council out in the wilderness. Some of it was a little hard to follow, with jumps in time as well as location and character, but it all came together at the end.

“History…” Jacobs spoke with a terse authority. “Is all full. And dripping. With the corpses. Of them who trusted the incorruptible.” I mean, yikes.