China Mieville's latest novel returns to the setting of his acclaimed Perdido Street Station: New Crobuzon, a fantasy city rudely transfigured by a steampunk industrial revolution.
If fantasy is traditionally founded on 'sense of wonder', Mieville's world turns more on a sense of awed revulsion; this is a world where the mutagenic force of Torque and New Crobuzon's brutal punishment factories remake human and inhuman alike into creatures truly monstrous.
A writer of rare gifts, Mieville combines the brutal vitality of modern urban noir with the profligate invention of a great fantasist; ideas are tossed out as set-dressing from which a lesser writer might drag a whole trilogy.
Iron Council is every bit as gripping as his previous novels, but more satisfying with it; where before his endings tended towards deliberate anticlimax, here he has found a way to give greater resolution without taking an undeservedly pat way out.
For anyone who enjoys fantasy, this is essential reading; for anyone who had given up on the genre, doubly so.
Iron Council by China Mieville is published by Macmillan priced £17.99.
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