Mieville's conclusion to the Perdido Street Station trilogy is dense, magical, bewildering and brilliant. Out in the wastes beyond New Crobuzon a rag tag band searches for the legendary Iron Council, a train taken by rebels into the wilderness when the City refused to pay their wages. In New Crobuzon unrest is rife and the people are in covert revolt against their authoritarian rulers, themselves at war against the mysterious Tesh, and the two strands come into painful contact
Mieville introduces us to an incredible cast: Remade, people punished by the authorities by being surgically altered to be part machine; their rebel counterparts the fReemade; magicians; golems; all manner of creatures part bird, bat and insect; stomach churning spells, the visceral urban grit of New Crobuzon and the bewildering landscape outside where smoke turns to stone petrifying its victims and nothing is fixed. And all this in an opaque bewitching language that often had me reaching for the dictionary. Worth the work though.
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