Pt II, the return from

Edinburgh. There is a British novelist called China Mieville who writes fantasy fiction in which he he has built an awesome world of towering imagination. In this world is the city New Crobuzon, a brutal place wherein live races of fantastic beings, insect people called Khepri; Remade who are the punished, literally remade part flesh and blood, part machine, slave people, the lowest order; garuda who are bird people; cactus people called hotchi and many more wondrous races. In the dark and brooding New Crobuzon are footpads, robbers, stealers of children, mystics, spell binders, even other dimensional folk who are both good and bad at the same time. New Crobuzon is described like Victorian London, sewers, stench, darkness, but with modern power sources, overhead railways, slow moving rivers, The Tar and Gross Tar. In China Mieville's book New Crobuzon is Rome, an Imperial City. In the first novel, Perdido Street Station the protagonists are a tiny group of citizens who are thrown into battle against the powerful Mayor on the one hand and terrifying creatures called Slake-moths (of which there are only four) on the other. To fight in such a treacherous and divided city requires stealth, cunning and great bravery, none of which is held in high amount by the heroes.

The second novel is called The Scar and describes a sea journey through fantastical times and places.

The third novel is called Iron Council. New Crobuzon is threatened with destruction in a developing war with another ethereal imperial power. People leave the city, some to travel hundreds maybe thousands of miles through landscapes touched with magic, and bandits, and renegade gangs. Many of these people are chasing a myth, a symbol of freedom that is talked about only in whisper, after dark. This place of liberty, free from New Crobuzon, a threat to New Crobuzon represents the hopes and dreams of so many, but does it really exist this Iron Council? Rumour has it, some claim even to have seen it, that a train rides over the land, forever on the move, taking up rails behind, laying rails before. Going wherever it so wishes, owned only by those who are aboard. Iron Council is an affront to New Crobuzon, to regular order, to Imperial power. Iron Council makes its own decisions, goes where it pleases. It is a symbol of liberty, a thought, a glimpse of what might be, what could be. Iron Council cannot be bound by normal rules, it makes it's own history. Iron Council has broken out.

And so did we. Desperate to avoid a disastrous return journey through drab stations, eating grey food we took control and began to lay our own rails, over platform six, across the main car park. Cutting, heaving, laying down, collecting up, wrenching ourselves free. We sang timetable songs, with choruses of hope where nothing was ever late and everyone had a seat. Glorious songs of fresh bread and bountiful fillings, with butter, and tea that had tea in it...

Tomorrow PtIII

In the meantime for all you out there who've never come across it, Perdido Street Station remains one of most astonishing novels I have ever read.