Iron Council

New Crobuzon is a vast, smoke-darkened city whose factories grind up the people they use. Beyond its reach, a train called the Iron Council carries those the city has thrown away, and it has become a moving refuge for them.

Judah Low is an obsessive scholar of golemetry, the craft of giving life to inert matter and shaping it into golems. He has spent years mastering it. Now he wants to use that power to shield the Iron Council from the city's authorities, who are closing in.

Cutter, who once belonged to the Council, leads a band of Judah's former students into the desert to find the train. Ann-Hari, a prostitute with a sharp mind and a past rooted in the city's underworld, travels with them. The three storylines move steadily toward one another.

This is fantasy that mixes technology, magic and politics, with a dark, strange and unsettling tone. As the threads meet, the real price of golemetry, the purpose of the Iron Council and the fate of the city's ambitions come into view.