Embassytown: A Novel

Originally published at Blood and Barricades -[...]One of the main problems with having this almost irrational obsession with China Miéville is that I now go into reading his novels with very high hopes, expecting to be grabbed straight away and by the end, blown away. I was very excited to receive a copy of his latest novel, Embassytown, before it was released. This was the first time I received a book free for review. So I am a little embarrassed it took me so long to finish and therefore review, especially due to my high regard for the author.With Embassytown, Miéville enters the `hard sci-fi' genre and does amazing things, exploring complex concepts of language and translation within a world that is deeply filled in, though I felt like it took long to get into the actual main story to be told.The novel is set on a planet at the edge of the `immer' - kind of the known area in which space travel can happen via a kind of space-punkish method of travel called immersing which is similar to colonial era travel by sea. On this planet, humans co-exist with very alien aliens, the Ariekei, and Miéville did very well to make them far removed from human beings, with complex language using two mouths and the fact that thought and truth is linked inseparably from speaking.The differences between our language and there's, the problems with communication are explained a lot throughout the work, but I never quite got it until the end. It's a bit hard to explain in a review which is why it's worth actually reading the book. Anyway, communication is done through Ambassodors, two people, like twins in body and thought, so similar that the Ariekei consider them one being. It is when a new kind of Ambassador comes and communication breaks down that we get our story. But I felt like this all came rather late.There is a lot of back story at the start, and even though some of this back story is about the narrator, Avice Benner Cho, I never felt like I got to know her, other than on the surface. The real depth is in the world and the politics of the society, which was fascinating for a time, but to my shame, I put this novel down for a bit when it wasn't going anywhere fast enough for me to keep reading. It wasn't until I picked it up again and I got into the second half, and especially much later that it really got moving quickly in the end.I really wanted to love this book, and I think the story it tells in the end is fascinating, the world Miéville creates so detailed, but there was something about the writing that didn't grab me. Often it felt like a report, rather than a novel in places. There was lots of `telling' and I kind of felt detached from the events. But perhaps this has something to do with the genre in which its written, something that is very clearly meant to be hard science-fiction, something I haven't read a lot of. For that reason, I've been curious to try and get friends and loved ones that are much more into sci-fi to read it and tell me what they think.This is worth reading, despite its short-comings, but I think I might go back and finally read the trilogy in search of his better work.

"The City & The City" and "Embassytown" are amazing books. TC&TC starts a bit slow then the story builds into a fully visualized city and cities full of texture and detail and inhabited by people for whom I came to care about and hope for the best. As I read TC&TC, I started thinking about quotidian spaces, how we inhabit and move through them, in completely different ways, had new ideas about how we perceive and interact with our environment, with each other. Sometimes we move through space and sometimes space moves around us. I found that i would read a few chapters, think about them for a bit, then read some more. This book will carried me for a while. I read it over a period of a few weeks. When I did put The City and The City down for the final time, my mind was full of different, satisfying thoughts. For a long time after I finished reading it, I kept thinking about the many details of this book and this new way of thinking about the places we inhabit. The City & The City appears to be written in a detective novel genre type of style. Then, I read Kraken, which was a really interesting story which inhabits and treats time as elastic; I was fascinated by this story in the manner of hearing about a terrible, profound event that happens to a friend from a long time ago; parts of the story, details and characters made me cringe and yet I couldn't look away. This story did not appeal to me very much at all, but the writing was so excellent I had to keep reading this book. When finished, I put this book down and felt a bit off-put and confused why someone would write this story and did not want to think about it too much. And yet, I do. It appears that Kraken was written in the genre of magick with a "k", London-modern fantasy tapestry with a few silvery threads of sci-fi woven therethrough. Then I read Embassytown, what an amazing book this turned out to be, completely different from the others and the ideas in this book also made think in totally different ways than I was used to. I could not put this book down. This book made my synapses fire along completely new neural pathways; the pace of action toward the conclusion lit up my brain. After putting this book down, still I turned the ideas therein over and over in my mind like gemstones in my hand. I absolutely would recommend to any one who enjoys science fiction read Embassytown and prepare to be swept up in the strange, new ride that is this story. If you like sci-fi then I cannot recommend this book enough for you to try. What a truly awesome book Embassytown turned out to be. Then I picked up... what was the title... maybe had shiny feathers on the cover... something about a Station... I stuck with it as long as I could but was so bored it was like sitting on a park bench waiting forever for a bus to arrive and then it's not your bus. Took that one back to my local library after getting about a third of the way through. No idea what genre that one was supposed to be. But I am convinced someone out there is going to think that this Mieville something-Station book is one of the greatest books they have ever read. Then read a few chapters of one of his books with with a flute, played outside of a window, perhaps, but only few chapters and returned to the library. For the next book of China Mieville, again I checked it out of the local library before spending money on it. I walked out of the library, got in my car, opened the book to page one, read the first paragraph, closed the book, got out of my car, walked the book back to the library return book box, dropped it therein, walked back to my car, got in and drove home to eat a sandwich. You can figure out which book that one was by reading the first paragraph of every one of China Mieville's books. However, whichever of his books you pick up, know that this guy is an amazing writer and if you don't like one of his books, research them and keep trying them until you get to the genres you do like. I read an interview years ago where he indicated that he writes each of this books in a different style or genre. He really does. I am impressed at how different his stories, characters, locations in time and space, consequences, and especially his style of writing is from book to book, yet all of his books and writings that I have read are well-written, well-thought out, amazing stories and worlds that he creates that have surprised me with new ideas and new ways of thinking about how we inhabit places, space and time. Keep trying different books he has written, you won't be disappointed; you may be pleasantly surprised you did.

One of the weirdest of any of Mieville’s fantastical worlds, which, like Terry Pratchett’s discworld novels, always have a metaphorical anchor in the familiar from the peculiar alternative reality in which the novels are set.In Embassytown we discover a world where the human diaspora has penetrated to the far reaches (of the galaxy, universe etc. is never defined) incorporating the improbability of distance travel through the “Immer” - a concept on which the author thankfully ignores the urge to provide a quasi-scientific explanation. You are just left to accept it along with ideas like the “out” and the “everyday”. In this world humans have established an embassy to deal with the native species who cannot lie and communicate through a “Language” which only they can understand. Humans employ twinned and bio-engineered “ambassadors” to communicate at a basic level which works moderately well until a new Ambassador turns up from off world and tips over the apple cart.What makes this book so special, apart from its, as far as I know, unique species traits, is Mieville’s clever exposition of international politics, bureaucratic interference/plotting and human relationships intertwined with more twists than a pile of old wire. Probably his best work since Perdido St Station for me.

The premise for this book is great. A human outpost on the edge of known space on an alien planet. The aliens have two mouths and thus the humans engineer a system where two clones will speak simultaneously to communicate with the Arekiene aliens.When a new ambassador pair arrives, the dissonance between the two voices acts as a drug on the Arekiene, addicting the whole planet to the 'god - drug'.Excellent read, this was my favorite Meiville after Perdido Street Station.

Only the fact that I've read a lot of his stuff stopped me giving up after around 150 pages. I started to think this was turning into a self-absorbed treatise on the complexities of language itself(he must have swallowed a thesaurus at an early age), but suddenly, roughly halfway through, everything seemed to kick off, and this became a very good SF novel indeed. I think his exhaustive treatment of the difficulty in communicating with the aliens really emphasised just how different they were to us, but then they started to show many familiar human qualities once the barriers started to come down. I can't say much more without spoiling the story, I would just recommend that you stick with it because it really is very good.

China Mieville is one of those writers where I have read a lot of his work without ever thinking of myself as a fan of his. He is undoubtedly talented, however I sometimes find his ornate use of language, and the level of detail he piles into books such as Perdito Street Station and The Scar, gets in the way of telling a good story.It’s ironic then, that I really liked Embassytown, a book where one of the major themes is language itself.The main character is Avice, a space pilot who has returned home to the planet of Arieka, where a colony of human live with the permission of the Hosts, a truly alien species that are only half-understood by the colonists. What follows is a tragedy of unexpected consequences, where in an effort to understand the Hosts better, ambassadors from Earth precipitate a crisis which puts the Hosts and the colonists in danger.There are 2 main themes here. First is the Fall, where humanity is the serpent in the Garden of Eden who have unintentionally corrupted the Hosts by their ability to lie. The second is colonialism, in particular China Mieville seems to have used the Opium Wars as a template for the crisis, with some Hosts turning on humanity in the hope of wiping out the source of their corruption.I think I liked this book because it is more of a ‘proper’ Science Fiction book than his other work, and was concise without any padding. If I was to criticise it, I didn’t find the ending particularly surprising and I wish that Avice had been a more active character.The Hosts themselves were a fascinating creation, which reminded me in some ways of the ‘Great Old Ones’ from the Cthulhu Mythos, the hints about the Immer were intriguing. Would love to find out more about that if he ever gets round to a sequel.

Am yet to read this book but am sure it will be just as good as his other work so should be 5 stars.I have given 3 as the book is covered in notes an print over the spine an pages.If I had known this I would have opted for a better copy or new.If I had read all information more closely it does say "may have marks/notes etc..."Personally I won't use this seller again as I think there is too much damage to book, but if this doesn't bother you grab a cheap copy