from English* to Tagalog to Hungarian to Esperanto to Chinese... and back to English again!It is quite a challenge in front of me, I also played its ideas. Children's Literature in the tradition of Alice in Wonderland, but not for me. I do not usually a fan of fun and good times and random stupidity, I'm not really a fan of word games. I like the rules and logic of literature and children's literature is no exception. Almost stimulate me whiny, uninteresting characters. It really grated. But the...

Let me begin this sadly negative review by saying that I think China Mieville is one of the BEST writers working today. To put it simply…he is THE MAN!! Unfortunately, and it pains me to say, he is THE MAN in this case that wrote a really shitty book. It happens to the best of artists at some point in their career. Al Pacino did Author, Author, Steven Spielberg did Always and even Will Ferrell did Bewitched. Well, I must report that this is Mr. Mieville’s Ishtar, sans Dustin Hoffman and War

If (for whatever strange reason) you ever wondered what a love child of "Alice in Wonderland" and Gaiman's "Neverwhere" would look like if it were raised by the Master of Weird - well, say hello to Un Lun Dun. 'I know you're not a sidekick.''No one is!' Deeba shouted. 'That's no way to talk about anyone! To say they're just hangers-on to someone more important.'This is an ode to all the sidekicks out there, those who were 'destined' to be on the sidelines, to be the 'funny one' or 'brainy one' o...

For the second book in a row, China Miéville's writing has reminded me of nothing so much as one of Stefon's drug-fueled gay fantasies:UnLondon's hottest club is Smog. This place has everything: naked ghosts, balloon zombies, sentient pollution, buses with lizard feet, spider windows, ninja R2D2s. You know that thing where a trash can has been trained in the martial arts?---This year it was my goal to read 100 books. Which I have accomplished with several weeks to spare!Number one, read in Janua...

Plus: It's China Mieville, of course it's weird. Chimeric monsters and all that jazz. The subverted trope and the wordplay galore were utterly, absolutely delightful.Minus: The book could shed, some, I dunno, two hundred pages? It takes almost 100 pages for the plot to move from the start, then some chapters could be tighter. I was really impatient to get to the end.

I don't read a lot of children's fantasy, but this was a gift from a friend and I felt I had to finish it. I did struggle with it a bit and it took some time for the story to pull me in, though my interest wavered throughout the entire book. That being said, there were a few things I really enjoyed about it. The thing I liked the most was how the author handled the idea of the Chosen One. I can't go into any details to avoid spoilers, but it was a pleasant surprise for me. There were also some i...

Warning: mild spoilersWhen it comes to creating weird worlds, there is none to beat China Mieville.One only has to look at Perdido Street Station, where weird beings from various mythologies join together in a strange world to create a socially incendiary cocktail. However, that novel was rather thin on story, and none of the characters were actually likeable. But in this book, which is meant for young readers, Mieville has overcome the failing on the story front: it contains a story rattling al...

Wow. How do I describe this book? It’s on the one hand a bit of an ode to all of the quest based, parallel world containing fantasies that have come before: The Wizard of Oz, Narnia, Mary Poppins, Alice in Wonderland, most of Neil Gaiman’s catalogue, hell even Harry Potter. On the other hand, it undermines the typical tenets of these books in a way that’s a bit of a fuck you to the whole genre. It also manages to transcend both of these things and become a decent quest based, parallel world cont...

A year late review but my impressions didn't fade, that is why this books is on my favorites shelf.I read Mieville's book recently, and ended thinking about his other works and decided to write something about this book too.Of course one might argue that I am doing it only because if I didn't I would be cleaning house, getting ready for work and other adult stuff I avoid doing.Yeah I suck at being adult.If you haven't read Mieville's books before I would describe Un Lun Dun as Alice in Neverwher...

What is it about London that makes it the prime place to create another world, not hidden in the shadows, but accessible through secret passageways that tend to close tight behind those who stumble in? Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere jumps to mind, which China Mieville (I don't know how to do the accents!) credits as an inspiration, and now Un Lun Dun.Although I guess the other example that I can think of, J. Michael Straczynski's Midnight Nation, is set in the States. Never mind. And in this book, UnL...

I am not sure what to make of this book or its author.Considerable time is spent attacking cliches of the fantasy genre, yet Mieville's Unlondon is acknowledged as derivative of Gaiman's Neverwhere. Isn't being obviously derivative of your predecessors both a cliche and the worst crime of the fantasy genre? (I give credit for open admission of the debt, though.)One of the cliches attacked is that of the the Protagonist with a Heroic Destiny (PHD). Fairy Nuff, but you can see the attack coming fr...

This is a hard book to rate. I hadn’t read a children’s book in a long time and most of the listlessness I felt while reading this one was due to the dumbed down language and on-the-nose exposition. Still, had I read this when I was 12, I probably would have thought it is the best thing ever.As whimsy followed whimsy, I kept having this nagging feeling that UnLondon needing better defining. So eventually I found a formula that, in my mind, helped explain the abcity’s (un)logic. For every un-X I’...

I totally enjoyed this story! I liked central character Deeba Resham a lot, and how well she handled herself when interacting with all the weird and really wonderful people and creatures she encountered in unLondon.Though a little draggy in a few parts, I enjoyed the plot, and the sheer fun of the names of creatures and people, and the many differences between our reality and that of unLondon, and how our reality seeps into theirs.(view spoiler)[-I liked Mieville’s skewering of the whole “chosen...

As I came to the end of Un Lun Dun, I decided that one of my New Year’s resolutions should be to make this story into a script for an animation movie. Maybe I'll Google it and see if anyone owns the rights. It would be a lot of fun, I think, to pare this novel's fantastical events, curious assortment of characters, and diverse settings into a two-hour movie. Not that I'm a movie-maker, I'm just saying there would be a lot to work with.The story is a wonderful adventure written for children and a...

One star off for making this too long Mr Mielville. Towards the end I felt tired and just wanted it to finish despite the fact that I did enjoy the book. The best books are the ones that finish and leave you wanting more. This did not do that! In many ways I was reminded of reading The Golden Compass which meandered along from one danger to another in similar fashion to the point where danger became tedious instead of suspenseful.Anyway enough of what I did not like and more about what I did. I

When I started this book, I thought to myself "oh lord, I hope this isn't another _Neverwhere_". I liked Gaiman's novel just fine, but I had in my hand ANOTHER urban fantasy, with a Dave McKean-esque cover, and I didn't think that I could handle it.Kudos to Mieville for taking my worries and drop-kicking them into the ocean.There's so much to like about this novel. The protagonist isn't who it seems at first. The level of imagination is astounding (quirky, gentle, but with a definite Mieville fl...

Zanna is a slightly above-average teenager: above-average in height, attractiveness, intelligence and even in all-around popularity. As a matter of fact, her only claim to originality is settling on a rather odd choice for a nickname: Zanna being short for Susanna. Nothing to get excited about, until of course there suddenly is: random people start to treat her like a celebrity, and animals follow her around. Except for cats, the snooty buggers!Even so, Zanna and her friends generally write the

What do you get if you cross one of Hyao Miyazaki's animated films with Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, the imagination of Clive Barker, and Alice in Wonderland? You get this book: Un Lun Dun by China Mieville. When young friends Zanna and Deeba follow a broken umbrella down to a sewer with a steering wheel, they turn it and enter the world of Un Lun Dun. Un Lun Dun (or UnLondon) is an urban wonderland where things that are thrown away in regular london are found and given a new purpose there. Upon en...

A sort of kiddie Neverwhere (and Miéville does indeed credit Neil Gaiman in the intro), this is one of those books that’s packed with cleverness—and really, really aware of it. I like some of Miéville’s attempts to turn the typical quest-y fantasy on its ear—The Chosen One turns out to be fairly useless! The “tasks” one must complete to defeat the bad guy are highly skippable!—but UnLondon never felt like a real place to me, or its denizens real people. I’m still really not sure who Deeba was