I see I'm going to be a dissenting voice here, but I'm afraid I found Embassytown to be weak, poorly-plotted and fundamentally unconvincing.The book is concerned with a settlement on a planet at the edge of the known universe. The city is inhabited by Ariekei, a strange species whose distinguishing feature is a unique language which has a double articulation and in which it is impossible to lie. A small enclave of humans lives there, and communicates with their ‘Hosts’ via a series of Ambassador...

Proem: In Which an Ambassador Iangrayetiates Himself With His Host With ImpunityIs a simileLike a metaphor?I cannot espouseThis figure of speech.This not unlike that?One word a signpost?Can this be that, orWould subject object?How could I be you?Worse still, you be me?Well, I know my place,I'm not one to boast.I am, like, content To be just a guest,Sometimes arriving First and leaving last.Not competitive,Neither least nor most.A figure of speech,An Ambassador,If you please, beyond Compare and c...

Aliens so alien they just alienate you with their alieness.That is what you have to look forward to. Embassytown is a brave move by China Miéville, it is not an easy read, it is full of neologism, and it has a steep learning curve. The author made an effort to create something special and he expects some mental exertion from the reader too. In order for the reader to indulge the author they generally need to have a store of goodwill for that author to want to make the effort. Basically, this sho...

For Hosts, speech was thought. It was as nonsensical to them that a speaker could say, could claim, something it knew to be untrue as, to me, that I could believe something I knew to be untrue. Without Language for things that didn’t exist, they could hardly think them; they were far vaguer by far than dreams. …Welcome to Embassytown, the frontier. I know how fast the stories’ll come. I’m an immerser: I’ve heard them. Just beyond our planet’s shores will be, people will say, El Dorado immer land...

Some books are just made for readers. Embassytown, with its focus on the way language shapes our perceptions and our thoughts, is one such book. As readers we are conoisseurs of language, we inhale it and revel in it and cultivate it and all of its diversity. Language informs us, sways us, entertains us, engages us … it is everything to us.Science fiction seems, to me, like a perfect vehicle for exploring our dependence upon language. After all, there has been a great deal of speculation about h...

I wasn’t planning to review this book, but I just can’t stop thinking about it. And then I realized last night that the Hugo Award winners will be announced today and I suddenly had this pang of fan-superstition, like one of those crazy sport people who feel compelled to wear the same socks for a whole week. Maybe if I review this today, he’ll win. Maybe I can speak my wish into reality. See? I really can’t stop thinking about this book. This book is very different than almost anything else I’ve...

This book very well could be the start of a new epoch. Or at least, I think it should be. Why? Because it's not just Miéville's grand far-future SF at play here, full of some of the most subtle and freakishly amazing and STRANGE aliens who are very much defined by their language, but because this novel works on several levels perfectly at the same time.Am I impressed? Hell yes, I'm impressed."Before the humans came, we didn't speak so much of certain things. We were grown into Language. After hi...

How can a novel about language leave one speechless? In a good way, I hasten to add!This was the third Mieville I’ve read, and they are all very different in style, content and my liking (or not).The core idea of this one is language: how minds shape language and how language shapes minds. Wonderful as it was, I can see reasons why some people would hate it, or find it too weird, or just not sci-fi enough. If you don’t delight in polysemy and are not interested in the difference between simile a...

In an unspecified future humanity has left Earth, settling several other planets in space. One of the more remote ones is on Arieka, a planet where the Terrans have established Embassytown, after coming to a mutually beneficial arrangement with the indigenous population (i.e. the Hosts).Despite the difference in physical appearance and language, the Terrans of Embassytown have managed to develop a rather ingenious method of communicating with the Hosts, ensuring a peaceful and prosperous life fo...

In ninth grade, Mrs. Muench--who had an uncanny resemblance to Miss Marple's friend Dolly Bantry--endeavored to teach us the difference between similes and metaphors. Similes use "like" and "as" to compare two unlike things.Metaphors state two unlike things are the same.But dear, enthusiastic Mrs. Muench could not have anticipated China's sophistry: metaphors are lies.Embassytown is a deep-thinking book, not one to pick up if you are in a the mood for a fast action read. China's use of a futuris...

Have you ever been on a first date and suddenly had the sweet realisation that not only are you going to have a great night, but that you're at the beginning of something special, something that could be lasting? That's how I felt a couple of chapters into Embassytown. I had no idea what to expect when I began this book, and it blew me away. An embassy district in a vast city on a faraway world. An alien race whose unique language limits their ability to think and entirely prevents them from lyi...

Embassytown is that rare thing in recent literature: unique. I'm sure there must be other books, other stories that deal with similar ideas, but I have yet to come across anything that comes close to the beautiful strangeness of this book. There are cons: Embassytown is far from perfect. Like all of Mieville's work that I've read so far, it is hard work (especially at the start) but it does get easier as the story begins to grip you. This is not a comfortable, lazy read. Sometimes I found that t...

Sometimes words can shatter worlds. Especially when they are like this: ""I don't want to be a simile anymore," I said. "I want to be a metaphor." This book lived up to all my expectations. It is by far my favorite Mieville book: I reread it and listened to it more times than I can remember. I loved it so much, and yet when a colleague politely asked what it was about (when I told him I stayed up half the night before taking call to read it) I could not figure out how to describe it

“Now the Ariekei were learning to speak, and to think, and it hurt.” I’m addicted to language; we all are. While reading this book, I thought about language. I haven’t really thought about it from the standpoint of it not existing or that it is something to be discovered, like traces of gold in a California riverbed. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t have language. The ability to express myself has served me well. Not that I haven’t said the wrong thing or said the right thing at the wrong t...

BLARGH this guy. This guy needs to be stopped. He is using all the ideas. He is taking all the genres.(I was going to delete that but it got 10 votes, so it can stay. The sentiment still rings true. Stop using up all the ideas, you limey bastard!)--------INTERIOR: Parking garage. Almost every space is full. The only opening is a narrow space labeled "Compact Car." To its left sits a SHINY MOTORCYCLE.[A BLACK LEXUS creeps into view. The driver is irritated, swinging his head back and forth in sea...

The girl who wanted to be a metaphor.There is a certain “What the hell??” quality about a China Mieville novel, especially in the first few pages. The City and the City continued on in this quizzical, absurdist mouth breathing until damn near the middle of the book. To put in Forrest Gump terms, the box of chocolates may reveal pieces that are most definitively NOT chocolate, are in point of fact not even food; some bite-sized morsels may be poison. The box may even be a prop from a Justin Timbe...

June 2011Dear Steven Moffat:China Miéville. Doctor Who. Think about it.Love, JacobAvice Benner Cho is an Immerser. She's a floaker. She's a hoopy frood who knows where her towel is (Dear Jane Belson: China Miéville. Hitchhiker's Guide. Bad idea?). She's also a simile. When she was a child on the strangest planet in the universe, home to the strangest beings in the universe, she became a living part of the strangest language in the universe. And then she left to explore the Out, and then she retu...

China Mieville is not the first writer to tackle the idea of language in a sci-fi setting (I’m thinking of Stephenson’s “Snow Crash” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), which drove me insane, and Ted Chiang’s story “Stories of Your Life” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), which was amazing – but I’m sure there are others); but if you know me, you know Mr. Mieville makes me weak in the knees… I read this book when it first came out and recently had an itching to re-read it: my hu...

Fascinating look at the way language underlies thought, action, being, done in a way that only science-fiction really can. The world of the Hosts & Embassytown is fascinating, full of bio-rigged homes and shrubs with legs -- world-building is such a strength of Miéville's. An entire lexicon, sentient species, and universe to explore in one book. I think what stopped this from being a 5-star read for me was that the most compelling character (Spanish Dancer) out of a cast of relatively flat peopl...

SPOILERSThere is no subject, not love, religion, sex, music, that generates more quasi-mystical but ultimately senseless gushing than.... language. I liked this book quite a lot, and wanted to like it more; but I was so unable to credit its central conceit, the Hosts' "Language", that I have to judge the book something of a failure. Here are some of my problems with it.Language (capital L) both is and is not a language. (Fans of the language mysticism in this book might prefer that I wrote the f...