Embassytown by China Mieville

Embassytown by China Miéville


My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is book #3 for the 2012 Hugo Nominee in the Novel category. After a rough start to this book in which I kept falling asleep - not the books fault! I was exhausted - I was finally able to get into the story and buzzed through it in a week.

From Goodreads.com:  China Miéville doesn’t follow trends, he sets them. Relentlessly pushing his own boundaries as a writer—and in the process expanding the boundaries of the entire field—with Embassytown, Miéville has crafted an extraordinary novel that is not only a moving personal drama but a gripping adventure of alien contact and war.


In the far future, humans have colonized a distant planet, home to the enigmatic Ariekei, sentient beings famed for a language unique in the universe, one that only a few altered human ambassadors can speak.

Avice Benner Cho, a human colonist, has returned to Embassytown after years of deep-space adventure. She cannot speak the Ariekei tongue, but she is an indelible part of it, having long ago been made a figure of speech, a living simile in their language.


When distant political machinations deliver a new ambassador to Arieka, the fragile equilibrium between humans and aliens is violently upset. Catastrophe looms, and Avice is torn between competing loyalties—to a husband she no longer loves, to a system she no longer trusts, and to her place in a language she cannot speak yet speaks through her.



This is a blending of the strange world Mieville created with The Scar, Perdido St. Station and Iron Horse and with last book The City and The City ("It's not a secret, it's not a thought." pg 168. echoing the concept of 'unseeing'). I found Embassytown absolutely fascinating. I know others are completely bouncing off of it.


This is a book about Language and understanding Language. Yes, with a capitol letter. A Language that can only be heard if something sentient speaks it, to be repeated through mass media has no meaning or context and is a garble of noise. A society that cannot lie, but understands the meaning of lies. A Language that when spoken by the right humans, is a drug more addictive than any thing that can be taken physically. And it's a story about language (yes, with a small 'L') and how stupid and ignorant people can be. It's about miscommunication, real communication, and trying to understand what is being said.


I hit a couple of minor issues: with all the world building that Mieville does, and in this book he moves into the larger universe with a wonderful set of aliens and technology or bio-ology, a couple of archaic and mundane items jumped out at me: a formal event with all the glam that Mievlle brings to his societies and he had a main character of the moment in a tux with a white rose. That kinda threw me. And we have a peoples far far removed from Terra Firma (they don't even know where Earth is anymore) and yet they were using "Christ!" and "Jesus!" as swear words. A bit anachronistic perhaps? Granted, the author did add on pharotekton, as in "Christ Pharotekton!" but it felt as if it was just that, an add on.


I thought this story was brilliant. I can't say that you will come to the same conclusion. It's one of "those" books that people either love or truly despise.





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