Customer Reviews

Embassytown

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(27)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

I'm not actually a China Mieville fan. The entire "New Weird" genre just sort of confuses me, and I'm rarely impressed (to be fair, he's a fantastic writer). "Un Lun Dun" and "Kraken", particularly, didn't really leave favorable impressions. Still, I did love "King Rat" and "Perdido Street Station", and his other books were enjoyable. Also, it's stupid to not read anything else by a prolific author simply because two books weren't your thing. Add to that the fact that "Embassytown" is, at least superficially, hard-core science fiction...well, it was enough for me to take the plunge.

"Embassytown" is told through the eyes of Immerser Avice Benner Cho. She first chronicles her childhood on the planet Ariekei, giving us glimpses of Mieville's multi-layered world: most children don't grow up with their birth parents. They live in communal homes with multiple parents (much like counselors.) Humans share their world with "exots"--aliens (exoterres). But this isn't some two-dimensional Star Wars or silly Futurama-type melting pot. Exots are screened. With one important exception, exots can only settle on Ariekei if their sociologic and, to an extent, genetic makeup (they must have language, move comfortably in a human-run world, have similar thought processes, et cetera) is similar enough to allow integration with humans.

Humans do not own Ariekei, however. We are settlers, only living on the planet because beings known only as Hosts permit us to.

The Hosts protect themselves. While benevolent, especially toward children, they have a part of the planet only they can enter; humans can't breathe in their area. They circumvent the human similarity, as well (it's their planet, after all.) They speak a language only genetically engineered linguists can comprehend (these people are called Ambassadors.) They are not at all humanoid in appearance; they do not communicate like humans; and their sociologic match-up is questionable at the very best.

However, the human and exot population of Ariekei long struck a balance. They are always problems, but Embassytown is an almost disturbingly cordial society. The Hosts do their best for Ariekei, and the Ambassadors keep the peace and essentially run the society.

But when a new Ambassador arrives, the entire balance is thrown into jeopardy.

Now, the writing in "Embassytown" is fantastic. It does start slowly. There are pages and pages of childhood memories, but that serves two purposes: extensive, and subtle, world-building; and an understanding of a narrator who often takes a back seat to the story to follow.

The writing is lyrical and descriptive. During its leaner moments, Mieville recalls Ray Bradbury (which is only a plus as far as I'm concerned.) Some readers will probably describe it as "long-winded", but I think it matches the story perfectly. The narrative doesn't stop or bog itself down. There is simply a lot to tell, and Mieville tells it all.

The characters weren't as deep as I prefer. But again, this matches the story. While a rather bleak, hard-core science fiction novel, the crux of "Embassytown" is the beauty and power of language. It wasn't a parable, but the theme overtook the plot. At the same time, it doesn't wham you over the head. You're not having "language is a beautiful thing" screamed at you from every page. It is subtle. The story doesn't have a weak spot, and it doesn't stop. I think one of Mieville's greatest achievements is this flawless weaving of a theme and moral into the fabric of a novel.

This novel is, I thought, bleak, if far, far from hopeless. While it starts off comfortably as Avice describes her childhood, "Embassytown" swiftly darkens.

I'll be honest. This is my favorite of China Mieville's books. It is traditional science fiction infused with enough originality to make it unqiue. It carries a theme that is actually very dear to my heart. The writing is Mieville at his best, and the story itself is very different. I can already tell it isn't to everyone's taste, but I adored it, and eagerly suggest you give it a try.

China Miéville's fertile imagination has always explored the interstices of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, but this, his eighth novel, is more strongly tilted toward science fiction than its predecessors. On a planet dominated by aliens whose unique language demands a uniquely specialized form of communication, the isolated human community of Embassytown lives a life of benign neglect, having only occasional contact with the society of which it's a nominal colony and the natives on whom its livelihood depends. When that harmony is shattered by an impossible arrival and an unexpected discovery, Avice Benner Cho, positioned by fate at the nexus of several conflicting agendas, finds herself caught up in the tragic, violent birth of a new order.

Miéville uses theoretical questions about the nature of language as a jumping-off point, but doesn't explore them in any rigorous way; this is not so much a novel of ideas as of images. As ever, the author excels at portraying an urban existence that's alien and yet based in universal aspects of city life. Embassytown is first seen through a child's eyes, as flashbacks detail Avice's early years, the games and myths that spring up in the lives of children surrounded by strangers, whether those strangers belong to a different ethnic group or a different species. No awkward exposition blunts the mystery of Avice's city, and readers not familiar with the immersive quality of novels like this one may find themselves lost. But before too much time passes, Miéville weaves seemingly-disparate threads together into a deeply satisfying moment of revelation. At that point, the novel truly takes off.

In its first half, chapters detailing Avice's complicated history with the different powers of Embassytown alternate with ones set on the evening when everything changes. These overlapping sections are perfectly paced, revealing narrative secrets at a rate that prevents the reader from becoming bored with either plotline or losing sight of the big picture. The science fiction notions that emerge are not particularly novel, but there are enough of them that the combination remains distinctive, and Miéville describes these familiar ideas with flair, finding the awe and terror in what might otherwise be clinical concepts, especially in the later sections, where the flashbacks end and the particular nature of the novel's aliens leads to a truly horrific outbreak of chaos.

The characters of Embassytown often lack individual depth; their histories are unexplored and their motivations treated as unknown and possibly unknowable, while Avice's laconic voice conceals personality rather than revealing it. Frustrating though it can be, this distance lends them a certain strange grandeur, the counter-intuitive dignity of minimalist fiction, and its shortcomings are offset by Miéville's rich rendering of the different factions at work in the life of any city. It's not as simple as humans vs. aliens, colonists vs. homeworlders, or any such binary. Feuds and clashing ideologies of which even the well-connected Avice can have only the dimmest idea drive competing factions, creating an impression of greater complexity than a three hundred fifty-page novel can offer, and there are no easy answers about which groups and actions are morally justified. Likewise, Miéville's robust world-building makes Embassytown feel like a real place, one whose dark nooks and crannies can only be glimpsed on a single visit.

Wars are fought not to preserve the past but to define the future. Miéville understands this, and his novel captures the compromised, compromising life of a city in transition. In spite of the cruelty, fear, loss, and destruction that it describes, Embassytown is first and foremost a portrait of strength and survival, of the adaptations demanded by hardship and the price they bring with them. And, for all its futuristic wonders, it is ultimately a novel about how communication between different cultures produces changes on all sides, and therefore remarkably contemporary. Embassytown excels both as gripping, imaginative science fiction and as a carefully thought out meditation on the nature of cities.

I read science fiction to be entertained and to stretch my understanding of ideas I might never otherwise consider. Embassytown gave me a huge dose of both. China Mieville wrote a stimulating, entertaining story of the importance of language. He did that by introducing an alien culture totally out of sync with the way in which human beings communicate - even though both species communicate through sound.

The protagonist, Avice, grew up in the one human town - Embassytown - on the alien's planet. The town was an outpost of a human-dominated world and not a large place to live. Mieville does a good job of grounding the reader in the culture of the synergy between humans and aliens by allowing Avice to tell certain important parts of her childhood.

The story begins in a time of rapid and traumatic change that threatens to destroy the aliens' world and Embassytown. The snowballing events pressure breakthroughs that offer changes as devastating as the ones at the beginning of the story.

I had two problems with the advanced proofs that I received for review. (The book is due to be released in May.) First, about 50-to-75 pages near the center of the book slowed down to the point of slogging through mud. (Mieville spends too many pages getting through the times when any action is taking place out of Avice's sight.) Second, one of the subplots that seemed to be important several times in the book - Avice's relationship with Ehrsul - ended strangely, even for sci-fi. Those are the only reasons that I rated the book with four stars instead of five.

With all truly well written science fiction stories, the first reading is for orientation to a new world and to make the paradigm shifts necessary to understanding the plot. The second reading brings out the nuances and the delights of finding all the subtleties the author includes in the book. Embassytown passed the first-reading test with high marks. I anticipate that Embassytown will carry me through the second reading with equal aplomb.

I highly recommend Embassytown.

Way out on the edge of the known universe, somewhere far into the future, a colony of human beings has formed an improbable alliance with an unusual species, the Ariekei, known by those who live on their planet as Hosts. What makes the Ariekei strange is not their distinct physiology, since in the world depicted here there are equally distinctive creatures out there on other accessible planets (and of course humans look strange to them). What makes them strange is their language. It's not just that they utter each word in two distinctive simultaneous voices. It's that in some important sense they don't have words, since they don't distinguish between the sounds they employ, the meanings they intend, and the things they refer to. What this means is they can't lie, and they can't recognize as meaningful speech acts that are divorced from their reference, and whose object isn't intended by their speaker. Combining that with the fact their utterances consist of two simultaneous voices making distinct sounds, means that only pairs of humans, who have been specially modified for the purpose of coordinating their voices and their thoughts, can communicate with the Hosts. These paired humans are known as Ambassadors.

Avice, the main character who tells this story in first person, grew up on Embassytown, the human colony on the outskirts of a major Host city, where the Ambassadors reside along with many other colonists. She left Embassytown while still young, to serve as crew on trade ships that travel through the known reaches of "immer" space. Now, though, she's returned, both to reconnect with old friends and because her new husband, a linguist, is fascinated by the idea of the Ariekei tongue. Things are changing, however, on her home planet. A new Ambassador pair, drawn from the capital planet of the colonial power rather than homegrown on Ariekei, brings about changes that no one could anticipate and that threaten the shared existence of colonists and Hosts on the planet. Avice is caught in the middle, and is uniquely situated to tell the story of what followed, and to play a role that perhaps no one else could.

I found the story to be engaging, the main characters to be intriguing, and the philosophical and linguistic speculations at the heart of the story to be fascinating. China Mieville knows just how to balance the three aspects that I take to be essential to intriguing science fiction: telling a story, creating a world, and exploring concepts. Comparisons with Neal Stephenson and William Gibson and Gene Wolfe fit well here, but the tone and subject matter of this book in particular reminded me a great deal of Octavia Butler's Lilith's Brood trilogy (though I think she might have pushed the reader a bit further in thinking about the ambiguous and troubling character of the final resolution to the troubles that arise in this novel). One thing I love about Mieville is that he plants little "easter eggs" into the text in the form of subtle references to philosophy and science and pop culture that aren't so obtrusive as to break with the story, but always brings a smile to my face. Here there's a very clever reference to Romero's living dead trilogy, for example - and another to Plato's Phaedrus (or at least to one of the myths that Socrates recounts there). I loved his distinction - drawing casually on German words for "always" and "everyday" - between the "immer", the original energy space through which interstellar travel becomes possible, and the "manchmal" or ordinary space we live in. I loved this book - I picked it up in the morning on a lazy Sunday - and couldn't put it down (except to eat and do other necessary things) until I'd finished late that night. This is one I expect I'll read again sometime in the not so distant future.

China Mieville wrote a wonderful book called "Perdido Street Station", which described a fantastically rich universe that combined high tech, low tech, steampunk, magic, other dimensions, and practically everything else. Instantly people were addicted. 'We want more Perdido Street Station', they cried. WIth time the fans became restless, they began to mutter amongst themselves and become surly. While there were no overt signs of violence, the mood felt the implicit threat of the addict denied.

Then "Iron Council" came out. The fans were not pleased, and if anything the hostile murmuring increased.

"The Scar" seemed to calm things down. 'Yes it's like Perdido Street Station we like it', and all seemed calm.

But with time the effects of "The Scar" wore off, and the fans became restless again. China Mieville wrote "Kraken", not set in the Perdido Street Station universe but with a similar attempt at richness, but the reaction of the fans was muted, like a heroin addict given whiskey and a couple of tylenols. The grumblings were only briefly stilled, and have since grown louder and more ominous.

But now we have "embassytown", and the fans are rapturous once again, the addicts soaring on a fresh high. Strange factions have arisen amongst the fans. Some say 'we liked that Perdido Street Station one better', and others claim that no, "embassytown" is better, while still others plan to vote for Michelle Bachman. Ultimately the minds of the fans are alien and unknowable. We can only hope that Mieville can match this quality of work before the fans become too desperate again...

Bottom line: no this is not flawless literature. But if you like rich science fiction, populated with adult characters who are neither craven villains nor perfect saints, where superintelligent aliens are not outwitted by twelve year old boys, and you want a fix of Mievilles' almost sui generis ability to evoke in a single sentence a richness that most authors would require a full novel to develop, this may be one for you.

I seriously consider China Mieville one of the best authors to emerge in a long, long time. His writing is enchanting, intelligent, and mature. I have read and absolutely loved everything Mieville has written. BUT, Embassytown could have been a LOT better, had it been edited. I am sure this book had an editor, but somehow this feels like an early draft. The plot could be tighter, the narration could be more coherent, some of the dialogue could be perfected, and the overall feeling is that this book is a bit of a mess. The world, as usual, is perfect to the smallest detail. The personae is wonderful. The ideas are, as usual with CM, amazingly original and thought-provoking. But Avice, the main character, is just... Away. The reader can't identify with her. Nothing happens to her during the story. A lot happens to the world around her, but nothing seems to affect her. That's not a novel, it's an early draft. It was really hard to read this from beginning to end. Had it not been Mieville, I wouldn't have read it through. Had it been Mieville's first book, he wouldn't get to publish another. It is still China Mieville, of course, and the book, with all its downsides, was really enthralling, but every author needs an editor, and this time someone slipped, be it the author, the editor or the publisher. I enjoyed this book about 70%. The rest was simply struggling against the writing. To conclude: If you've read all of the other CM books, read this. You will probably enjoy it. But if this is your first Mieville book - Read Perdido Street Station, The Scar or The City & The City first.

Embassytown is a Bremen colony on a planet bordering the farthest known reaches of space. The world is a strange mishmash of biological and technological species. Almost everything is part engineered and part living (architecture, flora, fauna, beings). Time is measured in kilohours. The relationship between the locals, their alien neighbors, and the Bremen Empire is tenuous. Embassytown is a bit of a back-water colony that largely exists under the radar of the ruling Empire on its distant planet - at least that's how it appears. The strange alien race that has accepted the Embassytowners into its midst is the Ariekei. Their speech, or "Language", is unique in that it is comprised of two things spoken simultaneously. The local leaders of the colony, the Ambassadors, are the only ones who can communicate with the "Hosts" or Ariekei. Ambassadors are two people bred and engineered so that they can be of one mind and speak simultaneously in "Language". "Language" is also unique in that it is literal and truthful. There is no symbolism in the language. Only what is can be spoken.

Avice Benner Cho, the narrator, was born and raised in Embassytown. She becomes an Immerser (someone who travels through space in the Immer - the timeless dimension in which the universe exists). During her travels, she meets and marries a linguist who is enamored with "Language". Together they return to Embassytown so he can study the strange language and they find themselves immersed in political and cultural upheaval.

To create the setting, the novel starts in two threads ("formerly" and "latterday") that finally meet and proceed to the book's conclusion. It is told entirely through the experience of Avice who is ultimately an impotent and uninteresting heroine. The narrative is revealed in endless summarizing and opining by the main character whose opinions count for very little. The reader doesn't know her. She's flat and empty - no values, no ambition, no wit, no passion, no intelligence. She just rides the wave of events and tells the reader about them and how she felt.

Two primary things occur that threaten the future of the Ariekei and Embassytown. First, a group of Ariekei struggle to learn to lie and achieve a momentous breakthrough. Second, when the Ariekei hear broken "Language" (simultaneous speech by an Ambassador that is not completely sympathetically linked), it has a narcotic affect on them. They become addicts and need the fix that only hearing the broken language anew can provide. These two occurrences threaten to destroy the civilization.

The work is imaginative (not dazzlingly so) but it lacks any grounding in characters that are interesting or with whom the reader empathizes. The novel comes off as a cold and calculated exploration of ideas lacking any emotional resonance. Imagination cannot substitute for characterization and this story suffers dreadfully as a result.

I do not see how any rational person with a long history of reading fantasy and science fiction can give this book five stars.

Heavy editing would have helped this book a lot. Starting with description: practically none of the alien planet, its natives, the human characters, the sociopolitical arrangement of the natives or the humans. Or of anything for that matter.

Fantasy and science fiction usually means neologisms, created words. There are some here and the author gives you little to no help understanding them. I had decided about halfway through to re-read it but when I got to the end I decided not to. Just too irritating.

The heroine has no connection other than sexual with the human rulers but seems to run some things anyway, at least until she decides she is sort of a traitor, though in what fashion is not revealed.

This is my first go at a Mieville book. I will try some earlier ones, as his imagination seems really strong. Perhaps he has had too much success winning all those awards and thus can ignore his editors, the way Grisham has done several books ago.

There are different viewpoints as to what makes good science fiction but I think above all of these is that the story must challenge your reader to think and to think about a possible future whether it is one year or a million years from now. Miéville certainly makes us think but there are other standards I hold science fiction to as well.

Set in an unknown future when humanity is crossing the universe using technology that is both dangerous and almost magical, we see how we interact with a very different species. (Or perhaps it is a past since the standard belief of the humans in the novella is that the universe has been created destroyed and created anew at least two previous times)

The Ariekei are certainly quite different from humans and yet we find a way to communicate. In a sense this entire book is about communication, how necessary, dangerous, and yet flexible language is to a community and between cultures. That is one of the challenges of the book. So much of the alien language is used, the type setting is interesting and removes much change of this book ever becoming a film or even being read out loud, that we struggle to understand it along with our heroine. However it is not simply the Ariekei language that is foreign but the language of the humans which has so many new phrases, ideas and just simple words that you must read slowly to comprehend it well.

There are two types of readers of science fiction. Some want a fast-paced book that gets them involved and keeps them turning the pages of a book they can devour in a day or two. Some want a slow read that requires a lot of thinking and a lot of reflection if not rereading of passages. This novel is for the second audience type. I can read slow but given the amount of reading my PhD required and the book reviews I do a year, when I read for pleasure I want more fast paced, engaging storytelling myself. This took me a good five days to read and grasp mostly because I had to for this review not because I found our main character particularly interesting or accessible to me as a woman today.

It shouldn't be that way because by the end of the book you realize that Avice, our main character, is the one we should be seeing the world through. Unfortunately I couldn't really get connected to her probably because her world was so truly different from my own on some many levels. I'm sure some of you will feel very strongly toward her and thus find the reading quicker and more rewarding.

Embassytown is a philosophical poem, an ode to language, and an outlet to an prolific imagination. When reading, one must keep in mind that the plot is more of a metaphor than a story. Events, characters, and even words often make little sense, instead serving as a creative exploration of the powers, limits, and jurisdiction of language.

"Before the humans came, we didn't speak so much of many things. Before the humans came, we didn't speak." Embassytown is about the fragility and duplicity of language and the creation of meaning. It is an argument for the storyteller's great conceit: that the deepest truths can be told only through lies. Mieville asserts language's role as a creator of meaning, not just a reference. The brilliance is that a complex argument about language is made without long soliloquies,and is instead demonstrated through plot twists and the act of reading itself. For example, Embassytown includes a scattering of portmanteaus (e.g., floaking = floating, soaking) and other made-up words that force the reader to assign meaning through context. Simultaneously, the alien hosts are struggling to create new similes ("We are like the girl who ate what was given to her in the dark") and ultimately the little lie of the metaphor to construct a reality that expands their senses.

"Embassytown" is to "The Scar" what Frank Hebert's "God Emperor" is to the original "Dune": a story that's a whole lot weirder and less plot-driven, but more interesting philosophically. The reader who can appreciate its merits and overlook the story itself will find Embassytown a book worth experiencing.