![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rushthatspeaksYesterday's review.
I have never expected China Miéville to write a novel I could find completely satisfying. Perdido Street Station, while it has its good points, suffers on an external level from gratuitous pessimism and, on a level more specific to me personally, from containing more insects than I can really handle in a single novel. I have been unable to finish The Scar and Kraken, let alone Iron Council or Un Lun Dun.
But I keep picking his new work up, because there has always been something in each of his books to catch me, before I couldn't take it anymore; and The City and the City came so very, very close to being a book I could respect.
And now, with his first SF novel, I have got more than I expected, more than I was hoping for, and more than I remotely considered possible. Embassytown is unrestrainedly magnificent.
Avice Benner Cho was born and raised in Embassytown, the tiny human outpost on the world of the alien Ariekei (whom the inhabitants of Embassytown simply call their Hosts). The language of the Hosts is unique among known languages in several directions: one of the most significant is that it always has referents. Words, for the Hosts, are signs of things that have happened or are happening or do exist. Each word is related directly to a demonstrable thing or action. The Hosts, brilliant at an odd kind of organic technology, have neither the concept of writing nor the concept of a lie.
When she was a child, Avice was asked by the Hosts to perform a set of actions to act as a referent for future incorporation into their language. She does what she is asked (her narration of it consists mostly of saying "it was the most incomprehensible experience of my life"), and so she is a simile. Her existence, and this thing that happened to her and that she did, are the referents for an entire set of alien emotional states which cannot be explained to her, and which cannot be explained among the speakers in any other way.
This is not why she left the planet, as a young woman. She turned out to have a talent for the dimensional manipulation human people in this universe use to travel more quickly than light. (One of the things I love about this book is that different alien species do it differently, but there is a major conceptual comprehension barrier that no one has quite straddled yet, so no species is terribly clear on how the other ones travel.) She goes all over the galaxy because she wants to and it's interesting and it turns out she came from a backwater; she marries four times, to three men and one woman, though not all at the same time; she learns languages and sees stars; she grows up.
But being a simile may be why she goes home...
This book works for me on every single level. The worldbuilding is unique and subtle, the characters are three-dimensional, the political motivations and machinations are complex without being incomprehensible, the aliens are alien, and the density of cool ideas is impressive. I was not expecting a novel from Miéville that reads like Ted Chiang in a blender with Rosemary Kirstein.
And I was not expecting the prose.
In a book so about language, the prose is important, and it's extremely good. The section titles alone are gaspingly brilliant. This is one of those books where the invented words work, and do what they're meant to do down to the roots, and where word and sound are in harmony with every connotation that surrounds them. Avice's dimensional talent, for instance, is to immerse. Because the place the spaceships go is the immer. Immaterial and ocean (mer) and shimmer are lurking around the noun and verb exactly where they need to be, and the verb, in a book where Latinate wordroots are important, suddenly changes itself, immerse, immer se, the obvious reflexive... this is one of the most carefully and subtly constructed novels on a sentence-by-sentence level I've seen in a very long time. His ear is good, too, and the English reads as though it has shifted and evolved from current modes while remaining lyrical and flexible.
And the plotting, oh, my, the way that the simile she is does and does not govern everything about the entirety of the book and Avice's emotional state. I am bowled over.
I could rave about this book for a lot longer, but seriously: I loved this and I do not usually like China Miéville. I would like it to win a whole lot of awards and have a lot of attention paid to it so I can talk about it with everybody. And, while I devoutly hope he writes something else I care about someday (and the odds of that seem better than they used to), this is the kind of book where one of it, for me, justifies an author's entire career and makes me smile seraphically and love them anyhow even if they retreat into writing, say, knock-knock jokes for the entire rest of their lives.
And it was the greater pleasure for me because it basically came out of nowhere. There is nothing quite like the moment when you realize that, without ever thinking it was possible, you are reading a book you will love for the rest of your life.
SPOILER CUT
So the thing that gets me most of all is how the simile works as a simile. The girl who, hurt, ate what was given to her... there was a song by Patti Smith stuck in my head for about the last quarter of the book, the title song from Horses, and specifically the lyrics "the tower of Babel, they knew what they were after". Here, they did, yes, and Miéville's damn certain it was worth it. I was also not expecting this to have an entire non-intrusively fascinating theological level which you can take or leave as you see fit. Avice makes a hell of an Eve, but I think part of the point is that her husband may be totally wrong about the morality of the consequences. Yay not rubbing that whole aspect in, though, I liked it being left nebulous.
Unrelatedly, I am vaguely wondering whether BrenDan, the halved Ambassador, is a nod to Cherryh's atevi books, since the one we meet is Bren.
I have never expected China Miéville to write a novel I could find completely satisfying. Perdido Street Station, while it has its good points, suffers on an external level from gratuitous pessimism and, on a level more specific to me personally, from containing more insects than I can really handle in a single novel. I have been unable to finish The Scar and Kraken, let alone Iron Council or Un Lun Dun.
But I keep picking his new work up, because there has always been something in each of his books to catch me, before I couldn't take it anymore; and The City and the City came so very, very close to being a book I could respect.
And now, with his first SF novel, I have got more than I expected, more than I was hoping for, and more than I remotely considered possible. Embassytown is unrestrainedly magnificent.
Avice Benner Cho was born and raised in Embassytown, the tiny human outpost on the world of the alien Ariekei (whom the inhabitants of Embassytown simply call their Hosts). The language of the Hosts is unique among known languages in several directions: one of the most significant is that it always has referents. Words, for the Hosts, are signs of things that have happened or are happening or do exist. Each word is related directly to a demonstrable thing or action. The Hosts, brilliant at an odd kind of organic technology, have neither the concept of writing nor the concept of a lie.
When she was a child, Avice was asked by the Hosts to perform a set of actions to act as a referent for future incorporation into their language. She does what she is asked (her narration of it consists mostly of saying "it was the most incomprehensible experience of my life"), and so she is a simile. Her existence, and this thing that happened to her and that she did, are the referents for an entire set of alien emotional states which cannot be explained to her, and which cannot be explained among the speakers in any other way.
This is not why she left the planet, as a young woman. She turned out to have a talent for the dimensional manipulation human people in this universe use to travel more quickly than light. (One of the things I love about this book is that different alien species do it differently, but there is a major conceptual comprehension barrier that no one has quite straddled yet, so no species is terribly clear on how the other ones travel.) She goes all over the galaxy because she wants to and it's interesting and it turns out she came from a backwater; she marries four times, to three men and one woman, though not all at the same time; she learns languages and sees stars; she grows up.
But being a simile may be why she goes home...
This book works for me on every single level. The worldbuilding is unique and subtle, the characters are three-dimensional, the political motivations and machinations are complex without being incomprehensible, the aliens are alien, and the density of cool ideas is impressive. I was not expecting a novel from Miéville that reads like Ted Chiang in a blender with Rosemary Kirstein.
And I was not expecting the prose.
In a book so about language, the prose is important, and it's extremely good. The section titles alone are gaspingly brilliant. This is one of those books where the invented words work, and do what they're meant to do down to the roots, and where word and sound are in harmony with every connotation that surrounds them. Avice's dimensional talent, for instance, is to immerse. Because the place the spaceships go is the immer. Immaterial and ocean (mer) and shimmer are lurking around the noun and verb exactly where they need to be, and the verb, in a book where Latinate wordroots are important, suddenly changes itself, immerse, immer se, the obvious reflexive... this is one of the most carefully and subtly constructed novels on a sentence-by-sentence level I've seen in a very long time. His ear is good, too, and the English reads as though it has shifted and evolved from current modes while remaining lyrical and flexible.
And the plotting, oh, my, the way that the simile she is does and does not govern everything about the entirety of the book and Avice's emotional state. I am bowled over.
I could rave about this book for a lot longer, but seriously: I loved this and I do not usually like China Miéville. I would like it to win a whole lot of awards and have a lot of attention paid to it so I can talk about it with everybody. And, while I devoutly hope he writes something else I care about someday (and the odds of that seem better than they used to), this is the kind of book where one of it, for me, justifies an author's entire career and makes me smile seraphically and love them anyhow even if they retreat into writing, say, knock-knock jokes for the entire rest of their lives.
And it was the greater pleasure for me because it basically came out of nowhere. There is nothing quite like the moment when you realize that, without ever thinking it was possible, you are reading a book you will love for the rest of your life.
SPOILER CUT
So the thing that gets me most of all is how the simile works as a simile. The girl who, hurt, ate what was given to her... there was a song by Patti Smith stuck in my head for about the last quarter of the book, the title song from Horses, and specifically the lyrics "the tower of Babel, they knew what they were after". Here, they did, yes, and Miéville's damn certain it was worth it. I was also not expecting this to have an entire non-intrusively fascinating theological level which you can take or leave as you see fit. Avice makes a hell of an Eve, but I think part of the point is that her husband may be totally wrong about the morality of the consequences. Yay not rubbing that whole aspect in, though, I liked it being left nebulous.
Unrelatedly, I am vaguely wondering whether Bren
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-06-14 01:24 pm (UTC)Have you tried Kraken? I found it to be, basically, the most hilarious take on the squidpocalypse that I could imagine. But I'm not sure whether you'd think it a whole book.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-15 07:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-16 06:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-14 04:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-15 08:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-14 05:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-15 08:47 pm (UTC)This was such a great book.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-14 09:49 am (UTC)I listened to it as an audiobook during the last year when I was in New York, mostly during subway rides and long walks through the city, which made it a very satisfying experience. But I do agree with your points (could have done without the detailed scenes of insect erotica). It also suffers from a more technical fault of a lot of Fantasy, especially among young writers: The tendency to juxtapose more and more weird ideas, even if they don't support or further the development of character or story (ambassador from hell, weaver, handlingers etc. etc.). I haven't read anything else from Miéville yet, but PSS made me want more. After your post I'll now pick up Embassytown as soon as possible!
no subject
Date: 2011-06-14 12:13 pm (UTC)...and remarkably, I didn't read your spoiler text. Usually I don't care and just read. But this time I held off. Maybe that means I'll be trying the book sooner rather than later.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-14 03:09 pm (UTC)But The City and the City (although not ultimately For Me for other reasons) gestured more in the direction of prose-level brilliance, and now after reading your review of this one: SO PSYCHED.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-14 04:31 pm (UTC)SOLD
no subject
Date: 2011-06-30 04:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-14 08:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-15 07:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-14 09:06 pm (UTC)Why the problems with Un Lun Dun? Were there insects I've forgotten about? Because I don't know that I'd describe it as pessimistic.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-15 07:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-15 10:49 pm (UTC)There's a wonderful plot twist in the middle. Did you make it that far?
no subject
Date: 2011-06-15 11:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-15 02:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-15 07:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-15 11:54 pm (UTC)The books, in many ways, are trying to counteract (or at least respond to) the fundamentally human trait of narrativizing, and to capture the chaos and meaninglessness of events as they happen in the real world. I'm not saying that his stories aren't depressing, but I would argue his books are far more interesting to think about than simple, "pessimistic" dark fantasy.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-17 02:58 pm (UTC)I agree - this is very good. The only Mieville I'd read previously is The City and the City, which I found perfectly decent but unexceptional. This is much better. I should probably try some of his earlier books.
If nothing else, three cheers for a book about language which does not depend on strong Sapir-Whorf, which is a thing that if I never read about again I will be perfectly happy.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-18 10:09 pm (UTC)I like Mieville a lot, but I agree that Kracken felt like a (rather pointless) Gaiman pastiche. I love The Scar for doing something I have only encounted in early Soviet cinema, but a lot of people found it dissapointing. Though I guess if you stopped reading because the mosquito people squicked you or you threw the book across the room the 15th time you read the word 'puisant' I can't really blame you.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-24 01:45 am (UTC)THERE
I SAID IT
SO YEAH
[/shallow]
(not sure if I want to see Rule 34 applied or not though)