China Miéville is my new boyfriend. I mean, look at him:



Hubba hubba. I mean, I've always had a thing for guys who have had their noses obviously broken at some point, but this man is just wicked attractive. Now that I've been super lame and girly about this authors merits, I do want to say that I love you for your mind, Mr. Miéville, your hot, hot mind. And the fact that your name is weird. And you've got those little French thingees over the e that I can't get my word processor to do. (I roll w More...

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 More...

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 More...

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 Warren More...

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 More...

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 More...

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 More...

I hated this book to start with, which is to say the first third or so. However, since I was reading it for work, I stuck with it, and finally came around to the novel.

My specific gripes with the first third are that it's clichéd, the characters lack distinction, and it falls into the classic sci-fi/fantasy trap of deluging the readers with unfamiliar and hard to describe details, thereby alienating them from the workings of plot and character. Instead of coming off as unique and charming, inst More...

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 More...

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 More...

A poor man's Neverwhere. I'll admit that I stopped reading after 115 pages.

I read several glowing reviews of this, saying it was going to rescue us in this, the time of no-more-harry-potter. And lookee! It has female protagonists! But no. A typical adventure/sci-fi premise: someone from our world gets transported to a different world and must save something/do a quest.
a) It is, at least in the first 115 pages, entirely plot-driven. I know nothing about what separates the two main characters fr More...

5 stars

I love you, Deeba.

China Miéville, you aren't too bad yourself.

(Maybe more sort of 2.5)

I was excited about the premise of this story. I like 'Wonderland' type stories, especially Gaiman's Neverwhere, which Mieville does specifically mention as being an influence. But this story never really got above "alright" for me.

Part of the problem was that I never really clicked with or cared that much about the characters. I liked the role of Deeba at first - the friend who reluctantly gets dragged into an adventure - but I never really clicked with her as a person. More...

China Mieville, Un Lun Dun (Ballantine, 2007)

I have written many times (more than I can count, certainly) about the dangers of message fiction. Chief among them is that the author gets so wrapped up in the message that he forgets he's first and foremost supposed to tell a story. When I realized that Un Lun Dun, China Mieville's first childrens' book, was of the “message fiction” stripe, I quailed in despair, thinking I might have encountered my first Mieville book (and I've read 'em all) I wasn' More...

I wasn't sure whether or not to give this book a 3 or a 4 (if we had a more refined rating system, I'd give it a 3.7/3.8) because it started out a bit slow but as soon as Mieville focused on Deeba, the story picked up its pace and became much more interesting.

Short plot outline (which doesn't contain spoilers): Like many young-adult & adult fantasies, there's another version of London (and the world) that exists just "around the corner" or in between the stacks in a library that it's sometim More...

A young girl in London is visited by strange people who seem to know her. They call her the Schwazzy and mysterious graffiti seems to imply that young Zannah is a mysterious savior-in-waiting. There's a mysterious world, unknown to most people, and only she can save them!

This is pretty much how the book begins. At this point, I found myself thinking, "How long will it be before people can read something like this without thinking of Harry Potter?" I mean, the whole displaced child-messiah thing More...

Un Lun Dun is the sort of book that promises the staying power of a classic. Though intended for young readers, Un Lun Dun can be enjoyed by adults as well, and Miéville does an excellent job of setting up, and then thwarting, the clichés and expectations inherent in YA quest motifs, from the idea of a “chosen one” to the intricacies of the quests themselves. At times, Un Lun Dun is reminiscent of the linguistically-playful tone of Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth or Madeline L’Engle’s A Wr More...

Nutshell: Alice goes to Wonderland, teams up with a Planescape: Torment crew, beats up sentient pollution with magic gun.

It's a tendentious faerie tale for kids, very expressly YA. Not for me, overall, even if it has merit.

Many moments of genuine inspiration and originality. Cool that slaves appear and are thereafter liberated, in the form of the rebrellas. We can count on Mieville for slave liberation, at the least.

Some brilliant moments, such as the list of other abcities (Parisn't, No York, S More...

This is the first China Mieville book I have read. It is a YA fantasy story where Deeba, a teenage girl, and her best friend Zanna stumble into Un Lun Dun – a surreal version of London. They are tasked with ridding both cities of the evil Smog - a personification of an environmental disaster. To do this they must gather a gang of trusted friends together; solve a few tasks and collect some magical weapons. Along the way there are twists and betrayals. The usual Quest story basically.

The story an More...

It’s a wonderful book. It’s so imaginative and so brilliant.

Don’t you ever say not to judge a book by its cover. That is not always true. The thing with covers is that they WANT you to judge a book by its cover. That’s why they spend millions making the covers look just right. Why am I talking about covers? you ask. Well, it was because of the cover of this book is the reason that I even picked it up (that and the title...). The cover is very reminiscent of the wonderful author of Neil Gaiman a More...

i think i would have to give this 4 and a half, though it was derivative of some other "lower london" books i've read, which shall remain nameless. i like this one better. but what i really liked was how it turned the whole young-adult phenomenon on its head, breaking all the rules laid down by the likes of narnia, dark is rising, harry potter, etc. unfortunately, he has to set up that sort of young adult world in order to smash it down, so the first 100 pages or so are not indicative of the res More...

Reads like a modern The Phantom Tollbooth. Zanna and Deeba, two young friends, are abruptly transported from London to UNlondon, where the obsolete and unwanted bits of London go. There, they fight their way across the city, through menacing trash piles and piratical insects, to reach the Propheseers, who can tell them why they've been transported and why everyone calls Zanna "the Schwazzy". Zanna, it turns out, is spoken of in prophecies as the Chosen One who can defeat the Smog, sentient poll More...

First off, if you haven't read China Mieville yet, I wouldn't recommend starting with this book, which is the author's first exploration into writing for young readers. Go pick up Perdido Street Station, one of my favorite books of the last fifteen years.

Un Lun Dun was a fun read, but a bit of a disappointment after the Revelation of the New Crubozon books by Mieville. It was all a bit too familiar, especially after books like Neverwhere and a lot of the comics in the Vertigo line.

And 'too fami More...

Having read China Mieville's excellent and sadly under-the-radar New Crobuzon trilogy (Perdido Street Station, The Scar, Iron Council) I was rather leery of reading Un Lun Dun, his first work of young adult fiction. However, Mieville brings the same bizarre perspective and riotous imagination to his YA fiction as he does to his other writing. The story's main characters, Zanna and Deeba, find themselves sucked into UnLondon, London's warped mirror-city. A war between the UnLondoners and the Smog More...

This is an awesome book. There are some books that make me squee in girlish delight(Kiki Strike In the Shadow City), some that make me cackle with insurrection (Trickster's Queen), some that make my heart race with the adrenaline of music and new love (Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist). Un Lun Dun makes me giggle with glee. A lot. Just seeing the book on the shelf can make me burst out again.

Some notes: The characters aren't flushed out so well. It starts a little slowly as it pulls you into More...

I read lots of these types of books and I loved this one. It's about two girls, Deeba and Zanna, who are schoolmates in London. Weird stuff has been happening to Zanna recently. People (and animals!) she's never met seem to know her and someone walked up to her in a cafe and said, "schwazzy." Whatever that means. Pretty soon, the girls find themselves on an exciting adventure in a very strange city called "UnLondon" where the conventions of our lives have been turned topsy-turvy and nothing is q More...

Full of clever wordplay and subversions of fantasy tropes, but way too self-consciously cutesy and twee for my taste. The tone is somewhat similar to The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland, which I also didn't finish for the same reasons.

From all I've read about this, I was expecting to adore it, but it's all just a bit... silly, really. Yes, it's a children's book so I probably should have expected that, but positive reviews in the likes of the Guardian Review led me to believe the book has more crossover appeal than it really does. Enjoyable but pretty daft and implausible, and a lot of the character names, conceits etc were really annoying. (I know it's for kids, but does the book really have to signpost everything so blatant More...

I'll read this book again every few years. I like all of Mieville's work, and I was wondering what he'd do for a younger audience. I wondered that about Neil Gaiman too, and his "Coraline" was great. "Un Lun Dun" is equally great. How can you not like a book in which a lead character has a pet milk carton? It's wildly imaginative, but follows the basic rule of SF/fantasy: assume whatever you like, but after that be consistent and follow the rules you just invented. There are some wonderful chara More...