In the far future, humans have colonized a distant planet, home to the enigmatic Ariekei, sentient beings famed for a language unique in the univer...
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reviews
Jan 31, 2012
Elizabeth
rated it: 
China Miéville’s writing reminds me of James Joyce. That’s both a compliment and a frustration. They both have need to play with language in new ways, drawing on old forms, making it sing or fly or float rather than plod along. Isn't this why one reads them? For me, the language becomes a distraction, a beautiful, thoughtful, intelligent distraction, but a distraction nonetheless. I am practical. I like to know what is going on. I am frustrated easily when an author obfuscates, deliberately, hi
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84 comments
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(36 people liked it)
Jul 10, 2011
Ceridwen
rated it:
When I was a kid, I played a lot with other neighborhood kids, and it was all politics and skinned knees. My best friend was a girl called Alicia, and it was was a yawning difference in age between us, two whole years. We made friends when I was running a lemonade stand more or less set up by my parents. I had a cigar box full of change, and a pitcher of lemonade, and she swindled me out of the lemonade and into friendship. We played a lot of Spaceman, and various forms of tag, and played her fa
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44 comments
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(50 people liked it)
May 27, 2011
Joel
rated it:
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!)
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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 dr More...
(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!)
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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 dr More...
27 comments
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(47 people liked it)
May 26, 2011
Mike
rated it:
I don't really want to give anything away. I also don't feel like trying to sell Mieville -- Ursula Le Guin does it grandly, here. . . so pardon me while I bore with a semi-personal take on reading, genre, and my appreciations for this author. Plus I said I'd send the book to Joel, and have been too busy to write a proper review and I really, really want to send the book to him soon...
Loving the Alien*:
Tracking the historical origins of one's own fannish enthusiasms, ge More...
Loving the Alien*:
Tracking the historical origins of one's own fannish enthusiasms, ge More...
34 comments
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(22 people liked it)
Jun 19, 2011
Jacob
rated it: 
Dear Steven Moffat:
China Miéville. Doctor Who. Think about it.
Love,
Jacob
Avice 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 More...
26 comments
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(31 people liked it)
Feb 12, 2012
Amanda
rated it:
I'm ashamed to admit that I was doubting Mieville (sorry, don't know how to do the accent mark) at the beginning of this novel. All of his books prior to this one had grabbed me from the start. However, I almost felt like I was reading an anthropologist's field notebook about a tribe being studied, for the first quarter of the book.
Once it was all said and done though, I get why it was necessary. I'm still amazed he pulled the plot off. It would have been a disaster if attempted b More...
Once it was all said and done though, I get why it was necessary. I'm still amazed he pulled the plot off. It would have been a disaster if attempted b More...
13 comments
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(8 people liked it)
Jul 15, 2011
Sandi
rated it:
I was thrilled to find a copy of Embassytown at the library a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, I only made it through about 40 pages before I had to return it. Those were a tough 40 pages that really hurt my brain. At some point, I realized that my problem was less about the book than about the fact that I just couldn't hear it right in my head. Avice, the first-person narrator, tells the story in a slang that kept making me stumble. She doesn't define anything in her world because she assumes
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5 comments
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(13 people liked it)
Feb 14, 2012
Apatt
rated it:
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 should not be your first Miéville book*. However, this is a great book, an amazing feat of imagination,
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2 comments
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(9 people liked it)
Jun 19, 2011
Simon
rated it: 
SPOILERS
There 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 bo More...
There 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 bo More...
May 24, 2011
Andrew
rated it:
I stayed up late reading this one. Somehow he brought all the stuff I associate with China Mieville wihout making it seem like a retread of what he's done before. I thought it was great.
And here's the thing I think he's best at: dropping you right into the middle of a culture, where the characters, including the narrator, speak in such a way that you don't quite follow whats happening, but then gradually cluing you on what exactly the weirdness is in without just having the charact More...
And here's the thing I think he's best at: dropping you right into the middle of a culture, where the characters, including the narrator, speak in such a way that you don't quite follow whats happening, but then gradually cluing you on what exactly the weirdness is in without just having the charact More...
3 comments
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(2 people liked it)
May 22, 2011
Lou
rated it:
Not the best of china's storytelling, I am sure even though this being the first of his I have read. I found myself just waiting for something really good to happen to the plot. This world he's crafted is not easy to write he's done well to conjure up this world and characters. A Coupe is brewing Embassytown used to be just cohabited by The Host's then the humans came and language was learnt between the two. The story picks at the problems they have had, the ambassadors and breakdown or lack of
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0 comments
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(5 people liked it)
Nov 02, 2011
Lisa
rated it:
what to say? what to say?
What an odd book.
It was a slog for me. I didn’t have a lot of fun reading it; it was more of a frustrating challenge than pleasure reading. But it was fascinating, and highly creative. This is my first book by this author and I’m not running to read others by him. I’m afraid this is my failing: to not fully appreciate what was done here. It is brilliant in its way, maybe worthy of even 5 stars.
This author does almost too good a job at More...
What an odd book.
It was a slog for me. I didn’t have a lot of fun reading it; it was more of a frustrating challenge than pleasure reading. But it was fascinating, and highly creative. This is my first book by this author and I’m not running to read others by him. I’m afraid this is my failing: to not fully appreciate what was done here. It is brilliant in its way, maybe worthy of even 5 stars.
This author does almost too good a job at More...
23 comments
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(9 people liked it)
Jul 09, 2011
Nicole
rated it:
Mieville's work is never mindless - this novel elicited a lot of thought, whatever its other characteristics. I liked this a good deal, but it could've been better/tighter. I felt like the Bremen faction/immer motive and the anti-EzRa/EzCal contingent of humans wasn't really fleshed out, and so it's hard to care about them fully, even though they are important in moving the plot forward. The main plot is really the Hosts and Ambassadors, and I sort of feel like this could have been an AMAZING sh
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2 comments
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(3 people liked it)
May 16, 2011
lin
rated it:
I won an ARC of this book through the First Reads Giveaways program. This was my first Giveaways win, and my first Miéville book.
I found the world Miéville created to be utterly fascinating. The language he used to describe it was often astonishingly beautiful. The underlying theme of communication and language was really compelling, and still has me thinking about it days after finishing the book. At times I felt a little overwhelmed by the intricacies of factions and language detai More...
I found the world Miéville created to be utterly fascinating. The language he used to describe it was often astonishingly beautiful. The underlying theme of communication and language was really compelling, and still has me thinking about it days after finishing the book. At times I felt a little overwhelmed by the intricacies of factions and language detai More...
0 comments
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(1 person liked it)
Jul 26, 2011
Embassytown is the eighth novel from China Mieville, one of the world’s leading fantasy fiction writers, and winner of numerous genre awards. It is set on an alien world at the edge of the known universe, where a colony of humans lives in a small enclave (the Embassytown of the title) in the midst of a strange world occupied by the Ariekei. Mieville is not overly specific in his description of the Ariekei or their world; he describes parts of it and its strangeness is clear, but much is left
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Feb 18, 2012
Derek
rated it:
When I first read Embassytown in ebook format a few months ago, as soon as it came out (I buy any China Mieville novel the second it's available), I was quite impressed...but also confused and oftimes lost while reading it, mainly because the first third of the book is a rather awkward interleaving of past and present events, while the remainder of the book is firmly set in the present. I read it in spurts, too, and was often nodding off while reading it--not because the book is tedious, but bec
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Feb 14, 2012
Alia
rated it:
This book has a really neat central idea and at the sentence and paragraph level is really beautifully written. However, somewhere in the middle of the book the narrator says something like 'I have tried to make this a coherent narrative but I see that I have failed.'This seem to me to be the Muse's protect to the fact that cruel and unusual punishment was being inflicted on what otherwise could have been a perfectly good plot. Not only does the book skip around in time in just such a way as to
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Feb 12, 2012
David
rated it:
The rumour before publication was that Embassytown would be China Miéville’s first proper oray into science fiction; and, technically, it is – but Miéville is a fantasy writer at heart, and setting a novel on a planet in deep space with aliens hasn’t changed the essential feel of his work. Our narrator is Avice Benner Cho, a human native of Embassytown, which lies on a world whose indigenous species are known as Hosts. The Hosts can only understand their own language, and even then only if it’s
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Jan 22, 2012
Tim
rated it:
Three stars. No, six. I settled on four. There's so much in here. I won't forget it for a long time. Can I say that it's a great novel but not necessarily a good novel? I love it but I don't like it? Something like that. Maybe I could find a simile ...
OK, a serious examination of how languages work, and limitations on communication, and colonialism, and what it might be like to try to coexist with aliens, and lots more. Stitched into an acceptably ordinary SF framework. I read Ursul More...
OK, a serious examination of how languages work, and limitations on communication, and colonialism, and what it might be like to try to coexist with aliens, and lots more. Stitched into an acceptably ordinary SF framework. I read Ursul More...
Jan 14, 2012
Carley
rated it:
I've never read any other Mieville books, but I had my eye on this one after reading a review in the newspaper--the plot sounded intriguing. I was disappointed with how hard it was to get into; as others have said, there's a lot of foreign slang which the narrator uses and it isn't explained either for a while or ever at all. The middle part of the book, where things are descending into chaos, is weirdly detached--somehow, it just doesn't really feel like a crisis situation, and also, the reason
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Jan 10, 2012
Piers
rated it:
"Embassytown is a fully achieved work of art." High praise from Ursula LeGuin (in her Guardian review), one of the writers who have really driven the potential for Science Fiction as artform. Best book I have read so far this year, for what that's worth, Embassytown is a maverick read, setting out a subtle but profound agenda, and then carrying it through to a stunning conclusion, much like Suzette Haden-Elgin's Native Tongue or Anthony Burgess's Clockwork Orange. If you have read it a
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(1 person liked it)
Jan 08, 2012
Daniel
rated it:
Wow.
Okay, this was different. This was ... it was different, and that's a good thing, especially in the Sci-fi/fantasy genre, where plots get rehashed with a great deal of regularity.
I'm glad this was on my Kindle and I was on a trip, because I might not have read it otherwise. This was difficult to get in to. Like one of my favorite authors, Roger Zelazny, Mieville doesn't wait for the reader or begin with a lot of set-up. He plops you down in the middle of a time an More...
Okay, this was different. This was ... it was different, and that's a good thing, especially in the Sci-fi/fantasy genre, where plots get rehashed with a great deal of regularity.
I'm glad this was on my Kindle and I was on a trip, because I might not have read it otherwise. This was difficult to get in to. Like one of my favorite authors, Roger Zelazny, Mieville doesn't wait for the reader or begin with a lot of set-up. He plops you down in the middle of a time an More...
Jan 08, 2012
Julie
rated it:
With this book, China Mieville proves he has one of the most original voices in modern American literature. Of course, to the casual observer, the weird aliens, strange technology and bizarre geography that form the surface of most science fiction seem original, but the truth is that a lot of scifi is hackneyed and repetitive. There are no new stories, only retreads of a few standard plots that regularly make the rounds. Humanity is always right, the bad guy will get his comeuppance, and the her
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Jan 05, 2012
Chris
rated it:
"I don't want to be a simile anymore. I want to be a metaphor."
When Avice, our humble yet determined protagonist, speaks this line near the novel's end, I had an epiphany in the spirit of the Ariekene. I realized how awesome Embassytown is. All the preceding flowing lines of language, some good, some bad, some inconsequential, came together to illuminate Mieville's literary wizardry. The "aha" moment brought to the surface all the different metaphorical gems hidden More...
When Avice, our humble yet determined protagonist, speaks this line near the novel's end, I had an epiphany in the spirit of the Ariekene. I realized how awesome Embassytown is. All the preceding flowing lines of language, some good, some bad, some inconsequential, came together to illuminate Mieville's literary wizardry. The "aha" moment brought to the surface all the different metaphorical gems hidden More...
Dec 31, 2011
Eric
rated it:
The second Mieville book I've read. Straight-up sci-fi. Fascinating basic premise, of the particular communication method of this species and how human beings adapt to communicating with them. I liked how the first third bounces back and forth between "present-day" and the earlier years in the protagonist's life, with the two merging together as the reader finally gets a full sense of what is going on, and then the huge plot change happens, which leads into the rest of the book. I
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Dec 09, 2011
Amanda
rated it:
I am like the girl who was hurt in darkness and ate what was given her.
I don't normally read science fiction, I'm more of an epic fantasy kind of girl. I really wanted to read something by China Miéville, though, and Embassytown was at the library just waiting for me.
When I finished this book, my first thought was: "Holy crap, I can't believe I did it!" The first quarter of this book was very difficult for me to get into, mainly because it was so dense. Once the cha More...
I don't normally read science fiction, I'm more of an epic fantasy kind of girl. I really wanted to read something by China Miéville, though, and Embassytown was at the library just waiting for me.
When I finished this book, my first thought was: "Holy crap, I can't believe I did it!" The first quarter of this book was very difficult for me to get into, mainly because it was so dense. Once the cha More...
Nov 26, 2011
Marcus
rated it:
I read the Sunday Times review of this book by Carlo R. I thought the review was quite positive and said a few good things but managed to miss something essential about the way Embassytown is written that effects the experience of reading the book so fundamentally that I can't quite believe the reviewer didn't mention it. This book is China Mieville's attempt at Science Fiction. But not just any science Fiction or even sci-fi in its broadest sense. Mieville has managed to understand one of the m
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Nov 19, 2011
Andrew
rated it:
Our everyday pantheon gone needy, desperate for hits of Ez and Ra speaking together, fermenting Language into some indispensable brew of contradiction, insinuation and untethered meaning. We were quartered in an addict city. That procession I’d seen had been craving.
“What happens now? I said. It was very quiet in the room. There were hundreds of thousands of Ariekei in the city. Maybe millions. I didn’t know. We knew hardly anything at all. Their heads were all made of Language. EzRa s More...
“What happens now? I said. It was very quiet in the room. There were hundreds of thousands of Ariekei in the city. Maybe millions. I didn’t know. We knew hardly anything at all. Their heads were all made of Language. EzRa s More...
Nov 09, 2011
Amanda
rated it:
Linguistics? Language? Science Fiction? After I read Don's summary, the whole time I was listening, I was wondering what my summary would sound like. Colony on the path to self government? Travelers and prisoners? Constant inside information? Supplies? Different races and languages coexisting between a fragile social structure?
There were a lot of questions about power. Partly because the A's had a language like no other in the world. It required two voices and could only be truth More...
There were a lot of questions about power. Partly because the A's had a language like no other in the world. It required two voices and could only be truth More...
Oct 28, 2011
Kathryn
rated it:
Just finished this book and wow, that was amazing. And TOUGH. Be prepared to do some hard work for this one; in its own way "Embassytown" is even tougher to get through than "The City & The City". That book was about political divisions made real (among other things), "Embassytown" is about language. Make that Language, with a capital "L". I don't mean it's important to the story, I mean for all intents and purposes it's the main character: how it defines
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