I have just finished reading China Miéville’s latest novel Embassytown. The main character of the book is Avice, who grew up in the titular city, which is a human colony on an alien planet. There the humans live separate from the local inhabitants, a race called the Ariekei. Because of their strange language, the Ariekei (or the Hosts as the human colonists also call them) can only communicate with Ambassadors. The Ambassadors are cloned humans specifically designed to be able to speak the language. Avice was one of the rare few people who left the planet to work in space, but she returned to Embassytown with her husband who wanted to study the language. Problems arise when a new Ambassador arrives, who has a strange effect on the Ariekei and on the language. 

I absolutely loved the book. I think it is fantastic. It is very inventive; I won’t go into specific details because I don’t want to spoil it for anyone, but there is great world-building going on with a fascinating alien race and their language is a brilliantly unique concept. On top of that there is a great character in Avice, a female main character who is far from any SF cliche. It is incredibly well-written, and Miéville definitely skews towards the intelligent end of the SF genre; he makes you work to figure out what is going on, but the result is definitely rewarding. You don’t have to take my word for it, as the well-renowned SF author Ursula LeGuin wrote this review of it in the Guardian.

I seem to generally have a mixed response to Miéville’s books. I was blown away by The City and the City, and I also enjoyed his YA novel Un Lun Dun. But a few years before that I tried to read Perdido Street Station and gave up because I really loathed it. Earlier this year I started reading Kraken, his most recent book before this one. I gave up on that too; I didn’t hate it but I just didn’t enjoy it at all, it was very underwhelming and almost pedestrian compared to The City & The City. But after this book I am now considering giving his earlier books another shot, as I may just have read it at the wrong time when I last tried.

Back to Embassytown: I thought it was a brilliant book, I loved reading it, and it is one of my favourite books that I’ve read this year.

I have been using the website LibraryThing for the past few years (I just checked, it has been five years!) to catalogue my books. For the past few years they have run a project called SantaThing, where users exchange book gifts. It is run through the website - you pay your money and they match you up with other users based on the books you have catalogued. You choose books for one user, while another user chooses books for you (and it is a secret santa, so you only find out which user picked your books at Christmas). LibraryThing does all the ordering and paying, so you don’t need to worry about giving internet strangers your name and address! I’ve always thought it was a cool project, so this year I decided to take part.

When the package arrived in the post I initially planned to keep it until Christmas, but then I finished a book I had been reading and thought that I may want to start one of the ones that I had been sent, so I opened the package. I have received Embassytown by China Mieville and The Dervish House by Ian McDonald.

I actually already had a copy of Embassytown, but I had foolishly not yet added it to my catalogue, so I can’t blame my secret santa for choosing it. It is also a great choice, as I have been planning to read it for ages. Actually, the copy that I’ve been sent is a bit nicer than the one I bought before, so I have just started reading this new copy of it.

The Dervish House is also a pretty good choice, as I’d read good things about it, and I also quite enjoyed two previous books by the same author. In fact I had very nearly picked it up in the bookshop the week previously, so I am glad that I restrained myself at the time. My only small gripe is that I’d have preferred a normal paperback edition rather than the trade paperback size, as I find them a bit awkward to read, but it is only a minor thing.

Overall, I am happy that I decided to take part, and pleased with the books that I received. But I will say that I enjoyed picking books for someone else just as much as I enjoyed receiving them. I was matched up with someone who reads a lot of science fiction and also popular science, and who had a lot of the same books that I do. I sent them Consider Phlebus by Iain M. Banks, Packing for Mars and Ringworld, and I do hope they like them. It has been a fun experience and I plan to take part again next year.

I’ve just finished reading The City and The City by China Miéville. I have a mixed history with Miéville’s books. I started reading Perdido Street Station a few years back, but I ended up giving up on it. Now, I generally stick with books to the end, even if I’m not enjoying them, so the fact that I couldn’t even finish it is a pretty clear indication that I really hated it. But I was convinced to give Miéville a second chance, and last year I read and enjoyed his YA novel Un Lun Dun. Later I was intrigued by descriptions of this book, and having somewhat revised my opinion of Miéville, I was excited to start reading it. The two cities in the title are Besźel and Ul Qoma, two European city states; the two cities share the same physical space, but are perceived to be two different cities by their respective citizens, who are trained to ‘unsee’ the other city; the whole process is monitored by a force known as Breach, which prevents citizens from ‘breaching’ between the two cities. This is a fascinating setting, which provides the backdrop for a murder mystery. This story is narrated by a police detective from Besźel, investigating the murder of a young student from Ul Qoma, who was obsessed with a conspiracy surrounding the two cities and a potential third city known as Orciny. The police procedural story is gripping enough (nothing spectacular, I suppose, but I do like Miéville’s style and it had a nice noir feel to it) but the main attraction for me was the unique setting and the intriguing idea of the dual city. I love it when I run across a new idea in fiction, and this is one of the most appealing I’ve encountered for ages. It’s incredibly imaginative, and Miéville’s vivid descriptions are marvellous to read. I’d recommend it for that reason alone, but the fact that it does have a strong plot and characters is just an added bonus. I really liked it and I’m certainly now convinced that Miéville is a better writer than I first judged him to be.

I recently read Un Lun Dun by China Miéville, a fantasy YA book, which like many other books of that type, managed to appeal to me as an adult as much as it would have done if I’d read it as a child. Similarly to Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, this is a book about parallel worlds and secret fantastical cities hidden beneath (or to the side of) real world cities, in this case London (the title being one of many rather neat puns and word games that appears throughout the book). In this particular instance the city is populated by a mixture of ghosts, fantastical monsters, flying buses and broken umbrellas, and of course the young protagonist must save the day. What I really liked about this book, beyond the wonderful city and its inhabitants, is the fact that Miéville managed to subvert the typical YA fantasy quest story, as the ‘chosen one’ here is sent home sick and instead the ‘sidekick’ is left to fill in as the heroine. It’s a really fun book, very well written, and I’d really recommend it to anyone who likes a good fantasy story and isn’t ashamed to read the occasional YA book.