Embassytown: China Mieville
Well, this is the one. The novel is sooo accomplished. It works so well on so many different levels: exploration of language (it’s an excellent primer in linguistic theory), a hard SF adventure, a story about a floaker. (A term Mieville has invented to categorise most of us.)
Another way it is accomplished is that it takes many of Mielville’s recurring tropes (the living City, the prisoner on a journey, the inexplicably alien, the lovers, umbrellas, the City in crisis, the battle, multiple weird races) and puts them in a context where they are all justified in the novel. I sometimes felt that Mievelle’s stuff was a bit whimsical: but not in this book.
This must put him at the forefront of novelists of ideas, period.
Embassytown: China Mieville
Well, this is the one. The novel is sooo accomplished. It works so well on so many different levels: exploration of language (it’s an excellent primer in linguistic theory), a hard SF adventure, a story about a floaker. (A term Mieville has invented to categorise most of us.)
Another way it is accomplished is that it takes many of Mielville’s recurring tropes (the living City, the prisoner on a journey, the inexplicably alien, the lovers, umbrellas, the City in crisis, the battle, multiple weird races) and puts them in a context where they are all justified in the novel. I sometimes felt that Mievelle’s stuff was a bit whimsical: but not in this book.
This must put him at the forefront of novelists of ideas, period.
Posted 1 year ago & Filed under China Mieville, Embassytown, 4 notes
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