Science Fiction
![China Miéville - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B001IQUN20.jpg)
Embassytown: A Novel
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
In the far future, humans have colonized a distant planet, home to the enigmatic Ariekei, sentient beings famed for a language unique in the universe, one that only a few altered human ambassadors can speak. Avice Benner Cho, a human colonist, has returned to Embassytown after years of deep-space adventure. She cannot speak the Ariekei tongue, but she is an indelible part of it, having long ago been made a figure of speech, a living simile in their language. When distant political machinations deliver a new ambassador to Arieka, the fragile equilibrium between humans and aliens is violently upset. Catastrophe looms, and Avice is torn between competing loyalties: to a husband she no longer loves, to a system she no longer trusts, and to her place in a language she cannot speak-but which speaks through her, whether she likes it or not.
In the far future, humans have colonized a distant planet, home to the enigmatic Ariekei, sentient beings famed for a language unique in the universe, one that only a few altered human ambassadors can speak. Avice Benner Cho, a human colonist, has returned to Embassytown after years of deep-space adventure. She cannot speak the Ariekei tongue, but she is an indelible part of it, having long ago been made a figure of speech, a living simile in their language. When distant political machinations deliver a new ambassador to Arieka, the fragile equilibrium between humans and aliens is violently upset. Catastrophe looms, and Avice is torn between competing loyalties: to a husband she no longer loves, to a system she no longer trusts, and to her place in a language she cannot speak-but which speaks through her, whether she likes it or not.
Editorial Reviews
"A fully achieved work of art."-Ursula K. Le Guin
"The most engrossing book I've read this year, and the latest evidence that brilliant, challenging, rewarding writing of the highest order is just as likely to be found in the section labeled Science Fiction as the one marked Literature."-Jim Higgins, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"Original, sophisticated, bristling with subversive ideas, and filled with unforgettably alien images . . . an amazing, sometimes brutal rhapsody on the uses of language."-The Christian Science Monitor
"Richly conceived . . . Embassytown has the feel of a word-puzzle, and much of the pleasure of figuring out the logic of the world and the story comes from gradually catching the full resonance of its invented and imported words."-The New York Times Book Review
"Miéville's swing-for-the-fences gusto thrills. This is Big Idea Sci-Fi at its most propulsively readable."-Entertainment Weekly
"Miéville [is] one of today's most exciting fabulist writers."-Los Angeles Times
"The most engrossing book I've read this year, and the latest evidence that brilliant, challenging, rewarding writing of the highest order is just as likely to be found in the section labeled Science Fiction as the one marked Literature."-Jim Higgins, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"Original, sophisticated, bristling with subversive ideas, and filled with unforgettably alien images . . . an amazing, sometimes brutal rhapsody on the uses of language."-The Christian Science Monitor
"Richly conceived . . . Embassytown has the feel of a word-puzzle, and much of the pleasure of figuring out the logic of the world and the story comes from gradually catching the full resonance of its invented and imported words."-The New York Times Book Review
"Miéville's swing-for-the-fences gusto thrills. This is Big Idea Sci-Fi at its most propulsively readable."-Entertainment Weekly
"Miéville [is] one of today's most exciting fabulist writers."-Los Angeles Times
Readers Top Reviews
Jason Mr phillips
China Mieville is one of those writers where I have read a lot of his work without ever thinking of myself as a fan of his. He is undoubtedly talented, however I sometimes find his ornate use of language, and the level of detail he piles into books such as Perdito Street Station and The Scar, gets in the way of telling a good story. It’s ironic then, that I really liked Embassytown, a book where one of the major themes is language itself. The main character is Avice, a space pilot who has returned home to the planet of Arieka, where a colony of human live with the permission of the Hosts, a truly alien species that are only half-understood by the colonists. What follows is a tragedy of unexpected consequences, where in an effort to understand the Hosts better, ambassadors from Earth precipitate a crisis which puts the Hosts and the colonists in danger. There are 2 main themes here. First is the Fall, where humanity is the serpent in the Garden of Eden who have unintentionally corrupted the Hosts by their ability to lie. The second is colonialism, in particular China Mieville seems to have used the Opium Wars as a template for the crisis, with some Hosts turning on humanity in the hope of wiping out the source of their corruption. I think I liked this book because it is more of a ‘proper’ Science Fiction book than his other work, and was concise without any padding. If I was to criticise it, I didn’t find the ending particularly surprising and I wish that Avice had been a more active character. The Hosts themselves were a fascinating creation, which reminded me in some ways of the ‘Great Old Ones’ from the Cthulhu Mythos, the hints about the Immer were intriguing. Would love to find out more about that if he ever gets round to a sequel.
jfmdac
Only the fact that I've read a lot of his stuff stopped me giving up after around 150 pages. I started to think this was turning into a self-absorbed treatise on the complexities of language itself(he must have swallowed a thesaurus at an early age), but suddenly, roughly halfway through, everything seemed to kick off, and this became a very good SF novel indeed. I think his exhaustive treatment of the difficulty in communicating with the aliens really emphasised just how different they were to us, but then they started to show many familiar human qualities once the barriers started to come down. I can't say much more without spoiling the story, I would just recommend that you stick with it because it really is very good.
Christopher Carrion
The premise for this book is great. A human outpost on the edge of known space on an alien planet. The aliens have two mouths and thus the humans engineer a system where two clones will speak simultaneously to communicate with the Arekiene aliens. When a new ambassador pair arrives, the dissonance between the two voices acts as a drug on the Arekiene, addicting the whole planet to the 'god - drug'. Excellent read, this was my favorite Meiville after Perdido Street Station.
Barnesy
One of the weirdest of any of Mieville’s fantastical worlds, which, like Terry Pratchett’s discworld novels, always have a metaphorical anchor in the familiar from the peculiar alternative reality in which the novels are set. In Embassytown we discover a world where the human diaspora has penetrated to the far reaches (of the galaxy, universe etc. is never defined) incorporating the improbability of distance travel through the “Immer” - a concept on which the author thankfully ignores the urge to provide a quasi-scientific explanation. You are just left to accept it along with ideas like the “out” and the “everyday”. In this world humans have established an embassy to deal with the native species who cannot lie and communicate through a “Language” which only they can understand. Humans employ twinned and bio-engineered “ambassadors” to communicate at a basic level which works moderately well until a new Ambassador turns up from off world and tips over the apple cart. What makes this book so special, apart from its, as far as I know, unique species traits, is Mieville’s clever exposition of international politics, bureaucratic interference/plotting and human relationships intertwined with more twists than a pile of old wire. Probably his best work since Perdido St Station for me.
Galacticat
"The City & The City" and "Embassytown" are amazing books. TC&TC starts a bit slow then the story builds into a fully visualized city and cities full of texture and detail and inhabited by people for whom I came to care about and hope for the best. As I read TC&TC, I started thinking about quotidian spaces, how we inhabit and move through them, in completely different ways, had new ideas about how we perceive and interact with our environment, with each other. Sometimes we move through space and sometimes space moves around us. I found that i would read a few chapters, think about them for a bit, then read some more. This book will carried me for a while. I read it over a period of a few weeks. When I did put The City and The City down for the final time, my mind was full of different, satisfying thoughts. For a long time after I finished reading it, I kept thinking about the many details of this book and this new way of thinking about the places we inhabit. The City & The City appears to be written in a detective novel genre type of style. Then, I read Kraken, which was a really interesting story which inhabits and treats time as elastic; I was fascinated by this story in the manner of hearing about a terrible, profound event that happens to a friend from a long time ago; parts of the story, details and characters made me cringe and yet I couldn't look away. This story did not appeal to me very much at all, but the writing was so excellent I had to keep reading this book. When finished, I put this book down and felt a bit off-put and confused why someone would write this story and did not want to think about it too much. And yet, I do. It appears that Kraken was written in the genre of magick with a "k", London-modern fantasy tapestry with a few silvery threads of sci-fi woven therethrough. Then I read Embassytown, what an amazing book this turned out to be, completely different from the others and the ideas in this book also made think in totally different ways than I was used to. I could not put this book down. This book made my synapses fire along completely new neural pathways; the pace of action toward the conclusion lit up my brain. After putting this book down, still I turned the ideas therein over and over in my mind like gemstones in my hand. I absolutely would recommend to any one who enjoys science fiction read Embassytown and prepare to be swept up in the strange, new ride that is this story. If you like sci-fi then I cannot recommend this book enough for you to try. What a truly awesome book Embassytown turned out to be. Then I picked up... what was the title... maybe had shiny feathers on the cover... something about a Station... I stuck with it as long as I could but was so bored it was like sitting on a park bench waiting forever for a bus to arrive and then it's not your bus. Took that one back to my local library ...
Short Excerpt Teaser
0.1
When we were young in Embassytown, we played a game with coins and coin-sized crescent offcuts from a workshop. We always did so in the same place, by a particular house, beyond the rialto in a steep-sloping backstreet of tenements, where advertisements turned in colours under the ivy. We played in the smothered light of those old screens, by a wall we christened for the tokens we played with. I remember spinning a heavy two-sou piece on its edge and chanting as it went, turnabout, incline, pig-snout, sunshine, until it wobbled and fell. The face that showed and the word I'd reached when the motion stopped would combine to specify some reward or forfeit.
I see myself clearly in wet spring and in summer, with a deuce in my hand, arguing over interpretations with other girls and with boys. We would never have played elsewhere, though that house, about which and about the inhabitant of which there were stories, could make us uneasy.
Like all children we mapped our hometown carefully, urgently and idiosyncratically. In the market we were less interested in the stalls than in a high cubby left by lost bricks in a wall, that we always failed to reach. I disliked the enormous rock that marked the town's edge, that had been split and set again with mortar (for a purpose I did not yet know), and the library, the crenellations and armature of which felt unsafe to me. We all loved the collegium for the smooth plastone of its courtyard, on which tops and hovering toys travelled for metres.
We were a hectic little tribe and constables would frequently challenge us, but we needed only say, ‘It's alright sir, madam, we have to just…' and keep on. We would come fast down the steep and crowded grid of streets, past the houseless automa of Embassytown, with animals running among us or by us on low roofs and, while we might pause to climb trees and vines, we always eventually reached the interstice.
At this edge of town the angles and piazzas of our home alleys were interrupted by at first a few uncanny geometries of Hosts' buildings; then more and more, until our own were all replaced. Of course we would try to enter the Host city, where the streets changed their looks, and brick, cement or plasm walls surrendered to other more lively materials. I was sincere in these attempts but comforted that I knew I'd fail.
We'd compete, daring each other to go as far as we could, marking our limits. ‘We're being chased by wolves, and we have to run,' or ‘Whoever goes furthest's vizier,' we said. I was the third-best southgoer in my gang. In our usual spot, there was a Hostnest in fine alien colours tethered by creaking ropes of muscle to a stockade, that in some affectation the Hosts had fashioned like one of our wicker fences. I'd creep up on it while my friends whistled from the crossroads.
See images of me as a child and there's no surprise: my face then was just my face now not-yet-finished, the same suspicious mouth-pinch or smile, the same squint of effort that sometimes got me laughed at later, and then as now I was rangy and restless. I'd hold my breath and go forward on a lungful through where the airs mixed, past what was not quite a hard border but was still remarkably abrupt a gaseous transition, breezes sculpted with nanotech particle-machines and consummate atmosphere artistry, to write Avice on the white wood. Once on a whim of bravado I patted the nest's flesh anchor where it interwove the slats. It felt as taut as a gourd. I ran back, gasping, to my friends.
‘You touched it.' They said that with admiration. I stared at my hand. We would head north to where aeoli blew, and compare our achievements.
A quiet, well-dressed man lived in the house where we played with coins. He was a source of local disquiet. Sometimes he came out while we were gathered. He would regard us and purse his lips in what might have been greeting or disapproval, before he turned and walked.
We thought we understood what he was. We were wrong, of course, but we'd picked up whatever we had from around the place and considered him broken and his presence inappropriate. ‘Hey,' I said more than once to my friends, when he emerged, pointing at him behind his back, ‘hey.' We would follow when we were brave, as he walked alleys of hedgerow toward the river or a market, or in the direction of the archive ruins or the Embassy. Twice I think one of us jeered nervously. Passers-by instantly hushed us.
‘Have some respect,' an altoysterman told us firmly. He put down his basket of shellfish and aimed a quick cuff at Yohn, who had shouted. The vendor watched th...
When we were young in Embassytown, we played a game with coins and coin-sized crescent offcuts from a workshop. We always did so in the same place, by a particular house, beyond the rialto in a steep-sloping backstreet of tenements, where advertisements turned in colours under the ivy. We played in the smothered light of those old screens, by a wall we christened for the tokens we played with. I remember spinning a heavy two-sou piece on its edge and chanting as it went, turnabout, incline, pig-snout, sunshine, until it wobbled and fell. The face that showed and the word I'd reached when the motion stopped would combine to specify some reward or forfeit.
I see myself clearly in wet spring and in summer, with a deuce in my hand, arguing over interpretations with other girls and with boys. We would never have played elsewhere, though that house, about which and about the inhabitant of which there were stories, could make us uneasy.
Like all children we mapped our hometown carefully, urgently and idiosyncratically. In the market we were less interested in the stalls than in a high cubby left by lost bricks in a wall, that we always failed to reach. I disliked the enormous rock that marked the town's edge, that had been split and set again with mortar (for a purpose I did not yet know), and the library, the crenellations and armature of which felt unsafe to me. We all loved the collegium for the smooth plastone of its courtyard, on which tops and hovering toys travelled for metres.
We were a hectic little tribe and constables would frequently challenge us, but we needed only say, ‘It's alright sir, madam, we have to just…' and keep on. We would come fast down the steep and crowded grid of streets, past the houseless automa of Embassytown, with animals running among us or by us on low roofs and, while we might pause to climb trees and vines, we always eventually reached the interstice.
At this edge of town the angles and piazzas of our home alleys were interrupted by at first a few uncanny geometries of Hosts' buildings; then more and more, until our own were all replaced. Of course we would try to enter the Host city, where the streets changed their looks, and brick, cement or plasm walls surrendered to other more lively materials. I was sincere in these attempts but comforted that I knew I'd fail.
We'd compete, daring each other to go as far as we could, marking our limits. ‘We're being chased by wolves, and we have to run,' or ‘Whoever goes furthest's vizier,' we said. I was the third-best southgoer in my gang. In our usual spot, there was a Hostnest in fine alien colours tethered by creaking ropes of muscle to a stockade, that in some affectation the Hosts had fashioned like one of our wicker fences. I'd creep up on it while my friends whistled from the crossroads.
See images of me as a child and there's no surprise: my face then was just my face now not-yet-finished, the same suspicious mouth-pinch or smile, the same squint of effort that sometimes got me laughed at later, and then as now I was rangy and restless. I'd hold my breath and go forward on a lungful through where the airs mixed, past what was not quite a hard border but was still remarkably abrupt a gaseous transition, breezes sculpted with nanotech particle-machines and consummate atmosphere artistry, to write Avice on the white wood. Once on a whim of bravado I patted the nest's flesh anchor where it interwove the slats. It felt as taut as a gourd. I ran back, gasping, to my friends.
‘You touched it.' They said that with admiration. I stared at my hand. We would head north to where aeoli blew, and compare our achievements.
A quiet, well-dressed man lived in the house where we played with coins. He was a source of local disquiet. Sometimes he came out while we were gathered. He would regard us and purse his lips in what might have been greeting or disapproval, before he turned and walked.
We thought we understood what he was. We were wrong, of course, but we'd picked up whatever we had from around the place and considered him broken and his presence inappropriate. ‘Hey,' I said more than once to my friends, when he emerged, pointing at him behind his back, ‘hey.' We would follow when we were brave, as he walked alleys of hedgerow toward the river or a market, or in the direction of the archive ruins or the Embassy. Twice I think one of us jeered nervously. Passers-by instantly hushed us.
‘Have some respect,' an altoysterman told us firmly. He put down his basket of shellfish and aimed a quick cuff at Yohn, who had shouted. The vendor watched th...
