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quadrille 's review for:
Embassytown
by China Miéville
2.5 stars, rounded up? What a promising but flawed book. I wrote the majority of this review a couple weeks ago, but tweaking and posting it now that we've had our book club meeting.
I went in completely blind wrt the premise and world (apart from knowing "this book is about language"), so the first few pages are disorienting, confusing, and I rode it out by simply enjoying the poetic prose. But then understanding clicks, and you piece together a better sense of Embassytown, the planet, its alien Hosts, and how everything works and fits together. Miéville's worldbuilding is absolutely astounding, unique and well-and-truly alien. Most of what propelled me throughout the novel was just wanting to learn more about how the world worked, about what was going on, the mechanics beneath the surface.
And yet other reviewers are right in pointing out that you don't read this book for the characters: Avice is far too passive and reactionary as a main character, and doesn't really go through much development either. She's just our lens through which to view this conflict unravel, and she only finds her role and becomes an active participant towards the very, very end of the book. Normally that sort of passive protagonist drives me utterly bonkers, but I was still able to get through it pretty quickly: I think just because I was interested enough in what the hell is going on.
I really liked the first 2/3 of the novel, thereabouts, but then oddly got pulled out of it right when things finally sped up -- possibly because the conflict of the last third simultaneously a) takes too long to unfold, but also b) is resolved a bit too quickly and neatly, jumping through a few miraculous in-the-nick-of-time hoops that I didn't quite buy.
The whole thing is also a love letter to language, how it works, and how our cognition is programmed by our very language -- all of which it makes me want to reread [b:Snow Crash|830|Snow Crash|Neal Stephenson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1477624625s/830.jpg|493634] or [b:Lexicon|16158596|Lexicon|Max Barry|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1356080172s/16158596.jpg|20077336] tbh, and also inspired me to finally grab my copy of [b:The Story of Your Life|223380|Stories of Your Life and Others|Ted Chiang|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1356138316s/223380.jpg|216334] and read it soon.
The novel also seems to stew over the idea of colonialism, and how the humans of the novel accidentally run rough-shod over the alien natives, and wind up exploiting them for their own survival -- completely rewiring the aliens' existence, essentially destroying their culture and way of life. It's hard to tell, though, exactly how we were supposed to feel about this: to me it was fucking awful, and yet in the novel it seemed portrayed as... maybe... not the worst thing ever? Which I find rough to wrap my mind around. I could have actually done with learning more about the Ariekei's non-Language culture as well, since that seemed one of the blank spots Miéville hadn't actually filled in; it makes it hard to untangle the human's impact on them when you don't have a very good idea of what they were like before.
In general there are a few other massively dropped threads (e.g. Avice's immerser skills, which was fascinating worldbuilding but wholly irrelevant, and then Ehrsul as a whole -- I loved her as a character, but what was the point of her??), which along with Avice's passivity, contribute to dropping my score. Embassytown was an intriguing ride, but not one that left much of an impact on me. It's been some ~12 years since I read [b:Perdido Street Station|68494|Perdido Street Station (Bas-Lag, #1)|China Miéville|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1393537963s/68494.jpg|3221410], but I remember that book haunting me much more.
Favourite quotes below:
***
A group of Hosts approached us. "Avice," Cal or Vin said politely. "This is..." and they started to say names.
I never saw the point of these niceties between the like of me and Ariekei. Understanding only Language-speakers to have minds, they must have thought it odd when Ambassadors carefully introduced them to speechless amputated half-things. As if an Ariekes insisted on one politely saying hello to its battery animal.
So I thought, but it didn't turn out that way. The Ariekei shook my hand with their giftwings when CalVin asked them to. They had cool dry skin. I shut my mouth to obscure whatever emotion was rising in my (I'm still not sure what it was). The Ariekei registered something as the Ambassadors told them my name. They spoke, and Scile quickly translated into my ear.
"They're saying: 'This?'" he told me. "'This is the one?'"
***
I admit defeat. I've been trying to present these events with a structure. I simply don't know how everything happened. Perhaps because I didn't pay proper attention, perhaps beceause it wasn't a narrative, but for whatever reasons, it doesn't want to be what I want to make it.
***
Our news figures said things to me from screens and tridflats like: "The situation is being closely monitored." We were trying to find language to make sense of a time before whatever came after.
***
Men and women bled of colour, in clumsy symbolism, fortified in a house and fighting grossly sick figures. Colour came back, and protagonists were in an edifice full of products, and sicker enemies than before relentlessly came for them. We read the story as ours, of course.
***
They could be mythologers now: they'd never had monsters, but now the world was all chimeras, each metaphor a splicing. The city's a heart, I said, and in that a heart and a city were sutured into a third thing, a heartish city, and cities are heart-stained, and hearts are city-stained too.
***
Sometimes when Spanish Dancer is talking to me in my own language, it doesn't say [metaphor|metaphor] but [lie that truths|lie that truths] or [truthing|lie]. I think it knows that pleases me. A present for me.
I went in completely blind wrt the premise and world (apart from knowing "this book is about language"), so the first few pages are disorienting, confusing, and I rode it out by simply enjoying the poetic prose. But then understanding clicks, and you piece together a better sense of Embassytown, the planet, its alien Hosts, and how everything works and fits together. Miéville's worldbuilding is absolutely astounding, unique and well-and-truly alien. Most of what propelled me throughout the novel was just wanting to learn more about how the world worked, about what was going on, the mechanics beneath the surface.
And yet other reviewers are right in pointing out that you don't read this book for the characters: Avice is far too passive and reactionary as a main character, and doesn't really go through much development either. She's just our lens through which to view this conflict unravel, and she only finds her role and becomes an active participant towards the very, very end of the book. Normally that sort of passive protagonist drives me utterly bonkers, but I was still able to get through it pretty quickly: I think just because I was interested enough in what the hell is going on.
I really liked the first 2/3 of the novel, thereabouts, but then oddly got pulled out of it right when things finally sped up -- possibly because the conflict of the last third simultaneously a) takes too long to unfold, but also b) is resolved a bit too quickly and neatly, jumping through a few miraculous in-the-nick-of-time hoops that I didn't quite buy.
The whole thing is also a love letter to language, how it works, and how our cognition is programmed by our very language -- all of which it makes me want to reread [b:Snow Crash|830|Snow Crash|Neal Stephenson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1477624625s/830.jpg|493634] or [b:Lexicon|16158596|Lexicon|Max Barry|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1356080172s/16158596.jpg|20077336] tbh, and also inspired me to finally grab my copy of [b:The Story of Your Life|223380|Stories of Your Life and Others|Ted Chiang|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1356138316s/223380.jpg|216334] and read it soon.
The novel also seems to stew over the idea of colonialism, and how the humans of the novel accidentally run rough-shod over the alien natives, and wind up exploiting them for their own survival -- completely rewiring the aliens' existence, essentially destroying their culture and way of life. It's hard to tell, though, exactly how we were supposed to feel about this: to me it was fucking awful, and yet in the novel it seemed portrayed as... maybe... not the worst thing ever? Which I find rough to wrap my mind around. I could have actually done with learning more about the Ariekei's non-Language culture as well, since that seemed one of the blank spots Miéville hadn't actually filled in; it makes it hard to untangle the human's impact on them when you don't have a very good idea of what they were like before.
In general there are a few other massively dropped threads (e.g. Avice's immerser skills, which was fascinating worldbuilding but wholly irrelevant, and then Ehrsul as a whole -- I loved her as a character, but what was the point of her??), which along with Avice's passivity, contribute to dropping my score. Embassytown was an intriguing ride, but not one that left much of an impact on me. It's been some ~12 years since I read [b:Perdido Street Station|68494|Perdido Street Station (Bas-Lag, #1)|China Miéville|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1393537963s/68494.jpg|3221410], but I remember that book haunting me much more.
Favourite quotes below:
Spoiler
There were automata in the crowd: some staggering boxes, some with persuasive-enough turingware that they seemed enthusiastic participants.***
A group of Hosts approached us. "Avice," Cal or Vin said politely. "This is..." and they started to say names.
I never saw the point of these niceties between the like of me and Ariekei. Understanding only Language-speakers to have minds, they must have thought it odd when Ambassadors carefully introduced them to speechless amputated half-things. As if an Ariekes insisted on one politely saying hello to its battery animal.
So I thought, but it didn't turn out that way. The Ariekei shook my hand with their giftwings when CalVin asked them to. They had cool dry skin. I shut my mouth to obscure whatever emotion was rising in my (I'm still not sure what it was). The Ariekei registered something as the Ambassadors told them my name. They spoke, and Scile quickly translated into my ear.
"They're saying: 'This?'" he told me. "'This is the one?'"
***
I admit defeat. I've been trying to present these events with a structure. I simply don't know how everything happened. Perhaps because I didn't pay proper attention, perhaps beceause it wasn't a narrative, but for whatever reasons, it doesn't want to be what I want to make it.
***
Our news figures said things to me from screens and tridflats like: "The situation is being closely monitored." We were trying to find language to make sense of a time before whatever came after.
***
Men and women bled of colour, in clumsy symbolism, fortified in a house and fighting grossly sick figures. Colour came back, and protagonists were in an edifice full of products, and sicker enemies than before relentlessly came for them. We read the story as ours, of course.
***
They could be mythologers now: they'd never had monsters, but now the world was all chimeras, each metaphor a splicing. The city's a heart, I said, and in that a heart and a city were sutured into a third thing, a heartish city, and cities are heart-stained, and hearts are city-stained too.
***
Sometimes when Spanish Dancer is talking to me in my own language, it doesn't say [metaphor|metaphor] but [lie that truths|lie that truths] or [truthing|lie]. I think it knows that pleases me. A present for me.