Currently Reading – China Mieville’s Embassytown

This is the book that has my attention at moment, the upcoming (in May) release from the great China Mieville just arrived in the post (proving commonsense is practiced in some publicity departments). Due to my Imperial concerns and responsibilities, I don’t get to read as much as I like but I always have time for the latest goods from China, an author who has made this transition from an understood, yet perhaps telegraphed  awesome to…mysteriously interesting.

There was a point when a non-Bas Lag work from Mieville would have seemed like a waste to me, but after two satisfying reads in Kraken and The City & The City, Mieville has transitioned very neatly into a writer that didn’t stretch (whatever that really means) genre as his previous reputation afforded, but rather is a writer who is equally adroit and dangerous within any of his choosing ala a Dan Simmons. Unlike some, I think there is value in entering  cages and beating everyone within down. The wilderness outside the confines can indeed be an adventurous and inspiring experience but I like being able to tell people that my boy China Mieville just crushed your  favorite Crime writer, like Chabon before him. Bas Lag is a jungle, but one that wholly belongs to Mieville, a locale where  nobody can challenge his authority, nobody who would dare to live or out dream him there.It became it’s own excuse, his own homecourt. The closer to reality Mieville moves to the more Weird his fiction becomes, the good Old weird. Now, something like The City &The City resembles to me a welcomed oddness due to proximity that a The Unconsoled feels like coming  from  Ishiguro’s library. In say this, the synopsis of Embassytown reveals something decidedly SF:

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 yet speaks through her.

I plan on offering some incredibly insubstantial thoughts at BSC Throne World when I’m done and possibly a Hit or Quit It here like I did with Cherie Priest’s Bloodshot. Can’t wait to squeeze through the bars, though I enjoyed my scars and staring matches with slake moths alike.