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Just finished reading Embassytown. I think that may have been the most... Mieville-ish book he's written to date. It's like his love of language, alien-ness, disdain for narrative, all on full throttle. The speech that Spanish Dancer gives at the end was probably one of the best bits of prose he's ever written for that matter.
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May 4, 2011 21:35
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Finished Embassytown last night. I love that Mieville can create a dense sci-fi world but spends most of the time in essentially a podunk colony of it. It also makes me hate that he doesn't spend more time in other parts of his creations but I suppose they'd lose the magic somewhat.
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May 6, 2011 12:31
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Paragon8 posted:Finished Embassytown last night. Well he mentioned that another book set in the Immerverse is possible. 
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May 6, 2011 12:49
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Hedrigall posted:Well he mentioned that another book set in the Immerverse is possible. I guess we'll just have to floak around until then
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May 6, 2011 12:55
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Gods, I hate you all. This is what being an EU/Aussie gamer must be like.
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May 6, 2011 13:01
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Is it not out in a lot of places yet? I was a little disappointed by the lack of discussion on it.
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May 6, 2011 13:31
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Paragon8 posted:Is it not out in a lot of places yet? I was a little disappointed by the lack of discussion on it. It's not out in the US until the 17th.
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May 6, 2011 15:01
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taser rates posted:It's not out in the US until the 17th. Oh drat, that sucks. It's really good!
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May 6, 2011 15:43
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Yeah, I get to wait until then for a crappy US cover, even though I live in  and we get UK books all the time; amazon et al won't stock other publisher copies sometimes and it's p random which ones.
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May 6, 2011 17:52
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I preordered Embassytown on the kindle and I guess it won't download til the 17th. Boo 
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May 6, 2011 18:41
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Picked my copy up this morning. (£4 off at Waterstones!) I've got to read this slowly and carefully, as I've read everything else that Mieville has published: from now on, I can only read his books as fast as he writes them. Only a few (slow) pages in so far, but the opening chapter rather reminds me of The Fifth Head of Cerberus: on the face of it, the writing is simple and straightforward but you can feel that there's a very complex and carefully crafted structure beginning to unfold beneath. No spaceships, lasers or fiendish alien overlords yet but, hey, it's early days!
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May 7, 2011 13:44
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tirinal posted:Gods, I hate you all. This is what being an EU/Aussie gamer must be like. +1. On the plus side, it motivated me to plow through what I was currently reading (and not really enjoying, but whatever, finished!) just so I could clear the decks for new Mieville.
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May 7, 2011 22:06
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Ursula K. Le Guin: "Embassytown is a fully achieved work of art." "The story, at first a bit hard to follow, very soon attains faultless impetus and pacing. If Miéville has been known to set up a novel on a marvellous metaphor and then not know quite where to take it, he's outgrown that, and his dependence on violence is much diminished. In Embassytown, his metaphor – which is in a sense metaphor itself – works on every level, providing compulsive narrative, splendid intellectual rigour and risk, moral sophistication, fine verbal fireworks and sideshows, and even the old-fashioned satisfaction of watching a protagonist become more of a person than she gave promise of being." Wow, that's pretty drat high praise.
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May 8, 2011 04:52
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Hedrigall posted:Ursula K. Le Guin: Whoa, did he actually write an interesting protagonist this time?!
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May 8, 2011 12:25
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Pompous Rhombus posted:Whoa, did he actually write an interesting protagonist this time?! She doesn't seem very interesting yet, but I am only a quarter of the way through the book and it sounds like there'll be some fairly epic relevations later on... There's an obvious hint in the protagonist's name: Avice Benner Cho: ABC... which is further endorsed by her personal history: she's literally a simile; a means by which the Hosts interpret and describe their worldview in speech. So Avice is both the narrator of the story and the story herself: she embodies the concepts that Mieville is attempting to communicate through the novel. I'm really interested in seeing where this is going to go from here. Embassytown is as playful as Kraken but much more tightly controlled: with Kraken, you can tell that he was largely writing for the sheer fun of it, with Embassytown, he has a much more definite purpose in mind. How it all eventually pans out, I'll have to read the rest of the book to discover.
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May 8, 2011 18:53
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I think with the exception of The Scar I greatly prefer China's non-Bas Lag books at this point. With regards to Embassytown's protagonist. I feel she's much less of a fish out of water type than Mieville's usually been doing recently.
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May 8, 2011 21:11
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Paragon8 posted:I think with the exception of The Scar I greatly prefer China's non-Bas Lag books at this point. He's done the fish-out-of-water thing precisely every other book (King Rat, The Scar, Un Lun Dun, and Kraken).
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May 8, 2011 21:26
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Paragon8 posted:
It's a very tempting narrative trick for an author: if the protagonist is semi-detached from the society and events that they're witnessing, it's easier to use them to describe what's happening. A character who's already in tune with what's going on doesn't need to have things explained to them in detail or go off on pages of internal exposition about the plot. It's another sign of the confidence that Mieville's displayed in writing this novel that he's dispensed with this 'easy' option.
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May 9, 2011 06:38
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Actually this time Miéville kinda invents a profession/way of life (called "floaking") for Avice just so she's always around to see important things happening.
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May 9, 2011 06:49
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Here's a spoiler comment about Embassytown I love that Avice's automaton friend turned out not to be some super intellect AI, but her limited programming got exposed by just how much things had changed. It was also super creepy how it tried to collect best friends
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May 9, 2011 09:18
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Just to take the conversation back to Kraken for a second, I'm abut 90 pages away from the end and I see myself giving this book a poor review. For a book that is supposed to Mieville's "fun" novel, boy what a slog it's been. It barely has a plot. At the point when they retrieve the stolen giant squid, there isn't even any tension going on, other than "oooh the end of the world by fire is coming and we don't know why." Billy, who I suppose is a protagonist, is so utterly boring, and the "occult police" characters are a waste of time. Meh, very disappointed. I almost gave up on this book but I decided I was too far in...and I'm regretting it.
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May 10, 2011 20:49
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Argali posted:Just to take the conversation back to Kraken for a second, I'm abut 90 pages away from the end and I see myself giving this book a poor review. For a book that is supposed to Mieville's "fun" novel, boy what a slog it's been. It barely has a plot. At the point when they retrieve the stolen giant squid, there isn't even any tension going on, other than "oooh the end of the world by fire is coming and we don't know why." Billy, who I suppose is a protagonist, is so utterly boring, and the "occult police" characters are a waste of time. I liked the promise of Kraken much more than the actual content. Would have loved a different novel set in that London with a different protagonist.
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May 10, 2011 23:31
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Paragon8 posted:I liked the promise of Kraken much more than the actual content. Would have loved a different novel set in that London with a different protagonist. Agreed. The setting is very interesting, it's just the characters are completely shallow and boring.
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May 11, 2011 13:55
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Every now and then I like to check out China's blog, but I feel that most of it goes right over my head. In some posts he links to various articles, but some (for example, 11th-13th May) simply don't make sense to me. Is there some intellectual message that I'm missing or is it just randomness?
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May 13, 2011 18:25
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^^^I think sometimes it's just random things photos and stuff people send him. I also think his blog is more for himself than his fans, just a way to keep track of random interesting things that happen across his desk. Here's Tor.com's review of Embassytown. A bit sad that Martin and Jordan re-reads get a hundred comments each, but "smaller" books become lost in the shuffle. I mean, Mieville is hardly small, but, you know what I mean. http://www.tor.com/blogs/2011/05/a-new-world-for-author-and-tale-embassytown-by-china-mieville
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May 13, 2011 20:00
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What is there to say about Embassytown, though? It was a well worked out portrayal of a society that has a language but lacks the ability to represent counterfactuals (somewhat; China sometimes hosed this up by for example not having Avice's simile always being in the past tense, and therefore technically being a lie). That is all. The world is self-contained, the plot is self-contained, the story is self-contained. There's nothing dangling left to be discussed (this is what drives the Martin and Jordan threads). 'I thought it was good/bad/so so/ok' is boring and not really a discussion either. Unless someone comes into the thread and posts something really stupid, there is nothing to do.
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May 13, 2011 20:13
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Beige posted:Every now and then I like to check out China's blog, but I feel that most of it goes right over my head. In some posts he links to various articles, but some (for example, 11th-13th May) simply don't make sense to me. Is there some intellectual message that I'm missing or is it just randomness? I'm really curious where he gets his source material for the stuff he posts on his blog. Like does he spend X minutes (hours?) a day trawling through old out-of-copyright books for illustrations to cryptically caption, is he part of some tumblr Illuminati undernet that gives him a steady stream of stuff to post, or what?
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May 13, 2011 22:40
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Mostly the latter, from what I understand. Some of the pictures he takes himself, others are things people send to him. Some of the illustrations are his own, too. I'm probably aging myself here, but I love those random captions. It reminds me of this old recurring skit on Liquid Television (when MTV had good shows.) There'd be old-timey postcards and a sinister British voiceover would narrate tales of violence and government experiments. etc. "Dear Mum..."
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May 14, 2011 03:29
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nixar55 posted:Mostly the latter, from what I understand. Some of the pictures he takes himself, others are things people send to him. Some of the illustrations are his own, too. I'll have to send him some stuff. The place where I worked in college basically made a huge grant-funded project out of going through old out of copyright material (mostly that line-art type stuff that he frequently posts) and scanning/converting it to clipart for free educational use. How do you send something to him?
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May 14, 2011 03:37
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Excellent, downloaded Embassytown to my kindle app today.  It's been tough not reading the spoilered sections here!
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May 17, 2011 18:31
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A shop nearby has signed copies of Embassytown. Sadly, I didn't have money on me when I saw them. Also, I found out that China was in Liverpool last week (I found out on that day and couldn't make it).
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May 17, 2011 19:16
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Embassytown is sooo good, I'm like 80% through and I started reading it like twelve hours ago (and I had work all day today). I can't stop reading it... I majored in linguistics though so I'll probably be more into this than most readers. The writing is completely solid though... I'll make a longer wall of text post once I finish.
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May 18, 2011 09:55
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I started it last night. It's my first CM book. Liking it a lot so far, just didn't get much time to read. I'm about 40 pages into it, just to the start of "part one", I believe.
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May 18, 2011 16:35
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It sure throws you in the deep end and allows you to tease out meanings for things before it definitively fills in the blanks. I find it really engaging, was tough to put it down to go to sleep last night!
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May 18, 2011 18:24
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systran posted:Embassytown is sooo good, I'm like 80% through and I started reading it like twelve hours ago (and I had work all day today). I can't stop reading it... I majored in linguistics though so I'll probably be more into this than most readers. The writing is completely solid though... I'll make a longer wall of text post once I finish. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on it; my wife is a linguist and she flat-out hated the entire premise of the language; she actually refused to read it past the point where Language was explained as requiring an actual thought behind it to be comprehensible.
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May 18, 2011 19:05
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I just finished it (got my pre-ordered copy in the mail yesterday afternoon). Still digesting it, but I feel like I can never get it all with an individual Mieville book: with Embassytown it seemed like he was very interested in exploring language and semiotics, but the actual story he told it with was almost incidental. On first reading, it seems like there are a lot of things he handwaves away so that he can set things up the way he wants, like [END OF THE BOOK] it not being "polite" to ask if Hosts see non-ambassadors as people or what, or the reveal about 3/4 of the way through that Embassytown is actually a strategic linchpin for future exploration. They both work in that they allow the story to continue on its path, but it's sloppy; the former is overly convenient and doesn't seem terribly logical, the latter really gets no foreshadowing and seems like he's stacking the deck so that Event B can happen after Event A. I mean, that's what writers do, but when it's done well it leaves you nodding and going "ah, of course" rather than frowning and muttering "ummm?". I know, my verisimilitude  The jacket kind of teases with the failing marriage thing, but it's barely a subplot and you wind up with a typical plot-fulcrum of a protagonist. I feel like he did a better job with Avice than he has in the past, but there still wasn't a great deal of character growth or internal conflict. It seems like Mieville was doing some odd things with diction (not just his usually verbose word choice, which I love), but I can't quite put my finger on it. I noticed fewer commas than there should have been, and some odd phrasing. It's definitely a book I'll come back to, and I didn't dislike it, but it's probably neck-and-neck with Kraken for my least favorite of his books (which means it's still pretty good, and breathtakingly imaginative). systran posted:Embassytown is sooo good, I'm like 80% through and I started reading it like twelve hours ago (and I had work all day today). I can't stop reading it... I majored in linguistics though so I'll probably be more into this than most readers. The writing is completely solid though... I'll make a longer wall of text post once I finish. I thought you'd be particularly excited about it, interested to hear your thoughts on it!
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May 18, 2011 23:39
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Pompous Rhombus posted:On first reading, it seems like there are a lot of things he handwaves away so that he can set things up the way he wants, like [END OF THE BOOK] it not being "polite" to ask if Hosts see non-ambassadors as people or what, or the reveal about 3/4 of the way through that Embassytown is actually a strategic linchpin for future exploration. end Its not just that its not polite there is also no motivation for an ambassador to find that out. The hosts thinking them the only ones having a full conciousness is only a good thing and they have got no reason to want to change that 3/4 this wasnt completely out of the blue we know that the planet is on the very edge of the explored universe and is run by Bremen a big ruling power we also know that there is a lighthouse in the sky nearby (i think) when this was revealed i had a lil 'ah that makes sense moment' also yeah, read the book twice now im a huge fan its 'cleaner' than PSS in that theres not as much chinastuff going on but it feels lot more bas-lag-like than the books he has written since i just wish it was the length of PSS
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May 19, 2011 04:52
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This has to be the gimmickiest idea for a blog ever: http://couldtheybeatupchinamieville.wordpress.com/
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May 19, 2011 05:11
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TouretteDog posted:I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on it; my wife is a linguist and she flat-out hated the entire premise of the language; she actually refused to read it past the point where Language was explained as requiring an actual thought behind it to be comprehensible. I don't feel like being a springboard for it, but I'd welcome a discussion on this as well. I also have a (modest, non-professional) background in linguistics and had much the same reaction as your wife. I found the premise bordering on offensive. I kept reading because I enjoy Mieville, but the gimmick is intellectually bankrupt to me. It's unreal. Which is a bizarre accusation to make against a scifi/new weird/whatever book, but where, say, something like TC&TC's unreality is evaluated by the metrics of "tactile" reality pared off against what is described, in this case there's no reality that can be used as a framework for what is described. The Hosts are flatly inconsistent with whatever mental faculties we're supposed to use to read about the Hosts. That may be how Language works, but that's not how language works, and whatever else it may be or professes to be, Language is language. ___ Regarding the book proper, it was a fun romp. Avice is the first time I feel Mieville has made an actual protagonist rather than some conjured connivance subject to whims of plot and narration. His prose is delightful as well. tirinal fucked around with this message at 12:49 on May 19, 2011 |
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May 19, 2011 08:33
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No, they simply require telepathy, which doesn't require as much of a suspension of disbelief as the Immer does. Not that telepathy is real, of course, but hyperspace is more preposterous. You could liken it to requiring an extra sense that has evolved in that species but not in ours, like how some earth languages have a large visual component because of gestures. If a blind person tried to speak that language they wouldn't understand what was missing the same way humans didn't understand what was missing in Ariekei -- the difference being that what we lack are not eyes but whatever it is the Ariekei use to 'perceive' 'minds'.
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May 19, 2011 08:45
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