nicanical
A trippy exploration of Sapir-Whorf and neurolinguistics set in Embassytown, an alien city on the planet Arieka, and namesake of the novel.
The central conceit is Language, the language of the indigenous 'Hosts'. Language has particular qualities necessitating specially engineered Ambassadors: twins who can speak Language and interact with the Hosts.
The story starts slowly because one of Miéville's techniques for building up the world is to first casually drop in neologisms, like immer or miab or exot, then provide a detailed explanation later on. This is cool because it disorientates which enhances the alien feel of the setting, but slows you down while your brain tries to comprehend all the mysterious terms.
The middle picks up the pace a little bit by introducing a crisis (essentially an Ariekei civil war). But, it slows down again by spending too much time swimming in the main character's soup of thoughts. This blunts any urgency and anxiety from the unfolding crisis. Language plays a central role in the crisis, so the chapters here grow dense with exposition on it which also slows down the story.
I felt the ending was rushed and the solution disappointing—brute forcing what is basically an evolutionary change in the Hosts by repeating 'lies' to them? In the midst of a civil war, and while the protagonist and her cadre are being hunted? Also, this evolutionary change benefits Hosts almost immediately like they're just hot-swapping hardware into a computer? Just seems too fantastic to me.
While the world is wonderfully-built and the characters' motivations compelling, the choppy pacing and deus ex machina ending dulled my enjoyment.
A trippy exploration of Sapir-Whorf and neurolinguistics set in Embassytown, an alien city on the planet Arieka, and namesake of the novel.
The central conceit is Language, the language of the indigenous 'Hosts'. Language has particular qualities necessitating specially engineered Ambassadors: twins who can speak Language and interact with the Hosts.
The story starts slowly because one of Miéville's techniques for building up the world is to first casually drop in neologisms, like immer or miab or exot, then provide a detailed explanation later on. This is cool because it disorientates which enhances the alien feel of the setting, but slows you down while your brain tries to comprehend all the mysterious terms.
The middle picks up the pace a little bit by introducing a crisis (essentially an Ariekei civil war). But, it slows down again by spending too much time swimming in the main character's soup of thoughts. This blunts any urgency and anxiety from the unfolding crisis. Language plays a central role in the crisis, so the chapters here grow dense with exposition on it which also slows down the story.
I felt the ending was rushed and the solution disappointing—brute forcing what is basically an evolutionary change in the Hosts by repeating 'lies' to them? In the midst of a civil war, and while the protagonist and her cadre are being hunted? Also, this evolutionary change benefits Hosts almost immediately like they're just hot-swapping hardware into a computer? Just seems too fantastic to me.
While the world is wonderfully-built and the characters' motivations compelling, the choppy pacing and deus ex machina ending dulled my enjoyment.
