Embassytown by China Miéville (5 stars)

I doubled down on Miéville and was dropped into the now-familiar confusion at the start of a new Miéville novel: an explosion of new terminology, gradual reveals, and complex world building. Some readers seem annoyed by this initial feeling of disorientation, but I love it, and I'm now so impressed by Miéville's skill with this style that I'm perfectly content to sit back and let him do his work. Language is also as you would expect from Miéville: why use 'rare' when you could use 'recherché'?

And in fact language is a central theme of the book. The Areikei, dual-winged insect-like aliens on whose planet Embassytown exists, speak with two mouths simultaneously. A complex means of communications using a pair of cloned humans linked by technology to be able to synchronise their speech has been devised, and a class structure has evolved around these sort-of-human 'Ambassadors' who communicate with the Areikei 'Hosts'. The disastrous conflict of the novel arises purely due the speech of a new Ambassador.

Miéville spends much of the book describing the Hosts's native tongue 'Language', and creates some interesting constraints such as a physical inability to lie, and a requirement that all phrases be constructed with similes, saying something is 'like' something else. Part philosophical, and part linguistic fantasy, I imagine it would appeal to students of those disciplines (although I did read one resounding criticism of the notion that a language could exist without the concept of 'that', which is a key part of the plot). I mostly enjoyed the forays into linguistics but occasionally found them boring, especially the meetings of the similes club. On the plus side I learnt some terms like 'cognate' and 'kenning'.

This is definitely an ideas and plot book, more than a characters book. We don't really get to know anyone deeply, even Avice our narrator. And there are times when the single point-of-view is quite painful, such as shortly after the turmoil is created by the Ambassador. Avice is basically hanging out at home and talking to other people who don't know what is going on, which makes for fairly tedious reading, while others desperately try to save their society. A second PoV at this point would have been great: Ez, Ra, Scile, or MagDa maybe. Ehrsul's character is and central to the story early on, but is barely mentioned as soon as the conflict starts, which seemed very strange. Perhaps Ehrsul's story is fodder for a sequel.

Speaking of sequels, there's plenty more that this (third!) universe has to offer: there's a great immer-travel beyond-the-final-frontier space-cowboy hunted-by-bremen-establishment novel begging to written. The concept of light-houses placed in the immer by unknown technologically advanced aliens is great.

My favourite part of the book was the description of the Hosts and their infrastructure battling addiction - it was fantastically imagined and described. I'd love to see this as a movie one day and watch a building grow ears to satisfy a heroin-like junkie craving.

5 stars!