Sandra reviewed Embassytown by China Miéville
Review of 'Embassytown' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Hovering between 3 1/2 and 4 stars.
This book. WTF?
Some parts of this book worked really well. Other parts? Not so much. The whole Language thing mostly went over my head as I've never studied linguistics, have zero interest... I don't even speak another language. I am definitely lacking in that part of my understanding, and that part of my brain wiring so I'm sure a lot of it went right over my head. But I just don't get that the Arieki don't understand anything that is not literally true. How do they know when they'll need a simile? How do they have all this technology with biorigging and such? They'd have to be able to think conceptually, be innovative and creative to create. So that whole part of the novel didn't ring true to me though I am willing to suspend disbelief. It's just that AND the whole …
Hovering between 3 1/2 and 4 stars.
This book. WTF?
Some parts of this book worked really well. Other parts? Not so much. The whole Language thing mostly went over my head as I've never studied linguistics, have zero interest... I don't even speak another language. I am definitely lacking in that part of my understanding, and that part of my brain wiring so I'm sure a lot of it went right over my head. But I just don't get that the Arieki don't understand anything that is not literally true. How do they know when they'll need a simile? How do they have all this technology with biorigging and such? They'd have to be able to think conceptually, be innovative and creative to create. So that whole part of the novel didn't ring true to me though I am willing to suspend disbelief. It's just that AND the whole ending seemed completely rushed and implausible and barely even explained the why and how and the whole conspiracy with Scile and Ez/Cal... None of that seemed thought out enough, developed or explained enough where you really got a sense of what was happening. So boo.
Also big minus for me was 1 dimensional characters. No character development, no growth. I really need a character I can believe in, feel I understand and care about in some way to really love a book, and alas, this book was lacking in any of that. It felt totally unemotional and cold and quite deadpan.
What DID work and work very well indeed was the whole feeling of alien-ness. From the new vocabulary words, to the descriptions of Embassytown itself, and time/space travel and the immer, to the architecture, to the Hosts, Mieville did an awesome job of helping to disorient you enough to literally force you to feel the alien. I felt transported and lost and that was very appealing because it felt like a new and exciting experience. He did this so well that though the rest of the book was a 2 star experience, this alien adventure was 5++++.
The way the Arieki became addicted to language felt believable to me because words ARE so powerful. I think of being hypnotized, or even just listening to certain people speak who maybe have an accent or something and it just sort of sends me into a reverie where I get this dreamy and spacey feeling, not so much what is being said but the cadence and rhythm of the words just pushes a button in my brain. I'm sure I'm someone who can be easily hypnotized. So, to me, it was believable that the Hosts would feel these brain sensations, synapses firing for the first time, neurotransmitters and chemical reactions flooding through their gray matter as drug-like, addicting in the pleasure of it all and addictive because of the changes made to the brain itself.
Then I think of 1930's Germany and the German people listening to Adolph Hitler orate... spine chilling the pure power of language. I get it.
This book needs to be processed. This book definitely needs a reread at some point. This book absolutely was a novel reading experience, I'll grant it that. So maybe that's worth 4 stars?
