I think China Mieville is tremendously inventive. In Embassytown (and a few others, really) he struggles to give his imaginings a structure in which I can really commit and invest. In a good portion of this one, I couldn't even conjure up mental images of what was going on, who the actors were, why any of these tribulations mattered. The ineffable remains un-effed.

That sounds a bit like what I would say about a one- or two-star novel, but this is worth more than that. I feel a bit inadequate to the work, really - like listening to a physicist talk about a few more dimensions than the one (three? four?) than I'm used to experiencing and just having to take her word for it. Physics and New Weird fiction - beyond my grasp.