A very thoughtful book about language and how aliens' language might be so truly alien from our own that we can't even begin to understand it.

Embassytown is a trading outpost on the world of the Ariekei (also known as The Hosts). The world is very foreign, but the Hosts have allowed the establishment of the town and attempts at communication and trade. The Ariekei language is impossible for normal humans to speak at all, however; their language must be spoken by two simultaneous voices and one single mind, all three working together to deliver the same message. As a result, only very specially trained sets of identical twins have been able to converse, and only very carefully. Also as a result, lying or even hypothetical imaginings are impossible among the Ariekei; they rely on examples as they can only refer to literal truths, and need to actually create real examples of a concept before they can understand and refer to it thereafter. Protagonist human Avice Benner Cho is an example of one of these living similes; as a child she performed a role in a scenario and is henceforth referred to by the Ariekei as "There was a girl who was hurt in darkness and ate what was given her."

As an adult, she returns to her home world again and encounters other living similes, as well as discovering some unsettling truths about the sacrifices that twin sets go through to qualify to be translators. But when a translator unintentionally exposes the Ariekei to a lie, something they are psychologically and physiologically incapable of comprehending, the impact changes them irrevocably, throwing the entire world into chaos. Avice is for the most part a fairly neutral protagonist, mainly existing to give us the human viewpoint and background of the story, but towards the end even she gets wrapped up in the chaos that follows.

It's not necessarily an easy book to read, like most of Miéville's writing it requires some deep thinking about unusual concepts. Probably not the best Miéville book to start with, but interesting as always.