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Embassytown  By  cover art

Embassytown

By: China Mieville
Narrated by: Susan Duerden
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Publisher's summary

China Miéville doesn’t follow trends, he sets them. Relentlessly pushing his own boundaries as a writer - and in the process expanding the boundaries of the entire field - with Embassytown, Miéville has crafted an extraordinary novel that is not only a moving personal drama but a gripping adventure of alien contact and war.

In the far future, humans have colonized a distant planet, home to the enigmatic Ariekei, sentient beings famed for a language unique in the universe, one that only a few altered human ambassadors can speak. Avice Benner Cho, a human colonist, has returned to Embassytown after years of deep-space adventure. She cannot speak the Ariekei tongue, but she is an indelible part of it, having long ago been made a figure of speech, a living simile in their language.

When distant political machinations deliver a new ambassador to Arieka, the fragile equilibrium between humans and aliens is violently upset. Catastrophe looms, and Avice is torn between competing loyalties - to a husband she no longer loves, to a system she no longer trusts, and to her place in a language she cannot speak yet speaks through her.

©2011 China Mieville (P)2011 Random House

Critic reviews

“A breakneck tale of suspense...disturbing and beautiful by turns. I cannot emphasize enough how terrific this novel is. It's definitely one of the best books I've read in the past year, perfectly balanced between escapism and otherworldly philosophizing.” (io9)

Embassytown is a fully achieved work of art…Works on every level, providing compulsive narrative, splendid intellectual rigour and risk, moral sophistication, fine verbal fireworks and sideshows, and even the old-fashioned satisfaction of watching a protagonist become more of a person than she gave promise of being.” (Ursula K. Le Guin)

“Brilliant storytelling... The result is a world masterfully wrecked and rebuilt.” (Publishers Weekly [starred review])

What listeners say about Embassytown

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Best of Audible SFF, May 2011

Narrated by Susan Duerden, whose previous titles include Android Karenina, China Mieville???s Embassytown is my pick for the best science fiction and fantasy title to be released at Audible.com in May 2011. Duerden ably pilots us through the dense linguistic plot, and nice production touches give listeners a flavor of the Ariekei tongue of which readers can only be jealous, mashing words on top of each other to create a truly alien effect. (Here is a short, low-fi clip of me saying ???Jeff??? and ???Chi??? overtop each other in a similar way to give ???JeffChi???.) Meanwhile the book never devolves into pointless and expansive background and detail, without leaving us truly in the dark. In short, Mieville creates an alien world and lets it breathe, with the sometimes horrific suffocation this can imply. That said, the book opens with an intimidating series of undefined terminology, and alternates chronology from ???formerly??? to the present, and is a challenging book to unravel ??? to the point of, at times, an exasperated ???what is going on???? Sticking it out, however, is plenty rewarding.

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I tried

Got to about 3/4 and gave up. Now that will say something; I'm normally feeling obligated to finish a book, if I can. I've really tried to like Mieville. The synopsis always sound so fascinating. I blamed part of my problems with 'Perdido Station' on Lee's narration [ I experience Lee as undigestible] This one was a different narrator, who did okay, a different story from 'Perdito Station', but so bleak, so confusing that I could not find it in me to finish this one. The aliens are just too mysterious and I did not get anywhere with their description and all the humans seemed to have been beamed over from '1984', they are depressed, scared furtive. Maybe I'm just not artistic enough to get it.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Creative but Mind Numbing

I'm all for creativity in a story, which Mieville does superb, but this story meanders aimlessly. I'm almost halfway through and just hanging on hoping it will get better. Aside from nonexistent action in the vague plot, the author insist on throwing in so much "Embassytown" techno jargon, that I'm often left hoping that eventually the author will reveal things, that usually are left for you to figure out or decipher yourself. The narrator doesn't help much, nor does the fact that it is read with a British accent, making it feel more like a Dr. Who episode.

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Just Bad

This book is disjointed and you spend most of your time trying to figure out where the story is going. This is my first China Mieville book and will be my last.

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Definitely worth a listen, but...

I love the themes of this book -- the problem of communication, the nature of language, the relationships among language, thought, and reality -- and the story is vividly written and quite compelling throughout. The timeline of the first part of the book is challenging (especially in audio format) but brilliant. However, there are deep conceptual problems at the heart of the very issues the book tackles. The fiction definitely trumps the science in this one. It is, however, a great book to argue about with others who have read it. The narration is also excellent for the most part, although it does become a bit melodramatic toward the end (although perhaps the prose demands that).

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

I don't get it

The City and the City is absolutely brilliant - one of my all time favorite reads. Perdido Station was unrelenting and pointless grotesquerie and I regret reading it deeply - but I recognize the originality and intelligence of it. This one I can't seem to keep my mind on. I've listened to perhaps a third of it and it's getting kind of painful trying to find any meaning in it. The main character is involved in a marriage with a man she really loves but the sex was so bad they no longer bother with it and get good sex elsewhere and hardly have anything to do with each other. Um, doesn't that make them just friends? She is supposedly an actual piece of another species' language. Um. This should be explained in the beginning. I've read too far into the book and don't understand what that's all about and I no longer care. I guess that's the problem. I don't care about the characters, they don't seem interesting or particularly deserving.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Loved This Book!

Complex, original, and as the best speculative fiction does, this book immerses a reader in a world they never imagined. A stunningly creative and original writer. It had me wishing this world were real and at the same time dreading the dangers the characters faced. The answers to those dangers were truly haunting. The narration was a perfect match to the story. This is fiction operating way at the top of the curve and a writer like no other. I'd be happy to see a sequel, another adventure in this world, or anything else Mr. Mieville wants to write. I've read three of his novels and will be reading all of them.

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    5 out of 5 stars

Just amazing.

I have listened to this book, rapt, within 48 hours. Wonderful, flourished descriptions and practically made for an audiobook experience. Such gorgeous language, narration, and narrative...

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Would be better as a novella

Loved the concept. Linguistics and sci-fi is a winning combination if done well. Unfortunately the book suffers from the same issue that I've encountered in other Mieville works: the plot founders about 2/3 of the way through and the characters get on my nerves as they bumble around until the pace picks up again rushing into the big finish.

Aggressive editing to trim the doldrums would greatly enhance the final product. More focus on the ideas and world building and less time on the characters - who are less interesting than those in the New Crobuzon series - would also play to Mieville's strengths. For this book in particular a significant reduction in length would have been beneficial.

The narrator is quite good.

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I really wanted to like this, but alas.

I have listened to The City and the City and The Kraken and have got used to John Lee. That said, given the fantastic reviews for Susan Duerden, I really wanted to give her a chance. I could not get used to her monotonous, deadpan narration. I could barely distinguish between narration and dialogue for the most part. The double voice was really interesting, but beyond that, not so much. I don't think John Lee would have been the right narrator for this story, but I did not like Susan much. So much so, I moved to the print book to finish it. I couldn't bear the thought of having to slog through 8 more hours of this monotonous rendition to get to the end of the story.

The story was a bit dark for me. The other Mievilles I've read have seemed almost farcical, this one just seemed to get dark. I was reminded of The Mote in God's Eye in the second half of the book. I did not enjoy this as much as the others I've read. The premise of the story was interesting, I unfortunately guessed what was to come before the reveal so it was a bit spoiled for me. In the end - a lot happened in a very short period. All in all, meh!

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