Embassytown

De: China Miéville

Narrado por: Susan Duerden

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.

Reseñas de la Crítica

“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

“The Kafkaesque writer journeys to the distant edges of the universe in his latest sci-fi thriller.”—Entertainment Weekly

“Utterly astonishing . . . A major intellectual achievement.”—Kirkus Reviews

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

Praise for Kraken

“The stakes [are] driven high and almost anything can happen. The reader is primed for a memorable payoff, and Miéville more than delivers.”—San Francisco Chronicle

The City & The City

“If Philip K. Dick and Raymond Chandler’s love child were raised by Franz Kafka, the writing that emerged might resemble . . . The City & The City.”—Los Angeles Times

Perdido Street Station

“Compulsively readable . . . impossible to expunge from memory.”—The Washington Post Book World

The Scar

“A fantastic setting for an unforgettable tale . . . memorable because of Miéville’s vivid language [and] rich imagination.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

Iron Council

“A masterwork . . . a story that pops with creativity.”—Wired

Un Lun Dun

“Endlessly inventive . . . [a] hybrid of Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz and The Phantom Tollbooth.”—Salon

Uniquely different sci-fi

Sci-fi tends to explore either the extrapolation of the existing boundaries of science or wholly new directions in human imagination. Fertile areas include physics, cosmology, or biology. In Embassytown, Mieville, has chosen to explore a biological consequence, language, from a truly alien perspective. The story is told from the point of view of a human who grew up on this planet, left for a time and has now returned as things are beginning to fall apart. The alien species is intelligent, but their biology has evolved a form of language that is unique and greatly limiting: they are unable to lie. As a result we are entertained with a story of a species struggling to overcome their evolutionary history, while their human guests struggle to understand and survive. This is erudite hardcore sci-fi at its best.

Excellent Science Fiction

Like all of his books, there is no explanation for what is happening, but the story is so cleverly constructed that partial understanding soon follows. His stories never end with complete explanations and the lack of full understanding is, in my view, one of the hallmarks of his brand of speculative fiction. The prose quality is excellent and the reader is clear and articulate. Mr Mieville's mind and imagination are, as always, outstanding. This is almost as good as the Scar which I believe to be his best. Great listen, well worth the credit and probably essential to read a couple of times.

Oh, Mieville.

So, I gave this 3 stars, and that's not very good. That said, I think this book is probably amazing, but it's just so complicated. Mieville bit off a lot with this exploration of language using aliens. You need to be a reader/listener who can listen to an audiobook attentively enough that you do not miss details. Because I promise you, if you zone out or lose focus, you will have to rewind! For that reason, I feel like this is not a good choice to listen to as an audiobook as opposed to reading as text.

The performance is a little tough for me. The reader is British. I am not British, but I've certainly listened to plenty of audiobooks narrated by British people and enjoyed them. However, in this case, the performance seemed a bit of a British accented drone to me, which made the complex material all that much more difficult to follow in audio format.

My husband and I had long talks after both listening to this book, so despite my negativity here, it is an intellectually stimulating book. If you like Mieville in general you may enjoy this book, but it's not an easy listen.

interesting

China Mieville is best when being inventive without getting steam-punk and stupid or anything else so typical.

Its Like the story you wanted mixed with the story you needed.

Another excellent mental exercise by China Mieville, this time on the power of similes and the complications of interspecies contact.