Book Review: Embassytown by China Mieville

Title: Embassytown
Author: China Mieville
Publisher: Pan MacMillan
ISBN: 978-0-330-53307-2
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 405
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

There are very few authors who consistently write enthralling books month after month or year after year. China Mieville happens to be one of them. His books are of the “New Weird” genre and I am not kidding about that. I remember reading, “Perdido Street Station” a long time ago and completely taken in by his style and the magnificence of his writing. Since then I have read most of his books – from King Rat to The City and the City, Kraken and now “Embassytown”.

“Embassytown” for me was not an easy read. It doesn’t start off easy, being the hard-core sci-fi novel that it is. It took me quite a while to get into the book and enjoy it more so only after 100 pages or so. Let me now tell you something about the book.

The book takes place on a planet known as Ariekei. A colony of human beings has formed an improbable and unheard of alliance with an unusual species, the Ariekei, known by those who live on their planet as Hosts. What makes the Ariekei strange is the fact that they have a different language. Different in the sense that they utter each word in two distinct simultaneous voices, without any words, they cannot distinguish between the sounds they employ (I found this very fascinating), the meanings they intend therefore are not clear, and so they cannot lie or recognize meaningful speech (I found this quite futuristic and scary). The only pair of humans, who have been specifically modified for the purpose of coordinating their voices and their thoughts, can communicate with the Hosts. These paired humans are known as Ambassadors.

Avice, the narrator and protagonist of the story makes us see Ariekei right through her childhood and youth – portraying an urban existence so different from ours and yet deep-rooted in universal aspects of city life. In the first couple of chapters, Avice’s complicated history with different powers of Embassytown is detailed, leading to the one evening when everything changes. The overlapping sections are well-paced, revealing the narrative secrets one step at a time. Who is Avice? What happened to her? Why are she and her husband Scile back? What is the actual science fiction element of the novel? Mieville sure doesn’t serve anything to the reader on a platter. The mystery of Ariekei and Embassytown is revealed layer by layer for the reader. The suspense element is right high on the charts and makes you turn the page, wanting more.

Mieville weaves the story so well – taking something as common-place and often taken for granted, language and showing us its real nature – as a jumping-off point – the novel is not as much of ideas as it then becomes of images. The idea of a city in transit and the cultural clashes by synergizing humans and aliens is remarkable and scary at the same time. China Mieville makes the necessary paradigm shift required for the “science-fiction” novel, by bringing out the nuances and elements of the robust world-building and the distinct awe and terror required for such books.

“Before the humans came, we didn’t speak so much of many things. Before the humans came, we didn’t speak.” That is the crux of the book. Embassytown greatest strength lies in the fact that it speaks about the fragility and duplicity of language, about the meaning, its creation and how sometimes language just doesn’t remain a reference point. What I did not like about the book is that the brilliant secondary characters were not explored more. I would have loved to see them shape and have their own voices.

Embassytown is everything you wanted though in a sci-fi novel – weird, inventive and nail-biting intrigue. If you have the patience needed for such a book, then you will not be disappointed by it at all.

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Book Review: Sold by Patricia McCormick

Title: Sold
Author: Patricia McCormick
Publisher: Pan India
ISBN: 978-1406334050
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 263
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

Sold is an account of a young Nepalese girl, Lakshmi who is sold into the sex trade in India by her family for the sole reason – Money. Patricia McCormick writes the book with great sensitivity and at the same does not let go of the bigger picture. The book is told through the eyes of Lakshmi – a thirteen year old, her beliefs (if any), her thoughts and her emotional sense of being, on understanding what she has been sold into.

Sold is written in free verse form and that is what makes it even more heartbreaking, because it is the sad poetry of life that comes through the pages. I had thought I had read enough already about the sex trade in India; however I was proved wrong after reading Sold.

The horrors of the flesh trade come alive in this book and that is most disturbing. As humans, we think we can handle almost everything, well certainly not a thirteen year old talking about how she was drugged and made to sleep with strangers.

I don’t know if this book can be recommended for young adults, and at the same time considering what they watch and see anyway, I guess they can read this book. McCormick’s writing is stark and raw. She doesn’t mince her words and one is not expected to while writing about a topic this sensitive. The story is heartbreaking and yet sometimes uplifting as Lakshmi shows courage to maintain her identity and survive her ordeal.

Such stories stay on and linger with you, even if you cannot do anything about the situation. We will never know what it is to live like Lakshmi did. The empathy will never be lost, hopefully. The book definitely widens the scope of what we know and what we chose to ignore and for that reason alone, I urge you to read this book.

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Book Review: Solace by Belinda McKeon

Title: Solace
Author: Belinda McKeon
Publisher: Pan
Genre: Literary Fiction
ISBN: 978-0330532327
Pages: 336
Source: Publisher
Rating: 4/5

This isn’t a book to choose if you want pace and plot: it’s a slow, gentle meditation, almost, on those classic literary themes: the tension between father and son, between the older generation and the younger, between the country and city, between family and individual, between dependence and autonomy. It is also the tale of a binding tragedy and the gulf of loneliness between them in today’s Ireland, slowly sinking into poverty and hardship.

The father is Tom Casey, a taciturn, withdrawn, hard-hit man, who is a farmer working in County Longford in Southern Ireland. He is the kind of man whose education is limited and he wants nothing more from life than what he already has. He belongs to the generation of men who believe themselves to be the king of their proverbial castle and every command of theirs should be adhered and obeyed – irrespective of it being right or wrong.

The person Tom connects least with is his son Mark, who as the book opens, is down from Dublin, visiting with his young daughter Aiofe, to help his father with the farm chores. The dynamics of the relationship between the father and the son are strained: Tom sees Mark as a sour human being, while Mark views his father as a cold and calculating human being. The strain of their relationship is felt through the entire Casey clan and this is all due to an incident that changed their entire course of lives.

I will not give away the incident even though it is a part of the prologue mainly because I feel that readers should discover most of the plot by themselves. Belinda’s writing is magical – not once did I find the need to keep the book away. The words are few and beyond, however the emotion is exact – it makes you empathize and think about the last time you were faced with such powerful and overwhelming emotions.

Solace is a book that will speak to you on different levels. For me, it made me realize and think back about the kind of relationship I shared with my father while I was growing up and it wasn’t easy. I could relate to a lot of passages and events describe and maybe that is the reason I could connect more. Solace is a book I would definitely recommend to all. Hope you are able to read and discover what I did.

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Solace: A Novel

Book Review: The City and the City by China Mieville

Title: The City and the City
Author: China Mieville
Publisher: Pan
ISBN: 9780330493109
Genre: Fantasy, Literary Fiction
PP: 373 Pages
Price: £7.99
Source: Publisher
Rating: 4/5

Beszel and Ul Qoma are two entirely different cities: one, grubby and loud; the other, rich and artistic. When Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Beszel Extreme Crime Squad gets involved in a new murder case, he finds himself straddling both cities as increasingly bizarre clues reveal themselves to him. The only danger is Beszel and Ul Qoma exist simultaneously in the same location: twin cities joined by a sense of perspective and dimension. It’s absolutely critical that citizens, and Borlú in particular as a policzai, exercise complete control over “seeing” and “unseeing,” “smelling” and “unsmelling,” “hearing” and “unhearing”–the methods taught to citizens and visitors of both cities where one must see only what exists in one city at a time. To acknowledge the existence of the other in anything but an academic or conceptual context is to invoke the wrath of Breach.

The City & The City isn’t your typical Miéville novel. It is if you take into consideration the inclusion of economics, politics, and his unmistakably dense, cryptic dialogue and narrative. Otherwise, it remains a detective novel of the hard-boiled variety: Dashiel Hammett and Raymond Chandler rolled up and re-made with Miéville’s characteristic SF bend. It’s not as looming or horrific as Perdido Street Station or The Scar (or even King Rat), but he always infuses his cities with as much character as the rest of the cast; Besz and Ul Qoma are no different. In fact, their very existence is vital to the reader’s understanding of the book.

Tyador is the narrator and comes to us through the first person, a choice that sometimes makes a book exclusive and harder to read. That’s not the case here. The suspense of the murder and the snaking trail that leads Borlú far from his home and the murder is heightened with the slow, teasing revelations the reader experiences as Borlú does. There is no panicked gripping of the pages as we, frustrated, hope against all hope Borlú escapes an omniscient evil–no, we are all subject to the consequences of the story as it unravels, no one knows any more than anyone else. We can’t fault Borlú for falling into unseen traps or revel in any dramatic irony.

The writing was harder for me to get into than other works by Miéville. I don’t know if that was due to time or if he did become a bit more elusive and stingy with his exposition. The good thing is Miéville always assumes an intelligent reader and reveals important details to us as they would normally come along. He does not stop to describe the unnecessary–everything adds to the flavor of the cities and the heavy ambiance of mystery. In particular, the description of the two cities is from Borlú’s perspective as a local. This made it a little difficult for me to catch on earlier as to what was going on with regards to his locale, and about 50 or so pages into the book, a vague, musing explanation is given. There is no scientific explanation for their existence and no explanation for the all of the odd terminology Miéville uses freely, but this I liked. Instead, words are given a context for our understanding and the novel progressed smoothly. Fans of Miéville’s writing will still enjoy the dense prose, albeit a little foreign in the new terrain of detective fiction.

The murder takes a backseat to everything else Borlú becomes entangled in. Instead of driving the narrative forward, the murder becomes an accessory to a greater element: the mysterious and mythical Orciny and the much feared Breach. At times it seemed like an odd combination: detective fiction and SF; the narrative reflected this dichotomy in the priority switching of the plot, but for the most part, I was kept in suspense and found myself not caring where the narrative took me, but that I was carried along the journey well entertained.

My only disappointment comes from the ending. I liked where Borlú’s path led him and the transcendent, if annoyingly explicit commentary of the novel, but felt a huge lack when it came to my hopes in the existence of a greater power. I guess I put too much stock in the fantasy of the novel, but I did enjoy it.

Personally, I would have enjoyed the metaphor of the book a lot more if it wasn’t spelled out for me in the end, by which point I’d already caught on, but overall think it was wonderfully executed. In a novel that questions “where it is that we live”, Miéville captured the frustration, and ultimately freedom, that comes from a close examination of our own philosophical existence with the larger world around us. I’d definitely recommend this to fans of China Miéville for the novelty of a break from his usual writing, but also to newcomers. The City & The City is well worth the read.