Embassytown
China Mieville
Del Rey
Review<p><em></em>PRAISE FOR CHINA MIÉVILLE </p><p>Embassytown </p><p><em></em>“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.com<br><em></em><br>Kraken<em></em> </p><p>“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_ </p><p> The City &amp; The City </p><p>“If Philip K. Dick and Raymond Chandler’s love child were raised by Franz Kafka, the writing that emerged might resemble . . . <em>The City &amp; The City</em>.”—_Los Angeles Times<br> _<br> Perdido Street Station </p><p>“Compulsively readable . . . impossible to expunge from memory.”—_The Washington Post Book World_ </p><p>The Scar </p><p>“A fantastic setting for an unforgettable tale . . . memorable because of Miéville’s vivid language [and] rich imagination.”—_The Philadelphia Inquirer<br> _<br>Iron Council<br></p>“A masterwork . . . a story that pops with creativity.”—_Wired _ <p></p><p>Un Lun Dun </p><p>“Endlessly inventive . . . [a] hybrid of <em>Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz </em>and <em>The Phantom Tollbooth</em>.”—Salon </p>Product Description<p>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 <em>Embassytown</em>, Miéville has crafted an extraordinary novel that is not only a moving personal drama but a gripping adventure of alien contact and war. </p><p>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. </p><p>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. </p><p>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. </p>