for 10.
Thanks, everyone. The reason I read Embassytown was the same reason I read The City & The City two years ag: for three years now I've been reading the BSFA Best Novel shortlist. Considering for about 4-5 years of my teens I read almost nothing but SF, I'm way behind on modern SF at novel length, so if I was to pretend to be a genre reader I should have a look at what at least some people (BSFA members) consider the best stuff. (This year I read my second Adam Roberts novel for the same reason and I'm pretty certain he's not to my taste either.)
I've only read two China Miéville novels. I have been in the same room as him but haven't actually spoken to him, though we did exchange emails way back when I was BFS Awards administrator, in the year he won for The Scar. He's clearly highly intelligent, very articulate and charismatic. I haven't read the three Bas-Lag novels, all of which won major genre awards, though I have a copy of Perdido Street Station lying around. (Until recently, it remained CM's bestselling novel and still might be. It's over twice as long as City... or Embassytown.) I haven't read his children's novel Un Lun Dun, though of two friends who both have experience in writing YA, one enjoyed it and one hated it. And I haven't read Kraken, which even a friend of mine who is a CM fan thought was getting self-indulgent.
Part of the problem I had with City... and Embassytown was that both are written in first person and neither narrator quite rang true for me. Less so with City, but the narrator kept using thesaurus words which I doubted he would use. Embassytown's narrator, Avice, is female. Now, I'm not suggesting that men writing as women is wrong or (to quote a thread over in novels) "socially unacceptable" - I'd be first against the wall if that were true. But you could change Avice to male and apart from changing the relevant gendered nouns, pronouns and adjectives, the novel would be almost completely unchanged. (Yes, Avice has a husband, but in a passing comment she reveals she previously had a wife. The only passage that would change would be a brief discussion of "homosex".) If you change something so basic about your protagonists with no effect, then that's characterisation-fail as far as I'm concerned. And since I didn't believe in her, I couldn't care less about her.
That said, the ideas behind City... and Embassytown are interesting, especially the latter as I have some background in linguistics as part of my English degree. Though saying that Embassytown is the best SFnal treatment of linguistics since Ian Watson's The Embedding (1973) (as The (London) Times says on the back cover) was a grr moment for me. I'd say that was Ted Chiang's "Story of Your Life", but no that's a novella, short fiction, and that doesn't count...
Okay, rant over. Maybe I'm just a disappointed fan not finding something recently that will blow my socks off. Two more BSFA novels to go, so here's hoping that Osama or Cyber-Circus will hit that spot. (The Islanders is the best of the three, and will probably win. It's not my favourite Priest novel, and definitely not recommended for those new to his work, but at least I didn't feel any urge to throw my copy at the wall as I did with Roberts and Miéville, though I finished both. I'm a Priest fan of old and his partner is a friend of mine.)
It's Saturday morning here. Good morning Cantina. Have a great weekend, everyone.