DeFlip Side

Embassytown
by China Mieville

Reviewed by Christopher DeFilippis

China Mieville splashed onto the Science Fiction scene in 2000 with his novel Perdidio Street Station, introducing his world of Bas Lag in a tale so hyper-creative, erudite and convention bending that it spawned a new subgenre, dubbed by many as Weird Fiction.

Eleven years and six novels later, Mieville has left Bas Lag and Weird Fiction behind, but his erudition and hyper-creativity remain, and he wields them aptly in his new novel Embassytown, albeit not to the story’s ultimate benefit.

The human outpost Embassytown is on the far distant planet Arieka—accessible only by a dangerous trip through extra-dimensional space dubbed the immer—home to a diplomatic corps of specially cloned twins that are the only line of communication to the native Ariekei, whose unusual double-mouthed physiology makes their language unique in the known universe. Ariekene speech can only convey literal concepts, so Ariekei can’t lie. But they will occasionally expand their language with the help of human volunteers, who enact scenarios that will allow their alien Hosts to express previously inexpressible ideas.

Avice Benner Cho is one such human, who became part of the Ariekene language as child. After a young adulthood spent as an immer pilot in the “out,” Avice moves back to Embassytown with her linguist husband, where she enjoys mild celebrity status among the ambassadorial set. But when a group of Ariekei begin to obsessively study Avice and other en-languaged humans, it becomes evident that they’re trying to learn how to lie. And into this fractious environment arrives a new Ambassador pair who aren’t clones, and whose remarkable linguistic abilities are affecting the Ariekei in unforeseen ways. Avice suddenly finds herself swirling in a maelstrom of linguistic revolution and social upheaval.

In Embassytown, Mieville treads fearlessly into conceptually high and wonderfully cerebral Science Fictional terrain. But unfortunately, the author stumbles into one of the greater pitfalls of high-concept SF: wherein exploration of the Science Fictional premise ceases to be a means to an end, but becomes an end unto itself, the novel’s chief reason for existing...

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