Embassytown Audiobook

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.

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"Nobody dramatizes ideas like China Mieville. Consider this exchange, which comes late in the story: "'Language is the continuation of coercion by other means.' 'Bullshit. It's cooperation.' Both theories explained what happened plausibly. I resisted, because it felt trite, saying that they weren't as contradictory as they sounded." Interesting debate, no? And you could certainly sit around with some sociologists and have it. But what makes this novel great isn't just the IDEAS, but the way the ideas take shape in the story. It begins with a wonderful conceit: eons in the future, humans have colonized a planet where the indigenes speak a language requiring two mouths, which only expresses fact. Only a few specially bred and trained pairs of humans - Ambassadors - can speak it. The narrator is Avice, born in Embassytown, who as a child became a living simile in the indigenes' language, "the girl who was hurt in darkness and ate what was given to her." After traveling the known universe as a space-sailor, she returns to Embassytown with her new husband, a linguist. What happens next, after the arrival of an Ambassador trained off-world, is fascinating and philosophical, both a great meditation on the nature of language and colonialism, as well as a great, page-turning story. I will definitely be reading more of Mieville's work!"

— charlotte (5 out of 5 stars)