Embassytown by China Mieville (2011)
Mr. Miéville just can’t get no love from me. I tried. I really did.
An opening quote doesn’t usually set up the premise of a novel as well as this:
“The word must communicate something (other than itself).”
Walter Benjamin “On Language as such and on the Language of Man”
But, must it? The science fictional story is always in the interfaces, is it not? In the friction between humans and humans, between humans and less human, between aliens and human, between aliens and aliens. And yes, sometimes between humans and machines. Those stories are all about the endless slips and catches of communication, translation, connection.
At the edge of the known galaxy, an enclave of humans inhabits Embassytown, a machined/mutated city on the planet held by the Hosts. Communication is difficult at best - humans see language as a symbol. The Hosts do not. Nor do they necessarily recognize the individuality of humans.
The protagonist, Avice, was a precocious child chosen to become part of the Host’s language, a simile. (And really, do you think that the author, playing with words as he does constantly here, didn’t name her knowing what parallels we’d draw? A Vice? Avarice? Do you have to telegraph that your narrator is unreliable so strongly? Or, is that just a feint?) But - that isn’t the story, or isn’t even much of the beginning.
Readers first meet Avice as a grown woman. Scorning temporal framework created difficulty because on one level this novel is all about slippage, but illustrating that with time as the medium meant that Mr. Miéville demanded more work from me right from the start than I felt he’d earned.
On another level, Embassytown is about slippage in language -shifts in meaning. And on yet a third, slippage in culture/behavior, the natural outgrowth - or is it?- of confronting the unknown, or formerly unseen.
The second difficulty was that while the premises aroused my cold intellectual interest, the story was interesting, but not engaging. A bit arch. Twee, even. Like the really good-looking kid in class who knows it - and might share a wink or a joke or even an afternoon, but will never, ever go to the dance with you.
I liked the winks and jokes, but I won’t go looking for another afternoon. It’s not a matter of making myself emotionally vulnerable - Avice, and Scile, Bren and the Hosts all were just the other side of a window, but not where they could touch me, or me them. I wasn’t in any danger of losing my heart, but they frequently lost my interest.
I confess I liked the textual nods to authors as disparate and talented as C.J. Cherryh, Frank Herbert, Mary Gentle, and Karen Traviss, among others. And that I was moved to write such a long review of a book I disliked is a tribute to the author’s ability to challenge readers.
I can look at a work like this and admire the thought process that birthed it, the complexity of the plot, the baroque touches and writerly affectations even as I reshelve it for something more - congenial.
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