EMBASSYTOWN by China Mieville

Well, me old China, what have we here? A new book, obviously, but is it in the brilliant Perdito Street Station mode, or more in failing Kraken mode? 

I guess the answer is somewhere in between. I enjoyed it. It’s not as good as PDS, but it is cleverly put together and raises lots of interesting ideas about how difficult it might turn out to be for two different species to communicate with each other. If anything, I’d say it introduces too many concepts, in that travelling in the ‘immer’ (known as ‘immersing’) is made much of throughout the book, but in fact it doesn’t impact much, if at all, on the plot.

So, I’d place this closer to the top of China Mieville’s offerings than to the bottom. If you are a keen SF fan, I have no doubt you’d enjoy it. But if you’re not, I suspect you’d find it heavy going.
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