Embassytown
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Embassytown
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Narrated by:
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Susan Duerden
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Written by:
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China Mieville
About this listen
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.
©2011 China Mieville (P)2011 Random HouseWhat the critics say
“A breakneck tale of suspense...disturbing and beautiful by turns. I cannot emphasize enough how terrific this novel is. It's definitely one of the best books I've read in the past year, perfectly balanced between escapism and otherworldly philosophizing.” (io9)
“Embassytown is a fully achieved work of art…Works on every level, providing compulsive narrative, splendid intellectual rigour and risk, moral sophistication, fine verbal fireworks and sideshows, and even the old-fashioned satisfaction of watching a protagonist become more of a person than she gave promise of being.” (Ursula K. Le Guin)
“Brilliant storytelling... The result is a world masterfully wrecked and rebuilt.” (Publishers Weekly [starred review])
What listeners say about Embassytown
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- H.Wessel
- 2022-09-14
not his best
the story had some very interesting elements and ideas, but it felt somewhat uninspired and forced. many parts felt redundant and repetitive. the narrator was decent, but her voice range was a little limited and the special effects used to express " the language" didn't help. China Mieville wrote some amazing novels ,but this isn't one of them.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Blythe
- 2019-06-30
Thought-provoking alien languages
A very thoughtful book about language and how aliens' language might be so truly alien from our own that we can't even begin to understand it.
Embassytown is a trading outpost on the world of the Ariekei (also known as The Hosts). The world is very foreign, but the Hosts have allowed the establishment of the town and attempts at communication and trade. The Ariekei language is impossible for normal humans to speak at all, however; their language must be spoken by two simultaneous voices and one single mind, all three working together to deliver the same message. As a result, only very specially trained sets of identical twins have been able to converse, and only very carefully. Also as a result, lying or even hypothetical imaginings are impossible among the Ariekei; they rely on examples as they can only refer to literal truths, and need to actually create real examples of a concept before they can understand and refer to it thereafter. Protagonist human Avice Benner Cho is an example of one of these living similes; as a child she performed a role in a scenario and is henceforth referred to by the Ariekei as "There was a girl who was hurt in darkness and ate what was given her."
As an adult, she returns to her home world again and encounters other living similes, as well as discovering some unsettling truths about the sacrifices that twin sets go through to qualify to be translators. But when a translator unintentionally exposes the Ariekei to a lie, something they are psychologically and physiologically incapable of comprehending, the impact changes them irrevocably, throwing the entire world into chaos. Avice is for the most part a fairly neutral protagonist, mainly existing to give us the human viewpoint and background of the story, but towards the end even she gets wrapped up in the chaos that follows.
It's not necessarily an easy book to read, like most of Miéville's writing it requires some deep thinking about unusual concepts. Probably not the best Miéville book to start with, but interesting as always.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Dalton
- 2023-11-20
Thought provoking creative but slightly unsatisfying
Loved the world building, but i think where it all went didn’t make enough sense. A lot of telling us how fantastic and incompressible the difference in language is, but ultimately much left unexplained in a way that doesn’t feel fully thought out.
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