Embassytown

Embassytown has an incredibly steep learning curve. I had to read the beginning several times to make sense of it all, and even then I felt a bit lost for a good chunk of the book. At first, Mieville reminded me strongly of Jasper Fforde, who tends to lean on the absurdity to make a point.

This is a book about language, and Mieville plays a lot with language in the course of it. There are all sorts of made-up words that you have to figure out from context - no helpful glossary here. And it takes a while for some of that context to click into place. But since this is also a book about miscommunications and the struggle to understand someone incredibly different from you, I bet a lot of that's on purpose to.

Ultimately, I like this book for the workout it gave my brain. I had to think hard, and I felt a little bit stretched out when I finished it. The way I used to feel at the end of a semester of college. But I'm not sure I want to work quite that hard right now. Maybe in a few years I'll pick this book back up and appreciate it more. For now I'm finding myself more drawn to light, happy novels. Or at least novels that let me get caught up in the story without struggling through the very language they're written in.

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