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...