I really enjoyed my previous experience of reading China Mieville but I struggled with this one. I'm wondering how much of this is because I rarely get to read for a long stretch of time, I am grabbing moments when I can and try to read a little before I go to bed. I miss my bus commutes to work where I would get at least two half hour stints a day. The problem with not having a long amount of time to get into this book mainly stemmed from there being a new language to learn and keep up with.
This is a story that is about Avice, an 'immerser' and a Terra from Embassytown. This is another planet sometime presumably in the future where two different species (Terra and Ariekene) live side by side, but unable to communicate apart from through ambassadors who are able to speak Language. There is a new set of vocabulary throughout the novel that is not always explained. This is one of the main themes of the book, language. Avice is a simile. Her story is used by the Ariekene to make sense of lies. The Ariekene cannot lie. It is a very complicated storyline, but involves the breakdown of communication between the two species and the resulting breakdown of the community and resulting war. I think that if I had been able to spend more concentrated time on this novel then I would have been able to get more out of it. Instead I found it more confusing than enjoyable, but I would imagine that the whole philosophy of language and why we use it would be an interesting concept to explore.
