"Embassytown" by China Mieville (published 2011)

Because of the ingenuity behind China Mieville's "Embassytown" (2011), the book is enormously fun to read. Like many science fiction books I've picked up before, there was a point when I was aware that I was not comprehending all of what I was "reading", but continued happily on anyway, willing to do the work, understanding what I could, while letting the story flow page by page freely. Usually the ability for the reader to do that with a complex story structure and highly intellectual content is a sign of great style. And that - amazing literary style - is something Mieville certainly does have.

This is the first Mieville book I've picked up and I was absolutely mind-blown by its concept. With language as the main thematic element, I emerged myself in the wonderful linguistic games, using my own sparse knowledge of Saussurian semiotics to back-up what I thought I was "getting". Beyond that, I loved the symbolism of the book, which Mieville's "Embassytown" allows for each individual reader to determine. For me, I found symbolism in the book's commentary. My interpretation is that plenty can be interpreted as commentary on history as well as colonization.

What I gathered, in terms of plot (no spoilers): the story starts in a beautiful decrepit town, much like what we today would call slums: remnants of dilapidated, generic building architecture, where a girl named Avice lives and plays on the streets with her friends. Those humans (which Avice and her friends are) live as "colonizers" among Hosts and the Areikai (which sadly I never came to a conclusion on whether those two were one and same); aliens of sorts who lives preceded those of the human colonizers. The Hosts and/or Areikai speak a language - if you could call it that - that none of the humans understand, and are these curiously monstrous looking things with bodies that have what Mieville describes as "eye-corals" and "fanwings/giftwings", "feathers", etc. 

What we find out later is that the hosts cannot speak anything but truth, literally. So when they do communicate, they can only say something that already IS, already HAS HAPPENED, and when they describe their own experiences, the closest thing they come to in terms of poetic justice is using similes.

This is where I kind of jumped and was in awe: Avice was called upon to be something called an *immerser*, someone who could leave Embassytown and immerse herself in worlds other than the one she grew up in, which most people couldn't because of the strangeness of those other places. But she was also asked to do something special for the hosts. And that something was to become a living simile.

How the hell does a person become a simile? Because the Hosts can only speak truth, they have to take part in and/or witness the simile actually happen:

“The Ambassadors spoke to me in the language of our Hosts. They spoke me: they said me. They warned me that the literal translation of the simile would be inadequate and misleading. *There was a human girl who in pain ate what was given her in an old room built for eating in which eating had not happened for a time.* 'It'll be shortened with use,' Bren told me. 'Soon they'll be saying you're a girl ate what was given her.” 

Avice literally went into a room, became hurt and in pain, and ate what the hosts gave her. And from that moment on, the hosts were able to say: This is like the girl who ate what was given her. Or, we are like the girl who in pain ate what was given her. Etc.

That story runs throughout the book entire, and by the end something phenomenal happens where the Host/Arieki are able to evolve to say something other than simile. They are able to *lie* but only in a way based in truth (if you're thinking, like I was, you'll be able hypothesize on what linguistic function the Hosts/Areikai are finally able to express. If you like words and reading and language, that's the fun part.

Avice's immediate plot line fascinated me. But there was another piece of the plot that I was extremely intrigued by as well: the pleasure and obsession the hosts/Arekai received, physically and mentally, by being able to hear and express language. The aliens were absolutely enamored and spellbound by the language they were able to make sense of, the language they were able to comprehend. This language was not able to be spoken by mere humans, like other human similes, but had to be spoken in this strange language expressed by the a specific type of people called Ambassadors, where were, put simply, *double persons*. In Mieville's world, an Ambassador is one made out of two (two people/two personalities), who had to speak at the same time and with the right intonation to be able to communicate to the hosts/Areikai. Their names are as such: Cal/Vin, Mag/Da, Ez/Ra, and so on.

Because the Hosts/Areikai are language fanatics, Embassytown would have lying parties/festivals, where they would gather and listen, in awe and terror and fascination, to the Ambassadors lie. Ambassadors would say things like: The door is blue! (when it really was red), and the Hosts would go nuts in ecstasy.

(I mean, you really have to read Mieville write about this to understand why it's so f#$%^&* awesome, unlike anything.)

As the story progresses, there is a major event where the hosts/Areikai become addicted to one Ambassador, and one Ambassador only. This Ambassador becomes a language god, and feeds language to the Hosts/Areikai as if language itself were an opium, through large loudspeakers. When half of the Ambassador dies, and there is no more of the god-drug, the town goes crazy and there is a war.

That's basically what I picked up in terms of the general story. But I do think an interesting interpretation would be to understand "Embassytown" in terms of what it possibly could say about history, the differing stories themselves, between colonizers and colonized trying to understand and communicate with one another. What would history look like from the Ambassadors eyes? From Avice's? From the hosts/Areikai? How would those different stories be told?

I did not fail to notice the two time periods that Mieville introduces: "Formerly" and "Latter-day". Like B.C. and A.D. There is something quite biblical about this text that I can't put my finger on in my own ignorance.

If anything, read this book for its writing style, which plays with language in wonderfully new ways. If Mieville was trying to show how language, like story, can be as much of a prison as it can a key (which he has said), I think the emphasis should be that it is both. It is shackles. And it is liberation as well.

While many may muse on the philosophical underpinnings of "Embassytown", say it's Derridian or Heidiggerian or whatever, the clue is right there in the beginning with a quote from the great Walter Benjamin:

"The word must communicate something (other than itself)." - "On Language as such and on the Language of Man"

... which I will find, and read, slowly, as soon as I can.