Embassytown by China Mieville

Embassytown by China Miéville
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

An allegorical, if convoluted, account of Humans interfering with the natural order of things, as usual, messing up, and then vainly struggling to undo their mistakes – never really achieving status quo ante.
Although Mieville excels at fantasy and bizarre tales if he is grounded in his favourite milieu of London, however, he fails to inspire with this attempt at extra-terrestrial SF/“weird fiction.” There are flashes of his brilliance

where the airs mixed – past what was not quite a hard border but was still remarkably abrupt, a gaseous transition, breezes sculpted with nanotech particle-machines and consummate atmosphere artistry

while describing the interface between oxygen-rich breathable air and the toxic alien atmosphere.
The author brings in many fascinating concepts like an extradimensional travelling subspace, alien biotech and xenocs to whom the notions of mendacity are incomprehensible and who consider humans to be figures of speech

“Hello,” said one. He smiled enthusiastically and I did not smile back. “I’m Hasser: I’m an example. Davyn’s a topic… You’re a simile.”

Some terms are not clarified e.g., yawl, immer, aeoli, altoysterman, immer, sopor, encomia, manchmal, floaking, to mention a few; although miab turns out to be nothing more prosaic than “Message In A Bottle!”

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