A Son of the Rock

Macmillan, 2011, 405 p

It’s not often a novel is concerned primarily with language but Embassytown is that exception. Unlike in Suzette Haden Elgin’s Native Tongue series, however, Miéville does not merely dally with the idea of language and translation but instead embeds this concern in the narrative; indeed the plot’s resolution is dependent on language and communication.

On a planet named Arieka, at the edge of known space, the Bremen colony of Embassytown is a habitable enclave surrounded by the otherwise poisonous demesnes of the indigenous Ariekei who are known as Hosts. Their language (Miéville emphasise its importance to the novel by naming it Language rather than Ariekan) contains no facility for lying and also requires the simultaneous uttering of two words/thoughts in order to be understood. This leads to a typographical representation oddity which I cannot fully reproduce here and is merely one illustration within the book of Miéville’s fascination with duality, a seam mined repeatedly in his earlier novels. “Twinned” Ambassadors referred to as doppels are identicalised individuals, kept identical by regular cleansing sessions which remove the superficial blemishes picked up between these ablutions, have been tested for empathy and trained to interact with the locals by speaking simultaneously. They have names such as ArnOld, RanDolph, CalVin, MagDa, CharLott or JoaQuin and are always referred to in the plural in constructions such as “the Ambassador were” – except when their components are on their own. The first three sections of the book, up to the initial crisis, are also twinned, with succeeding chapters respectively headed as Formerly or Latterday. Here, the difficulties of communicating with the Hosts and the struggles of a few of them to adopt human modes of speech are laid out. The remainder of the book deals with the fall-out from that endeavour.

Narrator Avice Benner Cho is a former immerser – a traveller in the immer, the void between planets – who, unusually for one of her kind, has returned to Arieka. Like many Embassytowners she has been made into a simile (she is the girl who ate what she was told, rather than what she wanted.) These human similes help the Ambassadors to talk with the Hosts. Avice’s status is, of course, vital to the plot’s development.

Disappointingly in a book so concerned with language, Miéville somehow manages (twice) to use grit where gritted is surely preferable but overall Embassytown is impressive. It may well be a front runner for this year’s BSFA Award, or even the Hugo. It is not flawless, though. Too many Ambassadors are indistinguishable (not in themself, but between them – you see where this twinning thing makes comment problematic) and the characterisation and motivations can be sketchy. That the Hosts are mere plot carriers is more forgiveable as they are not human and Miéville has taken pains to underline the difficulty of cross-species understanding.

Overall, though, as an intellectual exercise, an exploration of the idea of language as a defining cultural construct, the book succeeds admirably.