Anna's blog

Imagine a world where you can travel from sun to sun in wooden ships, without worrying about space suits since all of space is filled with air. Imagine a world without planets, with spinning town wheels to emulate gravity to keep humans – descended from us planet dwellers – healthy in a free fall environment.

You might like this book if you enjoy:

It's gift-giving season again. The time of year when you want to buy really good things to people you love, and you realize again that you don't really understand their taste in books.

Marya Morevna, when you longed to see the world naked and watched for what was hidded behind everyday things, did you know where it would lead you? When you saw the three birds turning into men, did you recognize the structure of your tale? When you learned the date of your death, did it change your way of life?

To summarise: I think you might like this book if you

This is a book about the technologies that will shape our lives in various ways in the near future and in the coming 100 years. It's all extrapolated from the current front line of technology and from new knowledge that is anticipated to be exploited soon.

This is so brilliant. Beautiful. At the moment I think this is the novel I'm going to recommend everyone to read for a long time to come.

As I have probably said before, it's a little bit risky to review a book before I have really digested it. I never know when I turn the last page what I will think of it in a week or a month. Still, I have now waited way too long to read this book, considering that I wanted to review it before the coming weekend.

Perhaps I'm just dazzled at the moment, but one thing that is safe to say is that I'm going to

New and important things usually start at the edges, the borders, the intersections and interfaces. It's not through some central committee that revolutionary ideas are spawned, it's not in the limelight of the famous stages new musical expressions are tried. Things start in the gutters, in hidden corners, through the clashes between old and new, near and far.

That is the attraction of places like Bordertown.

 China Miéville is an author with lots of readers who will just buy everything with his name on it. He gets all the prestigious awards and he is very visible in the field of SF/F. It's almost intimidating – how high should the expectations be on a new Miéville book? Still, I'm not disappointed. He has changed tracks again, after the strange fantasy setting of the Bas-Lag books (Perdido Street Station, The Scar, Iron Council), the inverted backside of London in Un Lun Dun, and the weird noir of The City and the City (I'm not saying anything about Kraken, which I haven't read yet). In Embassytown we get the first China Miéville science fiction, and it is a real treat.