I want read China Miéville's stuff, what are some

Looking For Jake has a nice selection of different ideas and styles. His longer works can be a bit atonal. I liked The City & The City; Kraken was entertaining at times but a bit long and just yet more Gaimanesque urban fantasy, King Rat was stupid for a number of reasons, Embassytown and Railsea are stylistically flawed, the scar trilogy or whatever it's good is a bit like a pseudo-serious Discworld.

I liked Embassytown, The City & The City, and Perdido Street Station. The Kraken was way to Gaimanesque for my taste.

>>7358829
His best books:
1) Perdido Street Station
2) The City and the City
3) Embassytown

His best short stories:
Looking for Jake

His best comic book:
Dial H

>>7358836
Comparing Embassytown(superior) to Railsea (inferior)
What is wrong with you?

>>7358849
>>7358855
I agree Embassytown is better than Railsea but the prose is bland and predictable. He constantly drops in references to things that you know he's going to explain later but is just teasing you with them needlessly. It's a formulaic way of forcing you to keep reading and I disliked it.

>>7358858
>the prose is bland and predictable. He constantly drops in references to things that you know he's going to explain later but is just teasing you with them needlessly. It's a formulaic way of forcing you to keep reading and I disliked it.

Embassytown is a great accomplishment in a central theme of science fiction, that of humans blundering their way toward fuller communication and understanding of an alien species. Despite some plodding of the plot in the middle and a struggle to accede to the overlying premise of the tale, this was well compensated for by good engagement in the fate of in-depth characters, plenty of ingenious invention and atmospheric conveyance with the details, and fascinating reflection on how very different species may have to change their nature to comprehend each other.

In this tale, the lead character Avice is returning to her home world and city in response to her new husband's interest in the language of the aliens who built Embassytown, the Hosts. Their language works without referents, as words do not stand for things or concepts, but instead speech is their means of effectively being thought. This is the premise that's hard to grasp, but Mieville spends a lot of time building up its plausibility for the reader. Another challenge to communication is that the Hosts speak through two different orifices in a kind of double-speak, and any single-speaking being, artificial intelligence, or recording is perceived only as noise by the aliens. Thus, the Hosts come off as baffling and seemingly harmless, but they are of moderate commercial interest due to their facilities in bioengineering a city with a living infrastructure.

Without giving away details of the narrative, it is fair to say that the efforts of the more powerful humans and Host factions create an extreme crisis in their relations. The novel's journey and resolution is a different kind of achievement than that of space opera. "Embassytown" is more accessible than other work by the author in being a more conventional tale. Some will miss Mieville's "experimental" writing, but here the stretch to comprehend the Hosts is enough of a nut to crack that the plain prose is a relief.

>>7358873
Right but you just explained everything interesting about the book in one paragraph. Mieville pads it out to a whole, unimaginatively written novel. The idea density doesn't justify that.

>>7358855
I've only read PSS which was mediocre at best.

>>7358873
Wolfe did that in 15 pages in a far more fascinating way.

>>7358883
Try some other author. Miéville just isn't for you.

>>7358878
>Mieville pads it out to a whole, unimaginatively written novel.
But that's false.

>>7358931
You know perfectly well that his prose is his weak point, apart from the crowbarring politics into everything, his ideas are what makes his stories worthwhile and Embassytown, like Railsea, King Rat and The City & The City, don't have enough on-topic ideas in them to justify being full length novels. They would all work better as short stories or novellas.

>>7358886
Butthurt much?

>>7358937
>don't have enough on-topic ideas
Name books that has enough ideas, then.

>>7358944
Harry Potter. The Hungry Caterpillar. Portnoy's complaint. Any book where the prose, character development or plot is good enough to not need to compensate by filling it with ideas.

>>7358937
With Railsea, I agree, but The City & The City and King Rat? No Anon. They have enough on topic ideas. The City and the City is one mind shattering book I've read.

>>7358960
King Rat is a hodgepodge of ideas that don't really fit together. The City & The City is one idea but the pacing and atmosphere of the piece sustains it. Embassytown doesn't have that.

File: download (1).jpg (24KB, 540x167px) Image search: [Google]

24KB, 540x167px

>>7358962
>The City & The City is one idea but the pacing and atmosphere of the piece sustains it.
Agree.
>Embassytown doesn't have that.
Embassytown has its own unique idea, different from that of TCatC.

>"I don't want to be a smiley anymore I said, I want to me a metaphor."
(pic related)

>>7358938
About what?

How does this make you feel?
>>7356836

>>7358972
>Embassytown has its own unique idea, different from that of TCatC
Yes, but the idea alone isn't enough. Because of this, it's one of his weaker books.

>>7358886
In which story?

>>7359416
Part of New Sun with Ascians and second part of 5th Head of Cerberus. Not exactly the same, but extremely similar.
Also Solaris.

>>7358937
I like his prose a lot, kept me going on PSS and Embassytown even when the plots got clockwork or transparent.

>>7358829
The City & the City is the best place to start. Then probably the Bas-Lag novels, I've only read PSS but The Scar is supposed to be the best of those.

>>7359030
Couldn't disagree more. The connection between language and what it's possible to think I find fucking fascinating. Albeit frustrating to get results out of.

The mimespeak of the aliens requires a lot of space, as does his gambit of describing them by sequential half-finished metaphors. There's two massive scenes (the ambassador arrival and the Avice becoming a metaphor) which would jar if you dumped them both into a short story.

Plus there's the vision of hyperspace/universal boundary which supports the theme by being a contrasting use of classic sci-fi metaphor as well as developing the focus on alternative ways of looking at what's there instead of going ever outwards. He really couldn't throw that in with a shorter work.

Like anon upthread I don't like the adventure sections, but the rest is rich in ideas.

>>7358829
Embassytown took me a long time to get into it, but once it got going it was great.
Also Dial H if you want comics.

>>7359796
Sapir-Whorf has been done by a million SF authors before, and significantly better several times. Mieville so rarely feels like tired SF tropes but that one is disappointing in that regard.

It's not a bad book but he's written better.