Wow. As one might expect from China Mieville, this book is not like anything else I've read. It's certainly not an easy read, both conceptually, and linguistically. I've actually had to use the dictionary quite a few times (I'm not a native speaker). But it was well worth the effort. I loved finding out how this world works, and how the Ariekei think. How the humans manage to communicate with them. The Ariekei's biotechnology. There was a part in the second half where the story dragged a bit, a period of makeshift solutions with no deliverance in sight. But I loved the ending. ( )

Would have been higher but a really slow difficult book to read. ( )

I think I would've marked this four stars a year ago, but some parts of my brain have been subsequently squashed flat. There's a few too many ideas packed in here, which normally doesn't trouble me, but felt distracting. Wish it were one of a few novels set in the same universe. ( )

When I was young and read Asimov, it was to imagine creatures and ways of living that I never would have thought up myself. Eventually I stopped being surprised, and switched scifi about how societies grow and change, and what was possible there. Embassytown is both, and shows us a species that is both alien enough to be almost possible, and human enough to be the subject of a story.

If your favorite episode of Star Trek TNG was Darmuk, you have taken the first baby step in this wild linguistic adventure. ( )

I don't know enough about linguistics to know whether the fact that the language breakthrough seemed to be achieved by shouting is accurate or not, but it felt arbitrary. ( )