association-list

I also read this recently. No one will be shocked, I sup­pose, that I didn’t par­tic­u­larly like it.

Quot­ing myself on twitter:

In the middle of Embassy­town right now. Impres­sion is Miéville doing Har­ri­son doing Blish. Less happy with it after the mid-​​reveal.

And:

Fin­ished Embassy­town. Now wish­ing I hadn’t fought through the middle. “Lan­guage” is a dud pivot. Artful awk­ward­ness here just awkward.

I don’t have a ton to add, I sup­pose, other than a state­ment of bias, as I thought that Kraken, as fun as it was a times, was kind of a baggy mess and con­cerned Men’s Busi­ness entirely too much, and had some huge dis­ap­point­ments in terms of its female characters.

The treat­ment of women as impor­tant is better here, which is praise­wor­thy, but doesn’t over­come the novel’s other flaws.