China Miéville - Embassytown
I've had this book on my shelf since it was first published. I actually stared reading it then and DNFd at around 50%. I remember thinking that while I enjoyed Miéville's prose - I always enjoy his prose - I didn't really understand what was going on at all. The language was slippery and the concepts and images were too big and weird for me to properly envision.
15 years later my tastes have expanded and changed, and with the release of The Rouse I figured I should revisit the only Miéville novel I haven't yet read. I got through it this time, but I definitely sympathise with my past self.
This was a difficult read, and one of those books that makes me think that maybe I'm not quite smart enough for what it's doing. That's sort of how I felt about M. John Harrison's The End Of Everything, too, and having now read this I'm even more steadfast in my belief that The End Of Everything feels like a throwback to the 2010's New Weird movement.
I remember being at university studying English Literature and having to take some Language modules, too, specifically around the philosophy of language and through that, Structuralism and Post-Structuralism. I was always interested in it, always felt like I could sort of sense what those thinkers were grasping at, but could never quite make it all slot together for myself mentally. I felt intellectually invigorated but also completely inferior. That's how I felt reading Embassytown, and while I can appreciate it for what it is, I'm very confident that I didn't fully understand it at all. And because I didn't fully understand it, the middle section of the novel - where I put it down 15 years ago - was once again a bit of a slog.
I know that this is a very highly regarded book and that a lot of people call it their favourite Miéville. I'm glad I finally read it. But for me it didn't quite land, and I'm still convinced that The City & the city is his best work. Of course, I still have The Rouse to read next, so that may well change.