Monday, February 8, 2010

Un Lun Dun - China Mieville


2007; 471 pages. Awards : NY Times Bestseller; 2008 Locus Award for Young Adult Book. Miéville has won a Locus Award four times. Genre : YA; Sci Fantasy. Overall Rating : "A".
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Un Lun Dun = UnLondon = an alternate dimension London. Geographically, it's in the same place as London, but there the similarity ends. When 12-year-olds Zanna and Deeba inadvertently stumble iacross the dimensional threshold, they encounter all sorts of strange new things - Binja (martial arts-wielding trash bins); Webminster Abbey (watch out for the spider thingies); Unbrellas (this is where broken umbrellas from our dimension migrate to); and giraffes you definitely don't want to cross paths with. Oh, and an evil presence ("the Smog") just happens to be threatening the very existence of UnLondon at that moment.
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What's To Like...
There's a great storyline; some delightful wordplay and fabulous characters to meet. This is kind of a cross between Lewis Carroll's Through The Looking Glass, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, and Good Omens by Pratchett and Gaiman. You'll find it in the "Young Adult" section of your bookstore, but adults will enjoy it too.
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Miéville has a message here, but there's no preaching and he "shows rather than tells". He also has an artistic touch, and he's sprinkled a bunch of his sketches throughout the book. One drawing shows what a "house-sized fist, carved out of stone, with windows in its knuckles" looks like. Neat.
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Kewl & New Words...
Un Lun Dun is written in "English" (as opposed to "American") so there are a lot of Britishisms here. Miéville conveniently lists of bunch of these in an Appendix at the back of the book. Here's a sampling : bog off; do a bunk, knackered, lairy, manky, minging, sarky, shtum, take the Michael, and yonks. "Knackered" I know; all the rest were new to me.
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Excerpts...
They ran past chefs baking roof-tiles in their ovens and chiseling apart bricks over pans, frying the whites and yolks that emerged; past confectioners with jars full of candied leaves; past what looked like an argument at a honey stall between a bear in a suit and a cloud of bees in the shape of a man. (pg. 36)
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"Where's it going?" Zanna said.
"Crossing the Odd, to some of the other abcities," Jones said."If you're brave enough to try, you might be able to catch a train from UnLondon to Parisn't, or No York, or Helsunki, or Lost Angeles, or Sans Francisco, or Hong Gone, or Romeless... It's a terminus." (pg. 60)
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To be or not to be. That is the quest...
Almost all "quest" novels contain the same elements. There's always a Chosen One, who's almost always the most unlikely one of the bunch. There are always some prophecies, which are true but inevitably misinterpreted. Our hero always assembles an intrepid band of colleagues to help him, who always manage to stay alive at the very least until the climactic ending. If they do die earlier, they always come back as some sort of ethereal ally. There's always an Ultimate Evil, and there's almost always an Ultimate Artifact that amazingly can penetrate the UE's one-and-only Achilles' heel. But to get that UA, there are always a bunch of mini-quests to do.
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Un Lun Dun is a quest story. But it seems as if Miéville wrote it with the idea of violating as many of those sacred quest elements as possible. The result is a refreshingly different read.
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I thoroughly enjoyed Un Lun Dun, so it gets an "A"from me. There are even enough unessential loose ends (is that an oxymoron?) to leave the door open for a sequel. If you like Gaiman, Pratchett, Pullman and Carroll, you'll love this book.

8 comments:

Amanda said...

Woah, this sounds incredible. Adding ot my TBR list right away.

terry said...

Jason says the scenario reminds him of Gaiman's Neverwhere. but i've never read that book.

i look forward to your review, Amanda. do you like stories like Alice In Wonderland?

Amanda said...

I'm not sure when I'll get to it. I have a gazillion books on my shelf waiting for me already. I still have Snow that you reviewed like a year ago and I still haven't gotten to that one...

I didn't like Alice in Wonderland - just read it for the first time in December. But I do like Gaiman for the most part. At least his YA and children's fiction; I haven' tbeen brave enough to try adult fiction again after American Gods.

terry said...

tell me about it. i've read 10 books this year. pretty good. unfortunately, i've bought 11 in 2010, and got 7 for Xmas. the TBR stack continues to grow.

Amanda said...

Yeah....I have about 350 unread books on my shelf. :O

terry said...

Heh. i counted up the books on my TBR shelf last night. there are 49 of them. which isn't bad, but when i joined 5-squared there were only about a dozen there. this is what happens when i fall in with a crowd of bookaholics.
:-)

Jeanne said...

I LOVE this book and am glad to find someone else who loves it as much! It's such a book for readers, among its other virtues. I reviewed it way back but didn't get any takers on reading it, so I'm very glad to see you inspiring more folks to seek it out.

terry said...

hi Jeanne! thanks for stopping by. it's nice to know someone else found this to be a stellar read.

my picking up Un Lun Dun was a case of serendipity. Miéville's sci-fi novel, Perdido Street Station came highly recommended to me. but the only book by him at the used-book store was Un Lun Dun. so i brought it home, then discovered it was YA. and then discovered it was a great read.

i think Miéville needs a new agent. the book is great, and so's the cover image. i'm hard-pressed to say why no one knows about this novel.