Embassytown

China Miéville

Embassytown is a book about a simile.

The girl, Avice Benner Cho, becomes a simile by going into an abandoned building with some aliens, and she comes out also being the girl who was hurt in the dark and ate what was given to her.

She had to become a simile so that she could become part of Language, the language of the Ariekei, the indigenous sentient beings of the world on which Embassytown was. Language was apparently unique among the languages of the universe because in order for an Ariekes to say something or even to think it, it needed to correspond to reality in some way.

This book managed to hold off all my doubts about this premise (narratively, linguistically, philosophically) long enough for me to buy into the book. For one thing, while often the premise of a language restricted by truth is used as a way to examine truth, which just doesn’t work for me, Miéville used it as a way to examine language and the relationship between language and thought. How does language restrict or enable though? How do similes work? What does metaphor get you?