China Miéville, Embassytown ***

My China Miéville binge continues with Embassytown, a prime example of linguistic science fiction. Embassytown is a city of mostly human inhabitants situated on a planet at the edge of the trafficked universe. The indigenous population of "Hosts" are mysterious creatures who speak a language that involves two mouths speaking simultaneously. Furthermore, they only recognize sound as language when both streams of sound come from a single mind: "A Host could understand nothing not spoken in Language, by a speaker, with intent, with a mind behind the words." The only humans who can communicate with the Hosts are Ambassadors, who are pairs of twins trained to have an empathic bond.

I liked the idea of dual-track language and was willing to suspend my disbelief about the Hosts being able to detect that the sound was coming from a single intelligence. I was less able to accept that the Host's Language was non-symbolic ("Words don't signify; they are their referents") and that Hosts were therefore unable to lie. What does it even mean to say that their words don't signify? Spoiler alert the Hosts learn symbolic language by the end of the book and it's a transformative experience.

As usual, Miéville creates an intriguing and convincing world, including its social mores and politics. Ultimately, though, I just wasn't able to embrace a couple of the fundamental ideas that drove the story.