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.