Pros: It would be hard to match this book for sheer inventiveness.
Cons: Mieville's characters didn't "live", and for me that was Un Lun Dun's fatal flaw.
The Bottom Line: "Approach with care". If you like your characters to be "real" and your plots to have depth, then Un Lun Dun may not be the book for you.
China Mieville's Un Lun Dun came highly recommended by a friend who felt that she hadn't enjoyed a SciFi-Fantasy read so much in a long time. So although I had heard mixed reports I was keen to read it for myself.
The story follows the fundamental Fantasy plot—there is a world in mortal danger from the villainous Smog and a quest to save it, involving a diverse party of "heroes", some likely and some unlikely in terms of their characters. The world in question is Un-London, an 'alternate London' that overlaps and to an extent reflects the city in our world but is still a separate 'verse. The feel of the story and the world is probably as much Oz/Yellow Brick Road as it is Alice Through the Looking-Glass—there is the Looking Glass sense of oddity and distorted reality, but Deeba, Un Lun Dun's heroine, also bears a considerable resemblance to Dorothy. Like Dorothy, Deeba wants to get home to her family, she acquires a small, "dog like" companion (Curdle) and others that bear some resemblance to the scarecrow (Obaday Fing, the paper man with needles and pins hair), the Tin Man (Conductor Jones) and the Lion (Skool). Admittedly I am may be stretching this resemblance a little, but even Mortar, the head "Propheseer" did rather remind me of the Wizard in Oz.
Throughout the book, Mieville's story operates at two levels: there is the traditional quest—and there is the deliberate turning upside down of the more familiar elements of that tradition. To say too much here would be a "spoiler" but suffice it to say that the prophecies of a chosen hero are quickly debunked as are some of the more traditional stereotypes of Fantasy fiction, such as the wise guide and the valiant Robin Hood type anti-hero.
This could have been refreshing and I think that if Mieville had pulled it off it would have been—but he doesn't quite manage it. It may be that humor, Terry Pratchett style, would have been a better vehicle for this sort of endeavor: it may simply be that trying to subvert the quest paradigm and carry it to a successful conclusion was just too difficult for anyone to pull off. But whatever the reason, Un Lun Dun did not quite work for me—despite my friend's glowing recommendation.
The reason I say "not quite" is that Un Lun Dun still held positives for me. I did not find it a thrilling read but there were no obvious continuity errors and Mieville's prose is vigorous and he kept the story moving along (a little too much imo, but more on that below). I also think that it would be hard to match this book for sheer inventiveness. The whole of Un-London reflects inventive imagination on the grand scale and the world and its inhabitants are vividly imagined and described, but …
But …
The reason Un Lun Dun did not work for me is that although the story was fast paced and inventive, I was left feeling that less could have been more in both these areas. As a reader, I felt that I was being rushed from one vivid and inventive and 'wow-that's-amazing-but I-can't-quite-take-it-in-moment-because the next-is-already-coming-up-and-omg-it's-here" to the next. And wait—there's more again! So much so that I never got fully drawn into the story, part of me was always left on the outside looking in.
And there were so many characters—many of whom simply flashed by and were never revisited—and even with Deeba, the main character, I never really walked in her shoes. There was always this sense of being "told" what Deeba felt, rather than feeling it with her, and most of the other "major" characters were never really fleshed out. And to be a great read, a book's just got to have characters that engage me—even if it is only to thoroughly dislike them. But in this case I just couldn't care enough to dislike anyone, or particularly like them either. Mieville's characters didn't "live", and for me that was the book's fatal flaw.
I think Un Lun Dun will appeal to readers who like the inventive, the quirky and the slightly subversive in their Fantasy, but will not hold readers who like their characters to be "real", and their plots to have depth as well as clever ideas. In terms of the target audience of Children/YA readers, it may appeal to those who enjoyed Philip Reeve's "Mortal Engines" quartet and Philip Pullman's "Golden Compass" series in terms of the alternate urban fantasy flavor and inventiveness.
Un Lun Dun is London through the looking glass, an urban Wonderland of strange delights where all the lost and broken things end up--including people....More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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