CityRead: Un fantasy
This week in CityRead: Un Lun Dun, by China Miéville.
China Miéville has clearly read the canon of imaginary worlds and decided he’s pissed off, and an irritated Miéville is a focused Miéville, and with talent as prodigious as his, that’s a good thing. Not that Un Lun Dun reads angry, it certainly doesn’t. It’s a coming of age tale about a girl who unexpectedly travels to Un Lun Dun and finds herself in the position of having to save it. But the who and the why and the how of the saving spiral off into directions readers of fairy tales may find startling, but we all can find amusing.
Un Lun Dun as a place exists sort of below the real city of London, and sort of in another dimension. It’s part of a network of such cities, like Parisn’t and Lost Angeles, an entire culture that subsists on the trash and obsolete objects discarded by the world above. Whole houses are made from discarded record players or tires. Computers are always of the oldest and most obsolete kind, but the Undernet connect right up to the Internet, with enviable ease. There is a certain amount of magic in this world, presumably another obsolete concept cast off by the world above and absorbed by the one below, but it all fits neatly together. The vast city is a tapestry of bizarre neighborhoods, from Wraithtown, populated by ghosts, to the home of Mr. Speaker, where you need permission to speak. The city in many ways evokes New Crobuzon, the setting for some of Miéville’s earlier books, but in a somewhat gentler form.
Un Lun Dun is aimed at kids, which means the author can’t dive to the depths of despair as is his wont in adult novels. Miéville’s filtered darkness gives an edge of danger to the situations in the book – characters die, places are destroyed, and bad stuff happens. But the wit and outright humor of the novel, along makes this a good read, perfect for autumn.
