A serendipitous library find. We'd borrowed this once before, but hadn't gotten around to reading it. This time, thanks to a nasty headcold, it was the book of choice while I wallowed in bed for two days, feeling stuffed up and sorry for myself.

I am a fan of China Mieville's adult fiction, in particular Perdido Street Station, so I was curious to see how he'd go with a young adult book. I do have to admit that the opening chapters were a bit too young for my tastes and felt slow and awkward, but there were some potentially great ideas, and I stuck with it, sure that it would settle down (or that I'd settle into it).

And I'm glad I did. What felt forced in the first half became effortless in the second, and I really soaked up all the imaginative details and the page-turning plot. Highly recommended, especially for Neil Gaiman and Lewis Carroll fans. ( )

I loved this fantasy about 12-year-old girl who finds a strange magical city below London, called UnLondon. There she meets a half-ghost, a tailor whose head is a pincushion, a friendly empty milk carton, and a host of others; and becomes involved in a quest that has been prophecized for many years. But this being UnLondon, things don't always go as the prophecies say! I loved the way Miéville plays with the conventions of the Quest, never going the expected route, but winding up in the right place just the same. ( )

I came across this book a few months ago while browsing my wife's library. We had recently been to London, and the flap copy, describing an adventure set is some sort of fantasy mirror of the real London, sounded intriguing. My wife gave it a thumbs up, so I put it on the "to read" list. It took me a little while to get around to it, but a recent beach vacation provided the perfect opportunity.

Zanna and her friend Deeba find themselves mysteriously transported to "UnLondon," an alternate London where Zanna is greeted as the "Shwazzy"—the choosen one predicted by a prophecy to come from London and save UnLondon from the evil Smog---an intelligent malevolence formed from the smoke and fumes generated by the city.

So far, this sounds like the plot of yet another good-vs-evil, heroic quest novel. But that's where the real fun starts. Author China Miéville deliberately sets up many of the plot conventions of standard fantasy novels, only to unexpectedly take the story off in completely unexpected directions.

UnLondon is described as the place that unwanted and broken objects from London go. Houses are built from old television sets, broken umbrellas flap and fly about the city, a discarded milk carton becomes a pet, etc. In addition, strange mirrors of London landmarks appear in UnLondon. The city is built around the river Smeath (Thames spelled backwards, sort of). The UnLondon-I is a gigantic water wheel. There is an adventure at Webminster Abbey, etc.

But most of all, UnLondon is a canvas for Miéville's endless creativity and imagination. All manner of people inhabit UnLondon. There are fighting garbage cans, a tailor with a pin cushion head, a bird with a rather remarkable cage, and more. Throughout it all clever puns abound.

The plot is highly episodic, consisting of one small adventure after another, often with the larger story arc—the quest to defeat the villainous Smog and the heroines efforts to return to London—moving into the background. Combined with the division of the book into nearly 100 bite-sized chapters, I think this would make Un lun dun great read-aloud book. There are lots of easy stopping points where a young lister won't feel that she is being left hanging in suspense. That said, I haven't actually tried reading it to our daughter... yet.

This was a wonderful book filled with quirky and interesting characters. I liked how Mieville played with descriptions and turned London into UnLondon. I especially admired Deeba's courage and her insistence that sometimes prophecies may not come true exactly as written. ( )

This is an example of one of my favourite genres in fiction, what I like to think of as liminal mythology. This is a brilliant example continuing a long line of books fascinated by the question of what’s in the back of the wardrobe or down the rabbit hole or through the looking glass; the world that lies alongside ours. China Mieville takes us on a journey through an alternative London where the broken and lost exist; not easy to reach but possible to find. This is a brilliant, surreal world full of dark and dangerous things and also a quest to protect Un Lun Dun and London from the Smog. Quirky illustrations and characters bring this world to life. Well worth reading. ( )

This is one of the weirdest (in a good way) books I've read in a long time. UnLondon is a parallel world of sorts. It is whacky and full of MOIL (Mildly Obsolete In London) objects come to life. As such, it influences as London and London influences it. The nearness yet farness of the "real world" is what makes UnLondon so sinester for Deeba. That and the fact that is is reduced to the role of Zanna's sidekick while they're there. And though there is definitely a bad guy (sentient Smog in fact), the sinister feeling is short-lived as Deeba is drawn into her task and drawn to the UnLondoners around her.

The attitudes of each world towards the other gave the whole book a feeling very much like that in Corpse Bride - the Upstairs (living) vs. the Dead feeling. Zanna's predestined role in the whole thing, and the way everyone seems to know about it but her, was a lot like when everyone finally gets to Narnia in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. And all the UnLondoners gave the whole thing a distinct Alice vibe (a guy with a birdcage for a head and a fleet of ninja trashbins, just for starters).

Also, a glossary of things British people say that American people don't say is included (hence the trashbins). It's hilarious.

Overall, this was a really fun read. Really fun. ( )

A very clever and entertaining book, Mieville has a brilliant imagination. ( )

Un Lun Dun dropped into my suggested books feed about a year ago. I was intrigued enough to add it to my Wish List over at Amazon, but didn't buy it until recently. It arrived on Wednesday. I finished it on Saturday. That should tell you something.

If that doesn't, then consider the way a minor character introduces herself. The heroine, who is not a heroine at all at the start of the book, has just completed an arduous climb up a mountain of books and is greeted by Margharita Staples who claims to be an "...extreme librarian. Bookaneer." If that doesn't set your little reader's heart a pitty patter, I don't know what would. Aren't all of us at Library Things "bookaneers" in one way or another? We're pioneering a new way to library...

Un Lun Dun is a giddy and scary spin that only has a couple of scenes in libraries, but a whole lot of scenes scattered around a madcap place that reassembles London, but not really. A building that contains a jungle, words that talk and walk, a bridge that moves where you want it to, and an army of umbrella slaves await you in this creepy and joyful (and safe for young adults) novel. Everything you would un-wish for in an un-novel. ( )

I've been a fan of Mieville's work since I discovered Perdido Street Station, but I somehow missed this YA book of his. I ended up just randomly grabbing it, completely on a whim and fell in love. It's a very clever mix of Mieville's steampunk-ish style mixed with young adult themes and real London. I completely loved the book and i hope he writes more YA. ( )

I picked it up read the first page and instantly knew I was going to love it. The charm of London turned inside out, backwards and sideways. It's very original and gives the old 'chosen one' routien a new twist that is perfectly suited to the book.
With carniverous gerafis, trash can ninjas, extream librarians and a rather affectionate milk carton this book was a varitable wonderland of strange and wonderful critters and people that made for a wonderful and endeering story of high adventure and friendship. ( )

Un Lun Dun is an enjoyable, smart, funny fantasy. Though it's a children’s' book, the scope and the detail of the imaginative work here will engross children and adults. Un Lun Dun's plot is not mere fantasy but has connections to current societal problems if you want to go there. It is also structurally sound, without the plot holes that popped up now and then in Harry Potter.

What astounded me was the author's command of language and his confidence in utilizing that skill to satisfy the demands of his creativity. Words come alive in this book, but also figuratively: the deliberate utilization of the shades of several meanings of a word, for instance, helps bring his other London that much more clearly to light.

Instead of denying that a fantasy world is based on our own, with Un Lun Dun the author embraces that this is the case. UnLondon is that other city you sometimes sense is behind the machinations of our everyday ones. Where does all our trash go, for example? The author builds on this hunch and amplifies simple things--a milk carton, trashcan, umbrella--until they take on a larger-than-life character. These are anchors to our world. UnLondon does not seem all that different from our world, more like an inverted reflection of it that you can--somehow--walk through to.

If I had not read Neil Gamin’s Neverwhere, I would probably be more impressed with Un Lun Dun by China Mieville. The concept was not entirely original and Mieville’s style is nowhere near as captivating as Gaiman’s, yet I never felt bogged down in the story. It did not quite captivate me either.

Before starting Un Lun Dun, I knew it was targeted at a much younger audience than Perdido Street Station, my previous exposure to Mieville. This work shows the author’s versatility, yet something was missing from making this a full fledged success.

For one thing, I felt the theme was a little too heavy handed for the Juvenile Fiction readers this book seems aimed at. If he had aimed a little higher with his target audience, maybe making the main characters a little more into their teens, he could have created a successful Young Adult novel instead of a mediocre Juvenile Fiction story.

Gaiman was light with his geographic puns (Earl’s Court being a real court of an earl), but Mieville is beating us over the head with a villain named Smog that is made of noxious fumes. The anagrams were too obvious for older readers and the better puns too obscure for the younger readers.

Despite this, I was carried along to the story’s conclusion without the need for forcing myself to stay with it. The book does have a nice flow to it, somewhat like The Phantom Toll Booth, but nowhere near as classic in its appeal.

If you are a fan of Mieville, try this to see another side of the author. If you are looking for some light reading that may be interrupted by another book, or sporadic reading between other things, this could be for you. While above average, I would hardly consider this a great read. It is worth trying, though. ( )

Its many years since I have read on my own behalf a book clearly designed for those under 15. I am reminded by Un Lun Dun why this is so. Hidden in all the verbiage is a story and possibly even a message. Both are well hidden and the concocted voice of the Un Lun Duners hides both even more. If I were asked for an opinion I would have to say that the book is an insult to the intelligence of readers in its target market. ( )

Un Lun Dun is a very entertaining, delightfully self-aware YA fantasy novel, set in an Alice-through-the-Looking-Glass version of London, a city where forests grow inside buildings, ghosts inhabit their own suburbs and the iconic red Roadmaster buses sail through the air. While it does have its faults as a book—that level of self-awareness can become a little too hipster at times, the climax is a little bombastic, the characterisation isn't emphasised, and Miéville could have edited it down quite substantially—I still found it immensely enjoyable.

It's inventive and imaginative enough to have made me smile at several points, and I think if I'd read this as a nine or ten-year-old, it would have eaten my brain for weeks. Reading it now, I think the part I appreciated most was how Miéville subverts some well-worn tropes of YA fantasy novels, especially in light of recent discussions I've been following on race and gender: in Un Lun Dun, the heroine is not, as we have been led to believe, the tall, blonde Zanna, the Chosen One of the Prophecy. Instead, it's her short, resourceful, slightly-cranky British-Pakistani friend Deeba who decides herself that she will have to step in and lead the fight to save Un Lun Dun—and does so with aplomb. ( )

Un Lun Dun, beneath or perhaps above but definately in the vicinity of London is its parallel twin, one of many ab-cities. Things and people can cross between the 2. Deeba & her friend Zanna find themselves in un lun dun, where Zanna appears to be the predicted saviour in the war against the smog, which would be fine, only she knows nothing about it. Fortunately a whole cast of characters is willing to help from Hemi the half ghost to the binja guardians of the bridge.

It has a fair bit in common with Mieville's books for an adult audience, so if you are used to that (or enjoy it) then the book won't hold to many suprises, but it does introduce a cast of interesting beings and some cute ideas ( )

disappointing. it's adequate, but not inspired. ( )

In present-day London, strange things start happening to teenaged Zanna. When she and her best friend Deeba open a strange door in their housing development they end up in a strange alternate London, "Un Lun Dun" which is in great danger. Will Zanna, "the chosen one" be able to save them, or will it fall to scrappy, blunt Deeba?

Un Lun Dun is a cute and at times funny tale of succeeding even where others think you will fail, and a light-handed environmental allegory. Mieville's language play will delight nerds of all ages, and is in the spirit of Juster's 'The Phantom Tollbooth'. The plot was not terribly surprising, nor the message original, but a fun, quick read with some good laughs. ( )

China Mieville’s book called Un Lun Dun is a very interesting fantasy type piece of work. Zanna and her friend Deeba are normal teenagers that find themselves trapped in an alternate reality trying to fight off the “Smog” that threatens to take over “UnLundun”. Zanna finds out that she is the so-called “Shwazzy” that is the only person who the Smog is afraid of. Deeba and Zanna fight for everything to save the town of UnLunDun. The protagonist of this story is Zanna and the antagonist is the Smog.
The jacket design of the book is very attention grabbing. It is somewhat Chinese looking, but colorful at the same time.
I would recommend that anyone who is into fantasy books should read this. It can be confusing at first, but in the end you don’t want to put it down. It’s one of those books that you can read in a day if you have enough time. There’s lots of action on every page, and the illustrations are just added attention grabbers. ( )

Deeba, a young girl who lives in London, accidentally ends up in an unusual world where words literally come alive, ghosts have their own suburb to live in, and giraffes are highly dangerous and bloodthirsty creatures. This is unLondon (Un Lun Dun), and Deeba has entered just in time to see war break out between the unLondoners and the deadly Smog. She accidentally finds herself in the unenviable position of trying to beat the Smog and save the unLondoners, and along the way, she assembles a motley crew of companions. The obstacles and dangers they face grow ever more strange and incredible...Will Deeba manage to save unLondon? And will she be able to get back to her own home in London, before her family and friends forget all about her?

This book is aimed at young adults, but this in no way means that it cannot be enjoyed by adults. Deeba is a terrific hero - all the more so, because she is an unexpected hero (it is revealed early on that her friend Zanna is the one expected to save this strange city). But against the odds, people begin to realise that Deeba is intelligent and resourceful.

As well as being a fun story, there is also an underlying message about pollution and the responsible of disposing of our waste - but the book never preaches or lectures.

China Mieveille must have an incredible imagination (and judging by the illustrations in this book, which are also his work, a talent for art as well). The story moves on at a rapid pace, with plenty of twists and turns. It never gets boring, and it is impossible predict what will happen next.

A very enjoyable read, and one I would definitely recommend. Although it could be classed as fantasy, I liked it, although fantasy is not a genre that I am usually drawn to. ( )

I enjoyed that this was more than a fairy tale. It was also a social commentary on pollution and the dangers of waste in our society. Mieville world was imaginative, and the main character was not at all what you expected. I'm glad that we chose it for our book club. ( )

http://tamaranth.blogspot.com/2009/03... ( )

An avid reader of Mieville's other books, I was delighted when this one was published. Aimed at young adults, it's also a good read for adults. His wordplay sometimes remind me a little of The Phantom Tollbooth -- I think that adults might "get" a little more of what's in here, but it's a great story that can be enjoyed on more than one level. And the illustrations are so cool! ( )

Things got very interesting when the prophecies went wrong. The "Chosen One" was knocked out and her friend, Deeba, became the "unChosen One". The story at its heart is about heroism and what it takes to be a hero. A defining quote from the book is said by Hemi, Deeba's half-ghost friend, "Yeah, but where's the skill in being a hero if you were always destined to do it?" Once Deeba realized that things weren't lining up, and that what she was told by Brokkenbroll was a pile of lies, she took it upon herself to help the unLondoners from the Smog. Here, her heroism was in doing something, anything, in order to try to save unLondon, even when people didn't want to believe her. She didn't have to do anything, but she wanted to. That's what made her the unlikely hero. She wasn't supposed to do anything, but she did. I would totally recommend this book to anyone and if I ever have children, I will read it to them. It's a very good book. ( )

Zanna and Deeba have just followed a walking umbrella and discovered the world of UnLondon, a fantastic place full of amazing creatures--carnivorous (and hungry!) giraffes, pet milk cartons, fighting trashcans called the Binja, and the Smog, which is trying to take control of the city. Zanna is hailed by the UnLondoners as their Chosen One, but is quickly defeated and sent home, losing all her memories of UnLondon. Can a sidekick save the day? Find out by joining Deeba on her journey back into UnLondon! ( )

I would give this to a teenaged girl in a heartbeat. Great characters.