Un Lun Dun

It's been said before, but I see no reason not to say it again: When a book is labeled as being "for younger readers", that is in no way a prohibition against the more elderly ones. Some of the finest works of fantasy of the last few years have been written with the young adult audience in mind, and it is in these books that the most innovative new ideas are presented.

I came across Un Lun Dun mere weeks after I had finished Miéville's most famous work from 2000, Perdido Street Station. As the story of Un Lun Dun gets underway, it seems in many ways to be a New Crobuzon for kids. The magical city of UnLondon, existing kind of parallel but not quite to our more familiar English capital, a strange and marvelous place where the show more spectacularly outlandish is pedestrian, is in may ways reminiscent of the sprawling steampunk metropolis featured in his earlier books. The bizarre and ever present horror of the antagonist falls in the same vein as the previous work's monstrous villains. Even Miéville's willingness to kill significant characters in a series of disturbing false climaxes creates the effect of tying the two books together.

Though it holds some very real similarities to his earlier work, Un Lun Dun does more than enough to stand up on its own as a fantasy novel and a fantastic story for both young and old. The adolescent heroes, drawn from a common schoolyard in London and nearly inexplicably thrown into a strange new world exhibit both the trepidation and panache that young teenagers harbor by the bucketful. The people, critters, and very structure of UnLondon is completely bizarre, but the disparate bits seem to fit together so well that the reader can accept when buses fly and trashcans are trained in ancient mystical martial arts. Even if there were no hero-quest to drive the story along, one could be perfectly content to read about the happenings of a single street corner for a hundred pages. Thankfully, we are given the chance to see much more of this stunning "abcity" as it falls under siege by a beast of its own making in a war that binds together both their and our London under threatening clouds. As mentioned above, Miéville is one of the few fantasy writers I know with the courage to let people die in the immensely dangerous situations that fill this story, and has a knack at teasing us with failure the likes of which we know so well and most storybook heroes know not at all. He also exhibits an excellent working knowledge of the structure of such stories, which allows him to deftly undermine their very workings and twist common motifs into new, real-feeling events and characters.

The characterization in Un Lun Dun is relatively simple and the language such that a clever young person (whom I think exist more often than not, if we give them some credit) should have no problem following along. If these are to be seen as flaws, then they are more than made up for by a complex, subversive plot and marvelously strange sights that fill most every page of this hefty and satisfying book. For ever twist you see coming, there's at least one more that will hit you out of left field and leave both the young readers, and the readers who are old enough to know that the young have better taste than they sometimes admit, salivating for more stories of the uncanny UnLondon and its heroes. show less

Un Lun Dun (Un-London) is an imaginative young adult fantasy that follows twelve-year-old friends Zanna and Deeba as they stumble upon an alternate version of London. It is a surreal parallel world populated by unconventional individuals, talking books, sentient umbrellas, carnivorous giraffes, and discarded appliances with a life of their own. Protagonists face Smog—a literal toxic cloud—and other manifestations of pollution. They must also figure out whom to trust.

The novel pokes fun at traditional "chosen one" narratives. Zanna is initially believed to be the hero destined to save Un-London, only for her unassuming friend Deeba to take on the mantle when Zanna’s abilities fail. The storyline celebrates ingenuity and show more individuality. A prominent theme is environmental consciousness. The author plays with language throughout, and adults will notice many puns that may escape younger children. I particularly enjoyed the Binjas (Dustbin Ninjas).

The author combines fantasy, social critique, and humor. It reminds me a bit of Neverwhere (but geared toward a younger audience) or Alice's Adventures in Wonderland set in the big city. It is a fun adventure that can appeal to children and adults alike. show less

If it were possible, I'd like to visit the inside of China Miéville's head - it must be a wondrous place to be. The creativity is seemingly limitless and with every turn of the page, there are more extraordinary creatures to get acquainted with - everything from binjas (ninjas in the shape of trash bins) to evil giraffes (a very clever nod to Eddie Izzard). Un Lun Dun is like texts from Neil Gaiman, Jasper Fforde, and Lewis Carroll all mixed together and reinvented with quite a few twists. Underneath all the action and the wordplay there is an ecological message, but it's not too overbearing - even to an advanced/adult reader - and, with all the puns and wittiness, it's easily forgiven. I'd be very surprised if this doesn't stand the show more tests of time to become a true classic. show less

Zanna is a slightly above-average teenager: above-average in height, attractiveness, intelligence and even in all-around popularity. As a matter of fact, her only claim to originality is settling on a rather odd choice for a nickname: Zanna being short for Susanna.
Nothing to get excited about, until of course there suddenly is: strangers suddenly treat her like a celebrity, and animals follow her around. Except for cats, the snooty buggers!

Even so, Zanna and her friends generally write the adoring fans off as run-of-the-mill weirdos. But then one night, she and her friend Deeba are sent to the odd city of Un Lun Dun. Or UnLondon, if you prefer. *roll credits*

Turns out that Zanna is the chosen one, destined to save the fantastic city show more from the evil powers of the Smog. There's a prophetic book and all, which has long foretold Zanna's - a.k.a. the Swazzy's (say it like choisi in French) - deeds... or has it really? Despite Zanna's steadily sharpening instincts, things suddenly take a turn for the truly awful.

Do you know those stories where the prophesied hero always swoops in to save the day at just the last minute? The otherwise utterly ordinary kid, who eventually gets dropped into just the right situation where things just click? Well, Un Lun Dun is not that kind of story. As a matter of fact, it does just about anything to become the exact opposite of said story.

Well perhaps not quite the exact opposite. To be fair, there is an otherwise ordinary girl who rises to the occasion, and there is a prophecy... that seems to have completely messed up its predictions. But otherwise, Un Lun Dun is a truly charming and exciting story, that will keep on taunting you with every imaginable cliche, only to veer into a completely unexpected direction at the last minute.

Score: 4.3/5 stars

Following my rather bumpy start with The City & the City (which I did eventually end up liking, though it took me 200 pages), I wasn't all that keen on having to tackle yet another complex book again. Would I be boring my cat to sleep again? Would I be clawing my way through all new language acrobatics again, before finding a sustainable reading rhythm?

So, naturally, I went and bought a physical copy. Because I obviously have no self-control. In the end, I had no trouble with language idiosyncrasies. Despite not being part of the book's primary audience (middle grade/young adult), I fairly flew through it. The large number of short (and very short) sentences bothered me a bit, but not enough to turn it into a deal-breaker. show less

If it were possible, I'd like to visit the inside of China Miéville's head - it must be a wondrous place to be. The creativity is seemingly limitless and with every turn of the page, there are more extraordinary creatures to get acquainted with - everything from binjas (ninjas in the shape of trash bins) to evil giraffes (a very clever nod to Eddie Izzard). Un Lun Dun is like texts from Neil Gaiman, Jasper Fforde, and Lewis Carroll all mixed together and reinvented with quite a few twists. Underneath all the action and the wordplay there is an ecological message, but it's not too overbearing - even to an advanced/adult reader - and, with all the puns and wittiness, it's easily forgiven. I'd be very surprised if this doesn't stand the show more tests of time to become a true classic. show less

Two girls make their way to UnLondon, London's supernatural companion city, the place where everything that becomes obsolete and discarded in London ultimate ends up. There, they learn that one of them is the chosen one, destined to face down a terrifying enemy that threatens UnLondon. But not everything goes according to plan...

This one is written for a younger audience than Miéville's other books. (Or most of them, anyway. I haven't yet read Railsea, but I gather that one falls somewhere in the YA category.) It's every bit as weird and wonderful and endlessly inventive as his adult fiction, though, and although it started out a bit slow, by the end the story had me utterly enthralled, and I finished it up with a great big grin on my show more face. I particularly like the way Miéville takes so many of the usual fantasy tropes about prophecies and Chosen Ones and quests and turns them neatly on their heads. This one's definitely recommended for both adults and kids.

Also, I will never, ever look at an empty milk carton the same way again. show less

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 show more 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. show less