Un Lun Dun

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

When Zanna and Deeba, two very English, plausibly adventurous schoolgirls, follow a broken umbrella through London, they end up somewhere else. But maybe one of them was always meant to be there, because, of course, adventurous girls always know they’re meant to be important. And there were those rather strange events, and that message, and… But prophecies can be confusing, interpretations can be biased, and instincts are sometimes right. Also, the underdog might grow into someone else (or into a fox).

Sometimes dark, in the same way as Alice through the Looking Glass, this tale of Zanna and Deeba through the upside-down umbrella is compelling, curious, kind of classical, and really good fun. Oh, and weird, with the weirdest of show more characters appearing—even dustbins!

So… adults can enjoy it. Children can enjoy it. Londoners will be enthralled. And teens will enjoy it too. Which makes it a really good read.

Disclosure: It was a gift and I love it. show less

Schoolgirl Deeba and her friend Zanna begin their adventure wondering why strange people and animals keep staring at blonde, beautiful Zanna and referring to her as ‘the Shwazzy’. Zanna’s investigation lands them in an alternative version of London known as UnLondon (Un Lun Dun), where they discover that a prophecy names Zanna as the Chosen. The book of prophecies says that Zanna will win her first encounter with the evil Smog. Confident, Zanna makes an attempt, but fails, her memory of UnLondon is erased, and she and Deeba are sent home. Deeba, however, cannot stop thinking of UnLondon …I will stop here because to go any further would give away too much.

Mieville is a wizard at word play and it was one of my favorite things show more about this book. Like as Conductor Jones talks about Manifest Station. 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.

Beyond the wordplay itself China Mieville has created a world that is filled with strangeness, beauty, and wondrous oddities. There's a milk carton called curdle that swiftly becomes Deeba's faithful pet. There are characters such as Brokenbroll, a lean, long-limbed man who commands an army of "unbrellas”, and Mr. Speaker, a gatekeeper who demands new words as payment. Deeba satisfies him with "bling", "diss" and "lairy", which then miraculously spring into life as a locust, a bear cub and "a baby-sized thing with one staring eye". There are carnivorous packs of giraffes that roam the streets at night looking for prey, highly skilled guards known as binjas, (trash bins that are ninja warriors), Black Window Spiders (windows with eight legs that guard the treasures of Webminster Abbey), and of course Hemi the half-ghost boy who becomes Deeba's closest companion (his mother was a ghost and his father alive).

Un Lun Dun is a colorful novel crammed with exciting incidents, dramatic confrontations, and Mieville's weird yet strangely appealing monsters. This is my first foray into anything Mieville and it won’t be my last.
Brilliant show less

Un Lun Dun is billed as a book aimed at young adults, or perhaps older children. So that’ll be me then. You can’t get a much older child than me. What’s it about? Err; this is going to sound a bit weird. Two girls Zanna and Deeba, find a way into UnLondon where the lost and broken things of London end up. UnLondon is under attack by the evil Smog and its cronies, and needs a hero, Zanna. But Zanna gets incapacitated in the first battle and the fate of UnLondon hinges on Deeba, an animated milk carton, a talking book full of not-totally-accurate facts and prophesies, the boss of broken umbrellas, and a couturier whose head is a pincushion. Pursued by the Smog, its stink-junkie slaves, and a half-ghost boy, Deeba has to rouse the show more people of UnLondon and find a way of defeating the Smog.

China, (the only fantasy author that everyone actually agrees is writing in the New Weird genre), is like Marmite; you either like him or loathe him. His incredible Perdido Street Station (his second novel, but the first to be set in Bas-Lag) was a nightmarish wonderland and Un Lun Dun takes us to the line and then legs it half way up the Mountains of Madness. This is Bosch and Dali in words. Miéville is constantly playful and inventive, the pages full of puns, and the text flowing around his own drawings every few pages. The narrative is witty, energetic, and full of ideas although this is at the expense of a lack of characterisation. Almost every literary cliché is overturned: the side-kick is the hero, some good guys die and some bad guys get away. Deeba is not the predestined hero but rather a real hero, coming from real people rising to the occasion. The decisions she makes and the personal growth she experiences is a much stronger recipe for heroism than simply playing a part in a drama spelled out by fantasy convention.

For the more thoughtful reader this book is China on a soap-box. There is a “War on Terror” subtext in the fight against the Smog, with some power-brokers exploiting fear, uncertainty and doubt to support the power, while others try to ingratiate themselves, rather than fight a losing battle. More obviously, this war between good and evil has none of the supernatural religious overtones, but the evil to overcome is mankind's own desecration of the environment. Miéville rages against the complacent acceptance of the status quo and the failure to question authority. 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

The first China Miéville story I ever read was his second Bas-Lag novel, 2002's The Scar, during my first year at university. Since then, I've gone on to read (and reread) both Perdido Street Station and the later Iron Council, and most recently his excellent short story collection, Looking For Jake. It's safe to say that I'm something of a fan - in fact, I can't think of any genre author whose work I could honestly claim to enjoy more.

And yet, oddly enough, I was reluctant about picking up this, his most recent novel. Partly that was because of the intended audience - Un Lun Dun is Miéville's first Young Adult novel - and partly, indeed more importantly, really, it was because of the nature of the story. Un Lun Dun is set in (indeed, show more is the name of) a magical alternate London populated, at least in part, by the things and people deemed 'mildly obsolete' in London (something that, ever since reading Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, I've been a little uncomfortable with). The story begins when a young teenage girl called Zanna and her friend Deeba stumble into UnLondon from our world - this is not, of course, the most original way to begin a work of YA fantasy fiction. Zanna soon learns that she is the 'Shwazzy' - the Chosen One prophesied centuries ago to save the city from a terrible evil force by going on a quest to find seven ... er, yeah. If this were a book by any other author, this is the point at which I'd roll my eyes theatrically, mutter something about Alan Garner's Elidor or Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising having done it all better decades ago, and go and find something to read that didn't seem like such a blatant attempt by a publisher to cash in on the Harry Potter phenomenon.

To do so in this case would be a mistake.

For a start, this is a very well-written book - written for a younger audience, yes, but not an attempt to patronise them. The vocabulary and sentence structure are both a little simpler than in the usual Miéville novel, but not much more so than many 'adult' works. Miéville's imagination is also given free range in populating the 'abcity' of UnLondon and the results are both impressive and - somewhat suprisingly, perhaps - often very amusing. The large cast of characters are all depicted very well, and the villains are, at times, genuinely menacing.

More importantly though, there is much more to the story than at first appears. Miéville might be writing for a new audience, but the fundamental tone of his writing (and the attitude behind it) hasn't changed enough for him to suddenly start writing uncritical cliche-ridden heroic fantasy. Instead, he's simply setting things up so he can catch readers off-guard when he starts turning the tropes of the genre on their head. No sooner do Zanna and Deeba begin to learn the details of the prophecies than Mieville starts to shift things in a different direction; prophecies can be wrong as often as they're right, not everyone who believes themselves to be fighting against evil really is, and choosing to do something heroic is more important than being Chosen to do so.

Indeed, if I were to criticse the book at all it would be that, once you realise what Miéville is doing, it becomes too easy to predict events. The final two or three twists of the plot came as no surprise to me at all, and however menacing the villains were I never doubted that they would, ultimately, be defeated. But such criticisms are, I think, essentially unfair: while this is certainly a story that can be enjoyed by adult readers, it is not one that is written primarily for them. Had I read this book when I was the 'right' age for it, before reading anything else by Miéville, I would, I think, have been as shocked by all the twists as I was meant to be. And I would also, I hope, have appreciated the lessons the book has to offer - both the critique it offers of the fantasy genre itself and the wider points it makes about prejudice, self-respect and the dangers of blind trust in authority.

Un Lun Dun is a tremendous achievement; proof - if proof were ever needed - that Miéville is more than capable of dropping the occasionally verbose style and leisurely pace that caused some to criticise the Bas-Lag books and writing a tight, fast-moving adventure story, and at the same time a wonderful subversion and demolition of many of the worst cliches of the genre. It is a book I can only wish had been published while I was still young enough to be its intended audience and one that I believe deserves to be ranked alongside the very best of English YA fantasy. show less

I intensely adored this while I was reading it--the language! the illustrations! the quirk! unbrellas!! a pleasing twist on your typical 'chosen one' narrative!--but it hasn't aged well. The book, while a delightful experience, is simply too derivative of everything else in the world. If I remember correctly, Mieville mentions his debt to Neil Gaiman, and oh boy is it obvious. Un Lun Dun is truly almost 'Neverwhere for kids,' so blatant are their similarities. This is most galling to me in that I know Mieville as one of the most original minds in speculative fiction--I'm sure he could have managed to lessen the similarities if he'd wanted to. The details are certainly his own--the book is full of wonder and delight and I would LOVE to show more read it out loud with a kid--but the big picture is not. I wonder what Gaiman thinks of it? show less