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Un Lun Dun by China Mieville
01/02/2007 . Source: Tomas L. Martin 
Pub: Del Rey/Ballantine Books. 425 page hardback. Price: $17.95 (US), $22.00 (CAN). ISBN: 0-345-49516-7. Buy Un Lun Dun in the USA - or Buy Un Lun Dun in the UK  check out website: www.ballantinebooks.com and www.delreybooks.com
In recent times, there has been a noticeable shift in fantasy. Authors like Neil Gaiman, Elizabeth Hand and Charles De Lint have had success writing fantasy very different from the traditional sword and sorcery line that followed on from 'Lord Of The Rings' success.
This style of 'weird fiction', where the fantastical occurs but in a far grittier and more original way often involving places where the real world and the fantastical world overlap. Gods and magical creatures are revealed to be as flawed as the human characters. The usual tropes of the genre are played with and reversed in an unexpected manner.
China Mieville won two Arthur C. Clarke Awards and two World Fantasy Awards for his three books set in his world of Bas-Lag, a fantasy world where an industrial revolution has taken place and industry, magic and weirdness collide in a mesh of incredible sights and events. In this reviewer's opinion those books, 'Perdido Street Station', 'The Scar' and 'Iron Council are among the most imaginative works in the last few decades of fantasy, bringing life and a new direction to the genre.
Like Neil Gaiman did with 'Coraline', China Mieville has branched into the young adult market for his new book, leaving the Bas-Lag setting behind to thrust two young girls from London into a magical adventure that defies convention and expectation.
Zanna and her best friend Deeba find their way into the strange world of Unlondon, a strange version of the capital city where anything is possible. Houses made of records, people with heads of ink or pincushions, ghosts and killer giraffes - the pluperfect killers.
Amidst this feast of the imagination, a thick black smog with its own personality is threatening the city and Zanna is hailed as 'The Chosen One' by Un Lun Dun's inhabitants. However, twisting convention, Zanna is taken out and Deeba must take over, despite the prophecies to the contrary.
To say much more would spoil many of the great surprises and delights of this book. Every page sparkles with ingenuity and wit and the traditional feel of fantasy narrative where the main character is destined to succeed and the entire book is a boring march along an already foretold tale is banished at every turn. China Mieville, as well as creating a memorable world, has created a surprising one. Many of the turns come completely unexpected and all the more enjoyable for it.
It's a slight move but the change to young adult has really reinforced and strengthened Mieville's prose. He has cut out a lot of the more complicated and off-message passages, curbing and shaping the novel into a really refined and elegant book. This is something that despite being three of my favourite books of the last ten years, 'Perdido Street Station', 'The Scar' and 'Iron Council' could never achieve. The Bas Lag novels are masterpieces but they are sprawling, messy ones, very much suiting the setting they described but occasionally bogging things down.
'Un Lun Dun' is a considerable step for China Mieville to take. In my opinion, the sheer readability and packed-to-the-gunnels imagination and originality should make this is a best-seller. It's a better young adult novel than Phillip Pullman's 'Dark Materials' trilogy, easily surpasses 'Harry Potter' and is comparable to Neil Gaiman at his best. Every page has something astonishing, amusing or audaciously creative as you would expect from the author's previous work. The big change is the readability. Where as before a China Mieville novel felt like digging for treasure amongst baroque and dense prose, now his golden ideas are easy and enjoyable to experience. This is a very, very good novel.
Tomas L. Martin
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