Book review: Un Lun Dun

Having seen China Miéville's books highly rated and wanting to try them out for some time, my entry point, as it usually is these days, was decided by which of them was discounted for kindle. This turned out to be Un Lun Dun, his entry in the all-ages fantasy field, which sees two teenage London girls drawn to a battle in a parallel version of the city, UnLondon. When London got rid of its smog problem in the last century, it actually moved over to UnLondon where, like many other inanimate objects. it acquired a conscience and, in this case malevolent, personality. Zanna and Deeba are fated to stop it from taking over both versions of the city.

Although Miéville acknowledges the influence of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere and other alternate London stories, he comes up with enough skewed geography and colourful characters to make UnLondon unique. What I particularly liked though was his messing with the conventions of fantasy, particularly the trope of the "Chosen One" which gets punctured pretty early on. And once we're in a story where the sidekick has to do all the work, it's open to having things like the quest narrative dismissed as well. (Also, the fantasy trope about cats being particularly mystical animals is quickly thrown out of the window. They're just idiots.) In any case I enjoyed this one and will give some of his more adult-oriented work a go as well - I get the impression cities are a recurring theme in his books.