The central question about linguistic relativity is always a fruitful one for science fiction. I loved a lot of Mieville's worldbuilding details, and the alienness of the aliens.

Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash meets Ted Chiang's Story of Your Life. So, I'm disappointed in this book, and my experience is probably no reflection of how good the book actually is, but for me, I'm glad to be done with it. I guess my problem is I can't take fantasy books seriously. I'm not really a great fan of the fantasy genre, although there are some works that I like - usually somewhat humorous works like Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, even Harry Potter. I had previously started and abandoned his book Perdido Street Station because it was just too much work for me to follow. They actually say things like 'I can't speak Language.' This book is all about a language that is so important to its people that it's not called the language, or a language, but simply Language, even by the non speakers. Although I do pretty well with English, I've never really been able to learn foreign languages, and boy was the Language that this book is about hard to understand. Perhaps it has something to do with my lack of aptitude for language. But still, not only was it confusing, and not making sense in some parts, but even when I thought I understood what was going on, I still felt I was missing something. The audiobook made it much harder for me for various reasons, so I kept rereading an ebook version to help clear up parts that were unclear (much of the book). At times, I asked myself why I was struggling with it, but out of curiosity or obstinance (I'm not sure which), I continued working my way to the end. I worked very hard to read and understand this book, and I wanted to like it.

Embassytown by China Miéville