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Have you ever been on a first date and suddenly had the sweet realisation that not only are you going to have a great night, but that you're at the beginning of something special, something that could be lasting?

That's how I felt a couple of chapters into Embassytown.

I had no idea what to expect when I began this book, and it blew me away. An embassy district in a vast city on a faraway world. An alien race whose unique language limits their ability to think and entirely prevents them from lying. A compelling wannabe slacker main character whose day job is guiding starships through a parallel dimension called The Immer. Mieville sews all this into a story that is a riot of color and inventiveness. This is high concept stuff, bristling with ideas, many of which would be worthy of their own novellas, and I ate it up, killing a full winters day in a Japanese hotel room with this book and loving every minute.

It's been a while since I've felt the frission of discovery that comes from finding a great new author to read, an author whose back catalogue offers tens of hours of pure reading pleasure (The last author to send a similar shiver up my sci-fi loving spine was Paolo Bacigalupi back in 2014). It's a genuinely exciting sensation, heady with premonitions of lazy, book-filled afternoons and Embassytown has set me off on an urgent quest to read all of Mievilles work. Judging from Embassytown, I'm going to have a shitload of fun doing it.

(Oh- and big love to Mieville from me for breaking a three star book drought that was five titles long and starting to kill my reading vibe. This book is exactly what I needed!)