30: Un Lun Dun, by China Miéville (2007 Paperback)

With the surge in popularity for TweenLit (ages 9-12) and TeenLit these days, it seems that every author who traditionally writes books for adults is releasing books for young people.  When I mentioned this phenomena to my sister Sarah last night on the phone, she suggested that these books were always being written, but they were simply found in the adult fantasy and SciFi sections of libraries and bookstores OR appeared on the shelves for younger readers and were ignored by adults; now that Tween and Teen titles are popular--among both their "intended" ages and adults--they are being labeled accordingly and marketed to a wider audience.  When I started to think about that, it made a lot of sense.  Sarah is a librarian, so of course she spends her time thinking about such things, and she is also the person who really got me started on TeenLit and graphic novels in the first place, so I find she is often ahead of me in thinking about these book types.  (Notice I didn't say "genres" here, as comics and TeenLit are NOT genres; like every media form they have many genres within them.)

A case in point to support Sarah's theory is Miéville's Un Lun Dun.  When I spied it at Northtown Books a couple weeks ago, my immediate thought was that this was a new book by an author of adult fantasy that I have read and enjoyed (My first entry in this blog was Miéville's The City & The City.).  And, I had read the book under that premise all along.  When I sat down to write this entry today, however, I finally looked at the publishing information and found that the book was released in 2007, around the same time that Twilight (2005), The Hunger Games (2008), and other books intended for younger audiences began to regularly hit adult reading lists.  (You could argue, of course--and I'd agree you might be right--that the whole age crossover began with Rowling's HP series in 1997.  However, it strikes me that it's in the past 3-5 years that the trend became commonplace.)  Anyway, what I took for a new book by an adult author really appears more likely to be one that was re-released--or has found a second audience--due to the Tween/Teen/Adult crossover phenomena.

All this, of course, does more to tell you about how smart my sister is and nothing to tell you what I thought of the book.  Which I liked as much as I do any Tween book.

TweenLit, as I've commented before, tends to lack the grittiness and complexity of TeenLit.  It's not that there aren't important issues in Tween books--Un Lun Dun includes environmental issues, political corruption, and stereotyping, for instance--but it's generally glossed over quickly in order to focus more on characters.  And, these characters (particularly the supporting characters) often include animals and other unlikely objects.  In this book, Deeba crosses the Odd and becomes the UnChosen savior of UnLondon (a magical abcity that is Londonesque in character) and encounters a half-ghost, a diving suit filled with seawater and fish, a milk carton, spoken words given form, and umbrellas.  With this motley crew, as well as a few eccentric adults, Deeba takes on The Smog.

Miéville is an amazing storyteller, and this book is no exception.  The whimsy, creativity, and surprises make it a great read for fans of fantasy--of all ages--who also enjoy Tween books.
 

20: Perdido Street Station, by China Miéville (2000 paperback)

Currently reading (Just got a bit side tracked by a few others.  I'll get back to this soon.)

1: The City & The City by China Miéville (2009 paperback)

I've had Miéville's book on one of my many unread-books shelves for some time.  I'm not sure what inspired me to finally pick it up, and once I began to read it I started to wonder how I ever came to own it.  I don't remember buying it, although those who know me understand that this means nothing in itself; I regularly buy the same book twice and can rarely remember the name of an author or book a month after reading it.

The mysterious origins of this book ultimately seem appropriate, as the book is a mystery as well.   More specifically, it is a fantasy murder mystery set in a world where two cities--in two different countries--exist on the exact same geographic location.  This is not a split city/country like East and West Berlin or North and South Korea, however.  In this modern, vaguely Eastern European landscape, residents of Ul Qoma and Beszel have been trained since birth to "unsee" and "unhear" the people, buildings, vehicles, and events in the overlapping foreign city through which they walk every day--seeing and participating only in activities within their own city.  The causes of this division are lost in the cities' centuries-long histories, which have also served to create a complex system for preserving the separate entities: architecture, clothing, language, technology, food, and even colors are specific to each city.  Those who venture across borders--which may exist right next door and which can be crossed by something as simple as an open stare--are subject to retribution from a completely autonomous force known as Breach.

Like most good murder mysteries, the book begins with a detective and a body: Inspector Tyador Borlu and a young woman living in Ul Qoma but found dead in Beszel.  While originally hoping to turn the case over to the mysterious Breach forces, Borlu instead finds himself enmeshed in a case that straddles two countries, uncovers possible conspiracies, and raises the question of whether a third entity--a city between the cities--exists which controls it all.

While the book's premise offered me challenges in the first few chapters, my confusion slowly resolved itself as the means by which the cities were separated became clear--end even logical. Miéville makes the implausible wholly believable and he tells a darn good yarn along the way.  I've added his other books to my book shopping list and will likely report on a few in the coming year.