That is until a breakthrough occurs, and specially trained-and-altered humans known as Ambassadors are finally able to speak to the Hosts. However, there is a bit of a communication hurdle as the Hosts’ method of speech is physiologically impossible for humans to copy. The natives are the Ariekei, known to humans as the Hosts-and gracious hosts they are, as they provide food and wondrous biotechnology for the settlers, asking virtually nothing in exchange. It is megahours in our universe’s future (all lengths of time are given in hours and multiples of, due to the difficulty of standardising day and year length over thousands of colonised planets), and the nation of Bremen has established a colony on the far-off planet Arieka: Embassytown, a human ghetto-cum-bureaucratic facility smackdab in the middle of the indigenous species’ only city. Embassytown combines planetary science-fiction with colonial novel, lingual exploration with zombie apocalypse.

After the previous genre-benders which melded murder mystery with metaphysical weirdness (2009’s The City & the City), and urban fantasy with theological satire (last year’s Kraken), the latest novel Embassytown once again mashes together incongruent elements of fiction to create something beautiful, bleak and terrifying.

Fans of the eloquent and endlessly imaginative China Miéville have been blessed by his recent annual output, with the third book in three years coming out this May.

Embassytown by china miéville