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With
the almost freakish success of a certain set of tales about
a boy wizard, more and more "adult" authors are giving YA
fiction a shot. Plus, these days, a satisfyingly increasing
number of kids are reading, and the idea of adults reading
books for kids is becoming more acceptable. There's got to
be metric buttloads of money in the YA section of the bookstore,
and even socialist, new weird/dark fantasy authors like China
Miéville cannot resist its siren song. Unfortunately, despite
such authors' immense creativity and writing talent, the first
attempt doesn't always turn out as they'd like.
Un
Lun Dun, begins like a lot of YA books: A girl and her
friend notice strange goings-on, follow a sentient umbrella
through the streets of London at night, and end up transported
to a bizarre alternative "abcity" called Un Lun Dun (Un-London)
with bus-blimps run by conductors (who embody the electrical
double-nature of their name), the maligned ghost-people of
Wraithtown, terrifying and carnivorous giraffes, tailors with
needles for hair that sew suits made of books, and trashcan
ninjas (binjas). They also, of course, discover that there
is a horrible plague of malicious pollution called the Smog,
from which one of the girls is predestined to save Un Lun
Dun.
Despite
the sort of tried and true YA fiction hero-plot, Miéville
also wants to differentiate himself from this standard "chosen
one" cliché. The "propheseers" of Un Lun Dun tell the chosen
one she is destined to win her first skirmish with the Smog.
Instead, she is knocked out within seconds, taken back to
London, and never remembers any of the wonders of the abcity.
Her friend Deeba (written in the prophesy book as the "funny
sidekick") can't get the plight of Un Lun Dun out of her mind
and decides to find a way to return and help, thereby making
her the "un-chosen one" who forgoes huge portions of the preordained
"quest of the shwazzy" (the ULD pronunciation of choisi,
French for "chosen"), and just skips to the end. Why should
she go through seven time-consuming and possibly lethal tasks
when she can simply skip to the part where she gets the ultimate
weapon? Wouldn't that simply make more sense?
Knowing
Miéville is a socialist (who ran for the British House of
Commons in 2001 and has written books on Marxism) makes reading
some of the subtext of the novel a bit of a left-wing Where's
Waldo? Miéville is not attempting to brainwash kids, or
trying to get them to forcibly redistribute their parents'
wealth, but many of the obstacles that must be overcome have
a distinct left-leaning/socialist flare to them. The antagonist
is an evil cloud of pollution; those in power in Un Lun Dun
are evil, misguided, or in with the Smog; the propheseers,
who could be seen as the religion of ULD, are misguided in
their attempts to help the people and are doing far more harm
than good until a completely average but dedicated and active
girl (proletariat?) helps show them the error of their ways.
To be fair, Miéville frequently uses a corrupt governing class
as a plot element in order to enhance the victorious/heroic/intelligent
underdog nature of his protagonists. It simply takes on a
somewhat sly, proselytizing aura in the milieu of a YA book.
While
the characters and situations in Un Lun Dun are unique
and clever, often relying on wordy puns and clever allusions,
the novel pales in comparison to Miéville's usual fiction.
In previous novels, Miéville's boundless imagination helped
to create rich and colorful realities and settings in which
his novels take place. Un Lun Dun's world is intriguing
only in that, since it is so gloriously random, a la Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland, there is no way for the reader
to know what lies two chapters ahead. Miéville offers his
landscape in a whirlwind tour, which allows the reader no
time to realize that the people and places in Un Lun Dun are
far more 2D than those of his other novels. The ghost-town,
the arachnid-laden Webminster Alley, and the Blabyrinth—the
brain-shaped maze of the vocabulary-loving Mr. Speaker—are
all fun locales that add to the inherent absurdity of the
novel but generally have little to to offer the reader other
than their witty names. All these ideas are entertaining and
charming in their own way, but something about them lacks
the staying power of the realms of classic YA fiction.
However,
the rapid-fire, episodic nature of the book is exciting, and
the story never stalls. And even though it mirrors the classic,
absurdist, and word-loving worlds of Lewis Carroll and the
like, it does bring a fresh set of ideas and concepts to the
table. Sadly, with no YA literature history under his belt,
Miéville hoped that by making the protagonist a junior high
student, toning down the darkness and violence, simplifying
his vocabulary, and tipping his hat to YA classics, it would
work. All of this merely feels as if he's attempting to write
with a willful crippling of his skills. Let it be said that
this isn't a bad book by any scale. It just feels terribly
average compared to Miéville's "adult" writing.
(July,
2007)
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