In Praise of Leading Sidekicks

London teens Zanna (Susanna) Moon and her best friend Deeba Resham seem like a typical heroine and sidekick. In addition to her cool name, Zanna has a certain charisma, being slender, tall, blond, and good at school and sports, while Deeba is short, round, black-haired, and dark-skinned. When the story opens, for at least a month Zanna has been the focus of bizarre events. Clouds have formed her face in the sky, strange men and women have approached her and called her "Shwazzy," and as the story proceeds a fox and some dogs bow to her, sparrows circle in a halo around her head, and her French teacher says, "choisi" ("Shwazzy!?). An Adventure is surely heading for Zanna. Indeed, she soon manages to transport Deeba and herself from London to UnLondon through a membrane separating two universes, one holding our cities, the other "abcities" like UnLondon.

In China Mieville's YA/children's novel Un Lun Dun (2007), it develops that through different points of leakage or access, discarded things (trash, old vehicles, broken umbrellas, etc.) from London find their way into UnLondon, where they become sentient (feral rubbish!) and or get repurposed, as in "moil" (modestly obsolete in London) buildings made of things like vinyl records. This applies to immigrants to UnLondon, like obsolete London bus conductors. And, as Mieville loves hybridizing, there are plenty of bizarre hybrids in UnLondon: a bird in a cage who "rides" atop a headless man; a swarm of bees in the shape of a man; a tailor who uses his full head of pins and needles to make clothes fabricated from the pages of books; and so on. Mieville's imagination is in full spate here. The UnSun is in the shape of a donut, our sun its missing center. The UnLondon Eye is a giant water wheel.

Mieville writes some neat characters. Honestly, bland Zanna is not one of them, so it is a relief when, early on, she is left hors du combat, and her plucky sidekick Deeba has to step forward. (At one point Deeba indignantly asks whether she's supposed to be the comical or the stupid sidekick.) Thenceforth the novel is mostly a pleasure to read. There is the de rigueur YA fantasy evil enemy, out to rule or destroy UnLondon (and maybe a lot more), but the Smog is politically pointed: an ever-growing, sentient, chemically poisonous wannabe fire god with a knack for making nasty allies, like the Concern (UnLondon "business people with plans"), some London politicians, and Brokkenbroll the Unbrellissimo (!). And some especially thick and ineffectual adults, the propheseers (supposedly well-versed in the past and future of UnLondon), can't believe the kids as to what's going on. Luckily, in UnLondon Deeba makes friends: Obaday Fing (the book-page tailor); Hemi, a half-ghost, half-boy "alternative shopper" from Wraithtown; Conductor Jones, an immigrant from London; and the book, a temperamental, talking tome responsible for the prophecy incorrectly identifying Zanna as the Chosen One.

UnLondon is a place where what is said correctly or incorrectly often has tangible consequences, the majority of Mieville's creations being inspired or developed by language. His novel is woven from neologisms, etymologies, plays on words, things lost in translation, and so on. For example. The phlegm (as in calm, stolid) effect means that Deeba's family won't miss her when she's in UnLondon. Jones is a bus conductor, which means that in addition to taking passengers where they want to go, at a pinch he can conduct electricity as a weapon. And when our umbrellas are broken and discarded, they fall into UnLondon, where they become unbrellas, and when repaired in UnLondon, they become rebrellas. Did I mention the dread black windows of Webminster? Or the utterlings, words made bizarre flesh? Or the smombies (zombies controlled by the Smog)? Or the binjas (trash bin ninjas)? O-or the legendary UnGun? And the different registers of English are fun to read, ranging from Deeba's teenage argot ("manky," "innit," "I'm blatantly coming back," etc.) to the bishops' posh and the propheseers' educated speech ("May I say. . . gather you lost a comrade. Awful business. Dreadfully sorry," etc.). Mieville even tosses in references to the likes of Harry Potter, Batman and Robin, and Bartleby the Scrivener. It all makes reading the novel a lot of fun.

As for Mieville's writing, it ranges from great to clunky, mostly falling in between. The following examples find him on his game:

"The air was growling and rumbustious."

"In the light of the full loon."

"Just because half my family are unquiet dead," he hissed, "why should I like this sort of thing?"

"It was clammy-looking and sickly pale. It padded like a clumsy cat. Its body was a pudgy hairless lion's, but its head was that of an enormous, blindly groping earthworm. It nosed into the bricks and concrete, turning them by some chemical exudations into mulch."

The audiobook reader Karen Cass does a fine job, doing a prime Smog (a creepy wheezing voice), convincing Deeba, stuffy scholars, and so on. The only drawback with the audiobook is that it's missing Mieville's many illustrations of his novel, many of which are quirky, grotesque, and neat.

I wish the book had fewer (than 99) and longer chapters and sentences; it tries too hard to join the short sentence, paragraph, and chapter YA trend. Too many action scenes come down to something like, "Deeba and Hemi ran." Plenty of things may not hold up under scrutiny. I wonder why Mieville introduces and then never uses an UnLondon travelcard. I wonder why all objects don't become animate in UnLondon rather than only ones that pique his interest. But his fertile imagination, language fantasy, sidekick reversal, and timely antagonists more than compensate for minor flaws. And readers who like the Fairyland books of Catherynne M. Valente or politically pointed contemporary versions of linguistic fantasies like the Alice books or The Phantom Tollbooth should like Un Lun Don.

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1 person found this helpful

Excellent! This is how a message novel should be

Would you consider the audio edition of Un Lun Dun to be better than the print version?

I don't know. didn't read the print version.

What did you like best about this story?

Like the best of message fiction, the messages come in to the reader subconsciously, never becoming even a slight bit preachy; and never interfering with the story.
Pollution. Using economically-lower countries as dumping ground for waste. The experience of a subcontinental-origin person in London. And the biggest hit for me was the sublime turnaround of the sidekick. The Neville Longbottoms of the world rise up to take their rightful position in this book, and how!

Have you listened to any of Karen Cass’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No. And she is brilliant.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Small touches of the oh-yes-that's-right.
When Deeba tries to convince herself, during her first return to London, that she does not need to return, because everything will be fine. --- and then, at the back of her mind -- and anyway, she would not know even if they aren't.
So true. "how many times can a man turn his head / pretending he just doesn't see"...

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2 people found this helpful

Hard to keep focus

I don't know if it was due to the intricacies of the story, but I found myself constantly losing focus. Maybe the book is better suited for reading.

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This is a childrens book

What disappointed you about Un Lun Dun?

I expected China Mieville to deliver as usual - but instead I get a childrens book.
Someone ought to told me.

If you’ve listened to books by China Mieville before, how does this one compare?

Well, it's plain out sily in comparison. It got characters and depth - but the story line just doesn't hold.

What didn’t you like about Karen Cass’s performance?

pretty much nothing :-(

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