By China Miéville
Deeba Resham and her best friend Zanna Moon start to notice that Zanna is attracting the attention of all kinds of people, who treat her like royalty and refer to her as the ‘Schwazzy’, and foxes and dogs start to bow before her and follow her around. Then one night, they see an umbrella flying around outside Deeba’s bedroom window, so they sneak out and follow it down a dark alley. They end up in a basement where, after turning a stopcock on some pipes, they are transported to a parallel London – Un Lun Dun – a bizarre, fantastical flip side to the London they are from, where garbage can attack, buildings made from our junk move around, umbrellas fly, and buses have feet like lizards. In this world, they’ve been waiting for the Schwazzy to arrive, she is the Chosen One, and she will save their world.
So far, so what, you might say. Tales of kids from this world being transported to another world, where they are hailed as a saviour, are the staple diet of young adult fantasy. What separates this from the pack, however, is the way Mr Miéville brilliantly suborns this fantasy trope at every turn.
Un Lun Dun is under threat from the Smog. As it grows, feeding on the pollution pumped over from our world, it threatens to engulf the city, swallowing and ultimately destroying everything in its path. According to The Propheseers, Leaders of Un Lun Dun, Zeena’s destiny is to defeat the smog and save them from certain doom. Unfortunately, the predictions prove to be wrong and at the first real encounter with the Smog, Zeena is injured and has to return with her friend to her own London where the healing process ensures her memory of the place is erased.
However Deeba is not satisfied with this outcome, nor is she able to forget the friends she made while there – including a pet milk carton she names Curdle – and so she sets out to find more information about what happened. Stumbling across evidence that one of the officials she met is, in fact, a traitor, and another is supposed to be dead, she finds her way back to Un Lun Dun to warn her friends and is subsequently drawn into the thick of the struggle.
And so, after reuniting with her new-found friends, there begins the inevitable quest to gather the items that will help to save the day, except that Deeba can’t be bothered with doing the whole quest so she decides to skip the preamble and go straight for the last item on the list, the Ungun, the only thing the Smog is afraid of. Brilliant! But the trip is not without incident. Let’s face it, in a city where the houses move around like tiles in a puzzle game and skyscrapers turn out to be huge chests of drawers, and buildings are shaped like top hats or clenched fists or made entirely of broken televisions sets, anything can happen.
In a neat twist, the longer she stays in Un Lun Dun, the more her friends and family will forget about her, making it impossible to return to her own world, so time is against her. Along the way, she takes on The Speaker, tyrannical king of the Talklands, journeys through the forest-in-a-house and battles vicious giraffes, all the time gathering a growing band of followers before eventually negotiating the black windows of Webminster Abbey to secure the Ungun and face the final showdown with the Smog.
This is terrific stuff from start to finish. Utterly engaging, funny, witty and very clever, every page packed with greater invention than a good deal of authors manage in a whole novel. It has been compared to Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz and even The Phantom Tollbooth and I can see all of those elements in it, but for me, it comes across as something Edward Lear might have written had he decided to turn nonsense rhymes into young adult fantasy.
Ever the socialist, Miéville manages to weave a bit of political commentary into his story. The Propheseers are rife with incompetence, inflexibility and corruption and the deliberate exploitation of fear, by some, to retain power lends an obvious War on Terror subtext to the battle against the smog.
But the main theme of the book is that real heroism means ordinary people rising to the occasion, and that only fools wait around to be saved. Even though she continually refuses to accept the role of Chosen One, Deeba demonstrates enough cunning and common sense throughout the book to out-manouevre her enemies and, in doing so, she gathers enough followers to elevate herself to that position without even trying. It’s a refreshing take for a writer point out that there’s nothing particularly impressive about being a hero if that’s your destiny, which gives Deeba’s actions and choices much greater impact than if she was just playing a part laid out for her.
Feeling like something you read and loved as a kid, Un Lun Dun is perfect for teens who’ve grown out of wizards and witchcraft and are looking for something with a bit of bite.
Un Lun Dun is published by in the UK by Pan Macmillan and is available from Amazon