Un Lun Dun - China Miéville

[goodreads]

Title: Un Lun Dun
Author: China Miéville
Genre: Childrens fantasy
Rating: 3.5/5
# pages: Audiobook ~13hrs
Date read: August, 2013

Zanna and Deeba are two girls leading ordinary lives, until they stumble into the world of UnLondon, an urban Wonderland where all the lost and broken things of London end up... and some of its lost and broken people too. Here discarded umbrellas stalk with spidery menace, carnivorous giraffes roam the streets, and a jungle sprawls beyond the door of an ordinary house.

UnLondon is under siege by the sinister Smog and its stink-junkie slaves; it is a city awaiting its hero. Guided by a magic book that can't quite get its facts straight, and pursued by Hemi the half-ghost boy, the girls set out to stop the poisonous cloud before it burns everything in its path. They are joined in their quest by a motley band of UnLondon locals, including Brokkenbroll, boss of the broken umbrellas, Obaday Fing, a couturier whose head is an enormous pincushion, and an empty milk carton called Curdle.

My expectations were totally off with this one. I'd heard it compared to Neverwhere so I expected a novel for grown-ups - or YA at the very least. But it's a children's novel. Not that I have a problem reading books aimed at children, and it was really well written, so definitely appropriate for grown-ups as well. It just meant that I had to do some serious mental readjustment along the way to figure out that the book was not at all what I thought it was.

That said, I really liked the book. I thought the characters fun and quirky and liked the traditional fairytale structure to the story. The plot wasn't anything special, which is probably where my mistaken expectations come into play, as there was less depth to it than I would have thought, but once I realized that and took the story for what it was, I found it a very enjoyable tale.