Yes. It's called irony.

Depends how good a writer someone is I suppose... And how hard they're trying to push their agenda, and how much you agree/disagree with that agenda. Mixture of skill from the writer and taste from the reader.

Sigh. Seems like a case of "don't feed the troll" to me. After what happened last year they must know the angry hordes will descend on them. Letting such a lazy review through to get published is a great way to gain page views...

Nope, the Dothraki use their horses for eating. Makes man strong! It is known.

My cat doesn't know that I give her the expensive food instead of the cheap stuff from the store, but it has a huge impact on her health. She also has no idea why we spayed her or tattooed her ear with an ID mark but both are for her and our benefit in the long run. If I could have a conversation with her she might…

Icky!! And interesting. And with brilliant actors. Should be good. :)

I'd say it's the same with all kinds of art. Some people try to communicate something specific with their work, some people just want to make something they and others care about, some people create for themselves and are very surprised when others like it. I've even heard of artists who refused to tell the public…

Is the last one supposed to be the Tardis or whoever said the line?

Then, no. It just mentions his... injury.

I dunno, she's very different from the other Olivias. I gotta say I was completely rooting for him until it was made clear that wasn't possible. He deserved that happiness...

You mean the guy from the LSD episode? I always had the feeling that was a manifestation of Olivia's self-destructive streak and guilt.

Awesome. They pixelated Street View too. Makes it look like a strange mix of 80s video game art and photos. Which I guess is what it is...

Isn't yeast fungus?

I'm pretty sure there was an established theory on Tower of the Hand about whether that person was alive, but it wasn't considered very likely.

The frustration was more about the language and writing style for me. Miéville's writing is often dense but that one was almost impenetrable. And I read it on holiday so I couldn't look up all the weird words he used... The story in itself was cool though. Reminded me a lot of Neverwhere.

I found Embassytown to be both fascinating and frustrating. Kraken even more so.

His best work (in my opinion) is definitely the Bas-Lag novels. They had excellent characters, awesome concepts, brilliant worldbuilding (but se don't really know that much about that world) and compelling stories. Nothing since then has been quite as good, especially the characters.

I have to say I agree about Embassytown. It had the makings of China Miéville's best writing since The Scar but he botched it. I couldn't put my finger on it before but it's like Priest says, the characters are just too weak and I never had that feeling of "ambience" that I got when I was reading about New Crobuzon or…

Kraken is definitely not his best novel. It might actually be the worst. The story is ok but not great and the language is almost unreadable. I love his Bas-Lag novels though. They were also very high concept but they had great characters that went on interesting journeys. If you can read them (especially The Scar)…

Yeah, I just decided that since we're so close now I might as well wait. Sometimes I get that "I've seen that before" feeling when I see the scene again in the episode and it'll just take me out of the story...