A few minutes ago, I finished Un Lun Dun by China Mieville, his first foray into the young adult fantasy market.

Un Lun Dun centers around two girls who travel into an alternate London and into a confrontation with malevolent pollution. It's a good book, but substantially different from his previous works due to being targetted for the young adult market. His other books, one of which I wrote about here, are very dark with a lot of sexual and grotesque imagery and violent action. Un Lun Dun is more in the Harry Potter vein, but with more word games since a lot of the people and places encountered are based on twisted versions of real things. For example, they visit Webminster abbey and have to deal with Binjas, trash bins with martial arts skills.

It's nice to see an author I like try something different and do it so well.