Avice Benner Cho, an "Immerser" (a traveller on the Immer, see § Style below for the meaning of Miéville's neologisms), has returned to her childhood home from her adventures in the "Out".

Ariekei compete at Festivals of Lies to see who can most closely approximate speaking an untruth, an act both thrilling and highly taboo.

A faction of the Ariekei deafen themselves to break their addiction and begin to violently convert others, developing increasingly sophisticated gesture-based communication.

The two Ariekei factions reconcile; freed from the literal nature of Language, they are able to learn new forms of communication, which also allows them to speak to non-Ambassador humans.

[3] Their effect on the reader has been described as disorienting, with The Guardian's James Purdon remarking on "a slow accretion of detail and implication until a universe coheres".

"[17] Ursula K. Le Guin, reviewing the book for The Guardian, wrote "Embassytown is a fully achieved work of art...works on every level, providing compulsive narrative, splendid intellectual rigour and risk, moral sophistication, fine verbal fireworks and sideshows, and even the old-fashioned satisfaction of watching a protagonist become more of a person than she gave promise of being".

Miéville has taken the theoretical and philosophical insights of thinkers such as Jacques Derrida and Paul Ricoeur and turned them into story.