Ambergris

Ambergris #1-3

by Jeff Vandermeer

From New York Times bestselling author Jeff VanderMeer comes the one-volume reissue of his cult classic Ambergris Trilogy: City of Saints and Madmen, Finch, and Shriek: An Afterword.

Before Area X, there was Ambergris. Jeff VanderMeer conceived what would become his first cult classic series of speculative works: The Ambergris Trilogy. Now, for the first time ever, the story of the sprawling metropolis of Ambergris is collected into a single volume, including City of Saints and Madmen, Finch: An Afterword, and Shriek.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction, Horror, Weird Fiction, Audiobook, Science Fiction Fantasy

880 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2020

About the author

NYT bestselling writer Jeff VanderMeer has been called “the weird Thoreau” by the New Yorker for his engagement with ecological issues. His most recent novel, the national bestseller Borne, received wide-spread critical acclaim and his prior novels include the Southern Reach trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance). Annihilation won the Nebula and Shirley Jackson Awards, has been translated into 35 languages, and was made into a film from Paramount Pictures directed by Alex Garland. His nonfiction has appeared in New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Atlantic, Slate, Salon, and the Washington Post. He has coedited several iconic anthologies with his wife, the Hugo Award winning editor. Other titles include Wonderbook, the world’s first fully illustrated creative writing guide. VanderMeer served as the 2016-2017 Trias Writer in Residence at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. He has spoken at the Guggenheim, the Library of Congress, and the Arthur C. Clarke Center for the Human Imagination.

VanderMeer was born in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, but spent much of his childhood in the Fiji Islands, where his parents worked for the Peace Corps. This experience, and the resulting trip back to the United States through Asia, Africa, and Europe, deeply influenced him.

Jeff is married to Ann VanderMeer, who is currently an acquiring editor at Tor.com and has won the Hugo Award and World Fantasy Award for her editing of magazines and anthologies. They live in Tallahassee, Florida, with two cats and thousands of books.

Reviews

[Zachary Houle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jeff VanderMeer is a genius. I can only make this pronouncement having now read the author’s Ambergris trilogy. Sure, I’ve read other works by the author, but nothing has been quite as mind-blowing as reading about the city of Ambergris and its sometimes mad, but mostly brilliant, inhabitants. What makes this work even more startling is that it came early in VanderMeer’s career. The Ambergris trilogy, which has been now collected in an omnibus edition containing all three works, came before the Borne duology and even the Southern Reach Trilogy. All in all, the novella collection City of Saints and Madmen (2001), and the novels Shriek: An Afterword (2006) and Finch (2009), are prime examples of world-building: making worlds seem complete and historical, and fully fleshed out. That world-building is what makes VanderMeer a genius. The books, which can be read individually, feel complete when brought together, like puzzle pieces that expose a larger whole.

City of Saints and Madmen, in its lead-off position, is perhaps the most brilliant of the three books collected here. However, it does bear pointing out that this is not a complete version of the novella collection. While it collects the novellas that were included in its original printing, plus one more (“The Cage”) that appeared only in subsequent editions, it does not collect all of the stories in the expanded editions of the book published after 2001. Still, City of Saints and Madmen is still potent, and the reason why is because it serves as an introduction to the city of Ambergris, both its human inhabitants and its mysterious “grey caps” — mushroom-shaped humanoids who live underneath the city, but who always seem to be on the periphery of the action. Some of this gets a bit meta at times — one novella, a written early history of the city, is so self-referential that it includes (groan!) footnotes — but VanderMeer manages to fire on all cylinders when he sits down to pen a rousing good tale. My favourite, “Dradin, In Love,” has a completely devastating ending that you won’t see coming.

Read the rest of the review here: https://zachary-houle.medium.com/a-re...

[Aleksandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ambergris feels like a test run of all the fantastical ideas and themes later explored in the Southern Reach trilogy. The claustrophobic power of nature, man's uncanny ability to be inhuman to that which it doesn't understand, it's all here as a testament to Vandermeer's imagination. The stories are mysterious at times, delightfully horrifying at others, though I think I prefer the cohesion of a single novel.

[Brittany · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the most amazing thing I’ve ever read. Need to recover.

[Ariel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a slow reader and this is a very long book, however the beautiful and horrifying world that is created is well worth the journey.

[Jase · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is quite the deal and in a format I didn’t know existed until very recently.

I’m a fairly early fan of Jeff’s work so this stuff, the Ambergris work, is more my Vandermeer vibe and I didn’t come to it from Annihilation and Southern Reach (which I also enjoy) books that really hit a chord and broadened Jeff’s base. As strange as those novels are I do they think they are much more accessible and I will admit it pleased me to see a writer I enjoyed reaching another level of professional success, and still maintain some of that funk that made him rad.

If you like weird, out of the box, secondary setting, and a writer really going for it and testing out his influences this is really great stuff. If you have an aversion to strange fiction you probably are going to be a hard convert because Jeff is really on that turn of this century fantasy wave and his secondary world is a bit more original and fleshed out and well thought while still being mysterious and constantly alien.

This collects Cities of Saints and Madmen, Shriek: an Afterword and Finch. These are probably my favorite 3 VanderMeer works. The first is a series of shots to your brain that will throw you into his universe, the second is an incredibly literate and personal experience, which feels like the product of much rumination, that touches back on fragments of City of Saints and Madmen, and Finch is a noir story in the settings. You can read all these parts as standalone works but they definitely enrich each other all together in this hardcover package.

I picked it up as soon as I was aware of it and will give it a reread and come back with more detailed thoughts.

[Teodora · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ambergris is my 3rd book of the year and the first one in my A-Z challenge. Being an atypical fantasy fan, I discovered China Mieville's Perdido Street Station a few years ago and became obsessed with weird fiction or new weird. I then found Borne by Jeff VanderMeer, then The Southern Reach trilogy (Annihilation on Netflix is visually stunning) and loved them, but starting Ambergris put Mr VanderMeer on my top-authors-of-all-time list.
What I love most about the first book in the trilogy, City of Saints and Madmen, is the brilliant worldbuilding and the rich, evocative language, the overall feel of being immersed into a dreamlike world, insane, beautiful, dark and terrifying at times.
City of Saints and Madmen consists of several loose linked short stories telling the city's history, each featuring a different character and set in different historical periods. There are sentient mushrooms, naked Living Saints, mad artists and enough weirdness to keep me turning the page.
I haven't finished the other two novels in the trilogy yet. Ambergris is a long book (about 800 pages) and not a quick read because of the dense prose, but it's well worth the journey.
*Also, there's violence - not too graphic, but it's there.*

5 stars so far (to be amended - or not - when I've read it).

—-

Update: Now that I’ve finally read it, almost a year later, I can’t believe I’ve been distracted with other books all this time. Still 5 start. Probably the most amazing story I’ve read in the past few years.
❤️ Ambergris

[Jessica · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't know... I didn't finish this. Got in about 300 and some pages and literally just couldn't force myself to keep reading. The world was unique and interesting with really vivid descriptions of setting, but what a load of pretentious dribble? Like, the story about the writer who thinks the world he created is real, but is convincing himself it is made up so people don't think he's crazy but then it ends up that he really is trapped in the world (like... did anyone not see that coming?); honestly. I may pick it up again at some point but...

[Em · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mr. VanderMeer's writing is so fascinating to me. I love reading novels that take you on a journey...when reading them alone feels like a life changing experience in and of itself. This trilogy certainly qualifies. I hope dearly that he will write another epic saga of sci-fi goodness like the two he's done. His recent work has been singletons which I appreciate but the joy of reading this one & Southern Reach is high up on my list of top ten favorite literary experiences.

[Matt Buongiovanni · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an interesting book to review, because it is actually the three books comprising Jeff VanderMeer’s Ambergris Trilogy, all bound together in one massive tome: City of Saints and Madmen; Shriek: An Afterword; and Finch. These works are united by their setting—Ambergris, a fictional city full of mushrooms, which grow with such frequency and size that it is rare for the book to go more than a few pages without making mention of some sort of fungal growth. The city is also noteworthy for its history of conflict with the “gray caps,” a race of short, subterranean humanoid creatures, whose presence in the novel serves both as a disquieting reminder of the city’s violent past and as an ominous portent of further violence to come. The humans of Ambergris, on top of negotiating those rather unusual threats, have to deal with the normal issues faced by a city: politics, religious differences, money troubles, and conflicts with foreign powers, to name a few particularly common sources of difficulty. I will give my thoughts on each work shortly, but first, a few overall impressions:
- Ambergris has proved to be a remarkably versatile setting. I was consistently amazed by the sheer variety of genres and tones that VanderMeer employed throughout these three books. I have read his Southern Reach Trilogy, and I went into this expecting the same sort of creeping, strangely beautiful horror that those books specialize in—and to be clear, he delivered that in spades—but I was not expecting the many other treats this book had in store: clever satires of academic writing, inventive detective fiction, a surprisingly moving story of a series of broken relationships, I could go on. There’s something here for everyone.
- Of particular note is VanderMeer’s sense of humor. In Southern Reach, moments of outright comedy are few and far between, so this book was my first exposure to the full extent of his knack for filling narrations with witty asides, which served as a good tonal counterweight to the bleak states of his characters’ lives.
- Also, to clarify: do not allow the two preceding bullet points to mislead you. The horror of this book is unrelenting and deeply effective—I struggle to think of any other books that have made me literally shudder as I read them with quite the frequency that this one did.
- The stories take place in a variety of times, and from a variety of viewpoints; each new story recontextualizes the events of those which came before it, as we see things from a new perspective—the narrators, while generally reliable to a point, have their limits. They aren’t usually consciously deceptive, though they can be, at times, but it’s far more common for them to allow their biases to color their perceptions, and sometimes they’re just flat-out wrong. It is our responsibility to sort out the truth for ourselves as readers, a deeply engaging and rewarding process.
And that’s as much as I can say without getting into specifics. Let’s get into specifics!
City of Saints and Madmen, the first of the three books contained in this one hefty volume, is a collection of short stories, united only by their setting, the eponymous city. I enjoyed it greatly, but I don’t have much to say about the collection as a whole beyond that fact, so it’s time to look at each of the stories individually.
(For those of you following along at home, the shape of my review is something like this: {Review of Ambergris (Reviews of City of Saints and Madmen *[Reviews of “Dradin, In Love,” “The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of the City of Ambergris,” “The Cage;” “The Transformation of Martin Lake,” and “The Strange Case of X”]; Shriek: An Afterword; and Finch)}. *You are here.)
“Dradin, In Love” is the first story of the collection, and also, in my opinion, the weakest. This is not to say that the story is bad, by any means—it isn’t, but something has to take the bottom slot, and I’m afraid that this is it. Our eponymous lover boy is a priest, who has arrived in Ambergris after a long and arduous mission trip in the jungle, and has fallen madly (pardon the pun) in love with a woman he spotted in a shop window. Using a dwarf he meets on the street as a middleman, he sets about trying to woo her with various gifts. To the discerning reader, it will be immediately apparent that Dradin is not playing with a full deck—this was not as apparent to me, on my first read through, but even I could tell that he was being taken for a ride. As the story progresses, Dradin ventures out onto the streets of Amberis during the Festival of the Freshwater Squid, an anarchic and violent yearly celebration which is alluded to throughout many of these stories, but never fully explained (this, to be clear, is not a complaint). As the festival grows ever more hellish and violent, so too do the predicaments that Dradin finds himself in. After narrowly escaping a trap laid by the dwarf—in collaboration with some gray caps—Dradin is able to make his way into the shop where he first saw his love… only to realize that she was nothing more than a mannequin. He picks up “her” remains, and decides to throw himself into the river. As I said at the start, this is by no means a bad story. The realization that Dradin is a madman whose mind never fully recovered from the horrors he faced in the jungle (in particular, the fever that he caught) makes the story’s more frustrating beats much more understandable in retrospect, and I cannot imagine a better way to introduce a reader to the city of Ambergris than through the eyes of a delirious lunatic. The Festival of the Freshwater Squid, in particular, is a very interesting aspect of this story—while it may, on one’s first reading, seem like the product of Dradin’s fevered imagination, future stories more or less confirm that the horrors it contains are pretty much business as usual for Ambergrisian festivities. It’s a fantastic story, which makes its status as my least favorite of the bunch all the more exciting: nowhere to go but up!
While I enjoyed the last story well enough, it was “The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of the City of Ambergris” that truly helped me appreciate how brilliant Ambergris is—it is, full disclosure, my favorite story in City of Saints and Madmen, and may well be my favorite work in the entire Ambergris series. Written as a history primer for visiting tourists, this story is a delight from start to finish. Its “author,” the historian Duncan Shriek, is clearly frustrated by the limitations placed on him by the conditions under which he is writing, and makes frequent asides through footnotes as he tells the history of Ambergris. While he attempts to maintain a detached tone throughout the document, it becomes increasingly clear that he holds fairly heterodox views on some aspects of Ambergrisian history, and that he has fallen from grace as a result of these opinions. He regularly calls out several of his academic peers in the footnotes, with historian Mary Sabon serving as the target of much of his rancor—though he also seems to possess a certain begrudging respect for her. The observant reader will soon realize that the bad blood between the two has to do with far more than just a disagreement about historical facts. Even without those subtler moments, “The Hoegbotton Guide” is a remarkable read. It covers a vast period of time, but Shriek is an engaging and clever narrator, and tells the events in a very natural way—much like the best teachers of history in our world, Shriek understands the importance of creating a narrative when teaching others about a region’s history. The guide is densely researched (which is to say, richly imagined), and every page makes passing reference to a half dozen historical events or figures that I would gladly read a whole book about. VanderMeer has, through this story, achieved one of the greatest accomplishments in fiction: he has created a city that feels more real than many that actually exist in this world. Many of the events Duncan touches on in this work will come up in the rest of Ambergris: Cappan John Manzikert’s slaughter of the gray caps and subsequent founding of Ambergris, various wars with foreign powers great and small, and the various works by the great composer Voss Bender (of whose talents Shriek does not appear to hold a very high opinion, by the way) memorializing these major occurrences; despite all of these significant discussions, there is one event which stands out above all the rest, one event which casts a shadow over every other story in Ambergris: The Silence. I will not describe it in detail here—both for the sake of brevity (a phrase I write as something of a private joke between myself and any reader brave enough to make it this far; brevity has never been a strength of my writing, as you now know), and because nothing I could write about it could come close to matching the power with which it is described by Duncan Shriek. The Silence is the defining question of Ambergris: every character, whether they know it or not, is responding to it, in some way. Thought by many to be an act of vengeance by the gray caps, some instantaneous act of bloodless genocide to pay back Manzikert’s initial massacre, it is an uncomfortable, constant presence in the mind of many characters, a trauma of the sort that impacts every generation to follow. Shriek’s interpretation of The Silence, the careful reader will note, does not appear to be the same as the prevailing opinion. More on that later. I have not even begun to scratch the surface of all that makes this story so special, but I hope that I have conveyed my enthusiasm for it in this portion of the review. A masterful piece of writing.
“The Cage” is a definite change of pace. Perhaps the most straightforwardly Weird-with-a-capital-W-Weird bit of fiction in this collection, it follows Robert Hoegbotton, founder of the omnipresent company Hoegbotton & Sons, early in his career. Chronologically speaking, this seems to be the first story in the collection—in every other story, Hoegbotton & Sons is a well established force in the city, but here, we are shown a much leaner, scrappier organization. Hoegbotton has become obsessed with the gray caps, and starts purchasing properties that have sat abandoned since The Silence—an event which occurred about a century ago. What’s more, he also arrives at any house which has fallen victim to a gray cap attack, purchasing anything he can. This story begins in one such house, and, after a very close brush with fungal death (one which I will avoid describing in detail, both for the sake of brevity—ha, ha—and because thinking about it still makes my skin crawl), he escapes with an item that the gray caps left behind—a cage. While it appears to be empty, it also possesses an unusual weight, as though it contains some sort of invisible creature. Hijinks ensue. At the very end of the story, Hoegbotton comes face-to-face with the monster from the cage, and accepts that his life may be over, because he believes that this creature holds the answer to the only question that matters: The Silence. Hoegbotton, as a protagonist, falls somewhere between Duncan and Dradin. While he is not an outright madman, he has allowed his obsession to consume him, and throws himself into any situation that might contain an answer with an almost suicidal dedication. I have been light on details when describing the plots of these stories, and this one has been given an especially slim recap, a fact which I regret, but will not revise. A wonderful story.
“The Transformation of Martin Lake” is an example of my favorite kind of story: it is a work of art dedicated to a different work of art. It follows the eponymous artist, a painter, from two different perspectives: quotes from Janice Shriek’s writings on his paintings serve to split up the narration, which follows Lake as he drifts through various circles of artists in the days following the disappearance of the great composer Voss Bender. If the last three stories were not enough to clue the reader in on the fact that this book’s various narrators are only telling partial truths at best, this story will open their eyes beyond any doubt: Janice’s interpretations are almost entirely wrong. This fact, coupled with the outright horror of the circumstances that brought about Lake’s sudden flash of inspiration, serves to provide some pitch-black comedy, but is also a powerful statement about the importance of [blah, blah, you get where this sentence was headed]. “The Hoegbotton Guide” is my indisputable favorite story of the collection, but “Martin Lake” is a strong contender for second place. I have written far less about it than I have about the other stories in City of Saints and Madmen, because much of what I want to say about it will probably come up when I start writing about Shriek: An Afterword. This was a deeply unsettling, surprisingly moving story, and I cannot recommend it enough.
“The Strange Case of X” is an interesting story to write about. It jumps between first- and third-person narration as it follows the interrogation of a man in some sort of prison or asylum, and I hesitate to write much more about the story than this simple fact, because of the elephant in the room: its ending. To call the ending a “twist” feels almost patronizing—it is apparent that our mysterious patient is an author from Earth fairly early in the story’s runtime; part of the fun of reading this story comes from just how brazen it is, the way that it dares you to assume that VanderMeer would be so bold as to write himself—and a copy of City of Saints and Madmen—into his own novel. It’s not just a source of Twilight Zone-esque fun, of course; it also features some truly potent writing, as “X” discusses the ways in which Ambergris began drifting into his everyday life, growing in the real world—or at least, in his mind—like one of the mushrooms found within the city. In some cases, this sort of wink at the audience can take the reader out of the work, but in this case, the effect is quite the opposite—by reminding us of the fictional nature of Ambergris, by revealing his method, VanderMeer strengthens his hold over the reader; Ambergris continues to grow steadily more real than our own world; “The Strange Case of X,” which may itself have been written by its narrator, eventually describes not just X’s inability to truly tell Ambergris and reality apart, but also our own. Or at least, my own.
All in all, City of Saints and Madmen is a fantastic collection. Wildly imaginative, beautifully written, and endlessly thought-provoking, it is so rich that there are entire subplots that I have neglected to allude to simply because I refuse to rob the reader of the joy of discovering them on their own; there are characters who appear in multiple stories and enrich our understanding of both works by virtue of their behavior, jokes with punchlines that are only clear in hindsight, mysteries that only grow more maddening the more we learn about them, a seemingly endless torrent of information and ideas to take in and turn over in our minds long after we have finished reading. I hope that my enthusiasm has been clearly conveyed. For that reason, I hope that you, dear reader, will understand the importance of what I am about to say: City of Saints and Madmen is, in my opinion, the weakest of the three books in Ambergris. That’s right. It’s Dradin all the way down, baby. Okay, we’ve still got a lot of ground to cover, so there’s no point in wasting time with meaningless transitions (beyond this one, of course). It’s time to move on to Book Two.
Shriek: An Afterword is an almost indescribably powerful novel. While Janice Shriek, the first—and, to her knowledge, only—author, began the manuscript as an afterword (go figure) to Duncan Shriek’s “Guide to the Early History of the City of Ambergris,” it very quickly morphs into something else: a memoir; a eulogy for her brother; a swan song; a final scream of pain from a woman who feels truly, utterly alone in the world. All of these are present in the final document, which makes the presence of her brother, Duncan (who appears in parenthetical notes all throughout the work) even more striking. His comments—by turns exasperated, wry, caring, furious, sad, wistful, cryptic, and sometimes all of these things at once—enrich the story that Janice weaves. She is, at times, an exhausting narrator—pretentious, spiteful, biased, conceited—but not only is she aware of that fact, Duncan is as well, and does not hesitate to call her out for these traits. He will often address her directly in his comments, but she does the same thing at times, speaking to Duncan in a more rhetorical manner, unaware that he will see her words and respond to them. The result is a novel with a fascinating style: dialectics without dialogue, two characters constantly soliloquizing to each other and admitting things that they would never actually say in face-to-face conversation. Janice regularly raids Duncan’s journals (a decision which outrages him initially, though he quickly forgives her), and draws from them to extrapolate Duncan’s feelings about certain events which he does not describe—generally, to wildly incorrect results, as Duncan seems to take no small amount of pleasure in informing her. As a result, many of the chapters feel deeply intimate, as though we should not be allowed access to the words that they contain—the only greater violation of written privacy than reading someone’s private correspondence is surely reading their journals, and Janice is dedicated to putting both on full display. (It occurs to me that I have been quite hard on poor Janice. To be clear: I like her as a character; I cannot imagine anyone leaving this novel without some level of affection for her. Like any real loved one, Janice is imperfect, and so her flaws are doubly frustrating, as compared to those of some hypothetical stranger.)
Remember Mary Sabon, the historian Duncan mentions repeatedly in “The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of the City of Ambergris?” Well, wouldn’t you know it, there is some history there—she is a former student, and lover (yikes!), of Duncan’s, who has dedicated herself to destroying his legacy. Let me tell you, Janice has some thoughts about all that. Mary is the novel’s voiceless third main character, a source of obsession for both of the siblings—Duncan’s obsessive love, and Janice’s obsessive hatred. Duncan’s fixation on Mary is the only thing that can rival his pursuit of all information about the gray caps and The Silence, just as Janice’s intense dislike of her is the only thing that can rival her fixation on destroying herself. (If I am hard on the siblings, I think it is because I see all of their flaws—Duncan’s stubbornness and pride; Janice’s penchant for self-destruction—and none of their strengths—Duncan’s intelligence; Janice’s… well, I’m sure that she has some strengths on display in this novel—in myself.) Those are the axes around which this story turns: Mary, The Gray Caps, Janice’s Social Life—not necessarily in that order.
With all of these plates to keep in the air at once, you’d think that Janice would struggle to stay on track, and you would be right! This novel is full of digressions, false starts, and asides, all of which
[Apparently, Goodreads has a character limit, and I have exceeded it. I refuse to cut out anything that I have already written, and so, the remainder of this review will live on only in my Google Docs. Shriek and Finch are both incredible reads, and I recommend this entire collection wholeheartedly. Email me if you want the full review, I guess. Hopefully my future reviews will be somewhat shorter, lol.]

[Clay Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jeff Vandermeer’s Ambergris is actually 3 books that Mr. Vandermeer wrote long before the Southern Reach Trilogy. I assumed that Mr. Vandermeer was about 42-45, and was shocked to see that he is actually 53! Gazooks! 3 years younger than myself. Surprising indeed to me.

I’d seen these volumes of the 3 books of Ambergris during Jeff Vandermeer’s scathing rise but realized that they were mostly in paperback. Old paperbacks. City Of Saints And Madmen, Shriek: An Afterword, Finch, now all in one tremendous 800 plus EBook volume. All pertaining to Ambergris an unusual city to be sure.

Ambergris is ‘taken from’ by force (Think America’s Natives) from a small dwarfish people known as the Mushroom People or Grey Caps. And you might want to take a look at DoroHeDoro (2020 Netflix) to get the feel of possibilities to Ambergris’ Mushroom angst and obsessions.

These weird and short, Mushroom People live underground and are dangerous. One night all of the residents of Ambergris (25,000) are taken by the Mushroom People and never seen again.

The first book of Ambergris is City Of Saints and Madmen and is 5 short stories that happen to be rather good. One could imagine a young cocky Vandermeer spreading his imaginative mind to some healthy use.

The characterizations within the first book are clear and telling. One about a frightened junk dealer on the rise with a blind wife who has a ‘thing’ about a spooky bird cage. Another about an so-so artist who must ‘let go’ of his inhibitions, who does so violently one night. And the first story about a man, a traveller of sorts who falls into a mad infatuation with a non-existent manakin. A book Jeff-O-Philes would surely want to read.

The second book of Ambergris is Shriek: An Afterword. Reading this book is nothing like the first book. Janice Shriek is an artist that ‘didn’t make it’ meaning that she wasn’t lauded by the ‘ding-dongs’ of the art world and didn’t make any money. Period. She decides to be a seller of art instead. And in this 2nd book she is the author of a biography pertaining to her brother Duncan Shriek.

Duncan is a herstorian/scholar and a man who decides to know the Mushroom People (Grey Caps) up close and personal underground. Shriek uses the materials garnered through many of the characters mentioned in the first book of Ambergris.

I was rather underwhelmed by Vandermeer’s penchant of placing parentheses of Duncan Shriek himself, answering his Biographer, his sister Janice, as she writes it! A terrible idea of Jeff’s, that I soon decided to skip altogether! I’ve never known a Biography where the subject gets to comment line by line of what he ‘thinks’ of his Biographers very word. Fact is because of this, Duncan loses all mystery and character! I hated this guy. Vandermeer surely needed an actual Editor, to tell Jeff: “Don’t Do It Boy!” But fat chance of that with an Ego of a writer of Jeff’s stance and circumstance. Jeff should have erased every single one of Duncan’s comments! Thematically Jeff’s ‘trick’ here is a ‘boneheaded’ mistake and very well nearly ruins the whole novel.

I continued regardless of the Duncan parenthesis, I skipped them all, and when I accidentally read a line or two of them, Duncan’s nasal voice and mean attitude was beside the point. I was thinking in the end that Vandermeer could easily rewrite Shriek and that would be a great idea. He could add new material (after erasing Duncan) as well. I’m thinking Jeff might want to when he turns 80 years old. Such would be a sort of ‘twilight’ project for such a writer as Jeff!

Shriek does have a good voice in Janice Shriek however, her life is tough by any standard and Vandermeer doesn’t need Duncan at all in the book. I didn’t see any need for Janice to make such a big deal about another woman. What for? Her reactions to Duncan’s girlfriend are petty jealously. Beneath such a literary woman.

As I continued with Mr. Vandermeer’s 2nd book Shriek I soon realized that I cannot recommend the book. The final 50 pages of the book does not make up for the deficiencies of the plot. Duncan Shriek doesn’t feel real. We don’t live any moments with him on his hunt for the ‘Grey Caps’ underground and his sister who is writing all this Janice, is a torn woman, who lives a diminished existence, as things go badly for her as the book proceeds. One or the other, Janice alone would have been better to the plot, with both brother and sister, in the book one doesn’t get any sense of place or circumstances. Their father’s death and their mother are only waxed upon never actually known.

Now onto the 3rd and final book of Ambergris, Finch.

Finch is the main character he is a Detective working the Ambergris Law and Order building in downtown Ambergris, the strange and unusual city that is the center of the 3 books of Vandermeer’s Ambergris.

The neat thing about Finch is that it is set way after the first two books. Everyone from those tales is either dead of somewhere else. In this book, Finch investigates 2 dead bodies that are found in an apartment. This is an Ambergris that is ruled by the subterranean ‘gray caps’ those mean little unusuals that litter every book of Ambergris. Now they have taken back their city and are building two massively huge skyscrapers in Ambergris.

Finch and his ‘human’ detectives, about 6 or so are from the day crew and their boss is a gray cap, he clicks and clacks when he talks, and is called Scarry, I think his name was. Finch recounts his life mostly about his father who was a 2 timer in the war between the two merchant enterprises in the books. Finch’s father is long dead but still beloved by Finch. The murders are unique because a grey cap is one of them, cut neat in half.

Most of the book is Finch getting down to what caused the death of the two. They simply appeared in the apartment this way, dead. And it comes out that the dead ‘human’ one is someone from the 2nd book! I don’t want to give it away! There are many new things to Finch and it is atmospheric. Supernatural in fact.

A worthwhile read on its own the final book sums up Ambergris well. The 2nd book Shriek is the clincher here. Like an Oreo Cookie with lard in the middle instead of the tasty creamy substance, Shriek as I’ve written up above needs a complete rewrite. Remember Ambergris is from ‘young’ Jeff, who has now given us his Area X, the brilliant trilogy of horror. Shriek doesn’t sink the book, not at all, it simply is not ‘good’ enough to sandwich the books that begins and ends it.

I must recommend Ambergris, however, as the whole is larger than the some. It’s a long read but a worthy endeavor, I must say.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have long wanted to read the books of Ambergris having previously really enjoyed Vandermeer's Area X books. While this trilogy represents his earlier work, it is absolutely masterful in its worldbuilding; each of the books reveals something about the others and through all of them, Ambergris emerges as a fully developed and entirely living world, complete with history, culture, religions, and social norms. It reflects some of the the wide range of Vandermeer's talents, with the first book ultimately a collection of novellas, the second written in biographical style (complete with interjections from the presumed dead subject of the biography), and the third a detective story. It is not for the faint of heart and not a quick read, but this trilogy is vital reading for fans of the 'new weird.'

Content warnings: torture (on page), body horror (extensive, graphic), blood, gore, violence, murder, death, colonial violence / colonization, genocide, suicide, grief

[Micah Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wildly inventive, sometimes to a fault. VanderMeer always pushes boundaries.

[ZomBobby · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was gifted to me at an extraordinarily painful moment in life, when I desperately needed a distraction. I’d never heard of this particular story but was familiar with Vadermeer, so I went in blind. The sheer volume of three books consolidated into one was overwhelming. Consumed, entirely, frustratingly consumed by these stories. There were parts of this that absolutely piss me off and made this shit so hard to read. I’m a quick reader and this legitimately took me months to finish, months! I’m not someone who typically annotates, and this book changed all of that, I find myself doing it all the time. When a book, words on a page, force me to write my own emotional response out back to the same page, says something to me. This is a huge, great big book about mushrooms, yeah mushrooms. This is an absolute dream come true for me in the weirdest way. I’ll treasure this book for years to come for a whole list of reasons. Books are fucking magical and this one is for me.

[Captain Sir Roddy, R.N. (Ret.) · Rating 5 out of 5]

VanderMeer's fiction is so out there and the concepts and ideas that flow off of each page are simply jaw-droppingly unexpected. Ambergris is a collection of connected short stories and two novels and it works beautifully. There are flickers of the mind-boggling imagination of Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino throughout, but I want to be clear that VanderMeer is his own guy, he is blazing his own trail with his fictions. In a nutshell, what is going on with Ambergris is it is the overlay of the human world on top of the world of a sentient race of fungi. Yep, mushrooms, and mushrooms with a purpose. This overlay occurs in and below the human city of Ambergris, and it is not altogether pleasant. No, not in the least.

I think it is rather trite to call VanderMeer an environmental fantasy or eco-scifi author. Having said that though, I think he is a master at describing the human relationship with the natural and unnatural environments around us. If you've read his Southern Reach trilogy, or his sequence of Borne novels, or his most recent novel, Hummingbird Salamander, you know precisely what I mean. Good stuff, folks!

[Giannechini · Rating 3 out of 5]

Parts were great, others were quite slow. I liked the historical pamphlet quite a lot, the footnotes were excellent. An afternword I didn't like at all, it took too long to get to anywhere and it wasn't satisfying when I arrived. Finch was better, but again, it felt like it didn't quite deliver. Loved the scope of it though, and the immersion.

[Lydia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ambergris is something that transcends the usual reading experience for me. I can't express how I feel about it exactly, but it is something I love immensely for the intricate insanity. It's true "metafiction" whatever that means.

Love love love love love love love love love

[Leili V. · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF @ 8%, summary mentioned Area X but this book is nothing like that. So boring.

[Saturn Caelus · Rating 5 out of 5]

While not perfect at all points, taken as a whole, the Ambergris trilogy is nothing short of glorious. Vandermeer, as usual, revels in complexity, in mystery, in dry black humor. I found myself alternately guffawing aloud and jittering with tension, but never bored, even for a short moment.

TL;DR: Mushrooms are really fucking cool, and really fucking scary. Jeff Vandermeer is a sick genius, and the funniest man alive.

The following review necessarily contains spoilers; we’re talking about a whole trilogy. The biggest spoiler possible is a sequel.


City of Saints and Madmen or COSAM
A collection of short stories rather than novels, City of Saints and Madmen is a wonderful introduction to the city, the world, of Ambergris. Dark and shifty, brimming with violence and eroticism, corners all stuffed with secrets, all poisonously intriguing. Vandermeer's creation, though perhaps nascent at this stage, already has a verisimilitude that few other settings manage to evoke.

COSAM has had multiple incarnations, each printing containing a changing list of short stories. The edition I read, being the bound collection of all 3 Ambergris novels, included the following:

Dradin, in Love
Serving as the first glimpse into Ambergris, the story follows a destitute missionary -Dradin, of course- as he arrives in the city after an indistinct incident at his mission in the jungle. We meet him as he falls hopelessly, obsessively, perhaps pathetically in love with a woman he sees in the window of the Hoegbotton & Sons headquarters. Sparing the lurid details, the half-crazed, besotted fool continually trips over himself and, in his attempts to win this stranger’s heart, is taken advantage of right up to the end.

It may not be Vandermeer’s best work, and as one reads through the rest of the series, he in fact seems to distance himself from it - in clever and even comedic ways. That being said, it is not an unpleasant read; despite being perhaps a bit stark in tone and obvious in its reveals, Dradin, in Love still contains the characteristic wit, and a bit of the depth, I have come to expect from Vandermeer. Not my favorite of the bunch, but it would be an outright lie to say it didn’t hook me immediately

The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of the City of Ambergris
Here I truly fell in love with Ambergris, and the cast of characters that inhabit it. The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of the City of Ambergris is what it says on the tin; a tourist guide to the city, focusing on its founding and the events immediately following. It is also so much more. The in-universe author of the 51 page ‘pamphlet’ is the delightfully wry Duncan Shriek, a washed up historian, exasperated with the very idea of being made to write schlock directed at tourists. His personality shines through every sentence, turning what might have been a boring exposition dump into a romp through the past.

From jump, he warns that “the most interesting information will be included only in footnote form” and that he “will endeavor to include as many footnotes as possible.” Suffice it to say, he delivers. Almost half of the bulk of the “pamphlet” is footnotes; some provide commentary, or additional context, extra information. Some are personal anecdotes. Others are just outright funny.

It probably doesn’t make a very good tourist guide, but it is an excellent briefing on Ambergrisian history. From the Manzikert dynasty to the grey caps and the Silence they caused, the beginnings of the Festival of the Freshwater Squid to the doomed monk Samuel Tonsure, this story more than any lays the foundation for everything that follows. Easily my favorite from COSAM

The Cage
Perhaps it was my fatigue at the time of reading, but to be honest, I found this one rather forgettable. It introduces us to the original Hoegbotton, a modest man named Robert, and reveals how his honest antique and curio store became the shady shipping magnate it is throughout the rest of the Ambergris stories.

It takes place one hundred years after the Silence (as explained in Guide to the Early History of the City of Ambergris,) a time in which the grey caps have begun enacting sinister, deadly fungal infiltrations into the homes of Ambergris. A time in which the ever present fungus threatens to overtake the city entirely. The Cage is certainly unsettling, in ways reminiscent of Vandermeer’s later work in Area X, and not at all poorly written. Something about this one just slid right off of me, failed to stick.

The Transformation of Martin Lake
Insight into an interesting period of Ambergrisian history: the time immediately following the death of oft mentioned composer Voss Bender. One part a biography and artistic analysis of the artist Martin Lake by one Janice Shriek (yes, relation. Duncan Shriek’s sister, she is also responsible for editing The Guide.) The other part follows Martin Lake in the period immediately before his meteoric rise, spearheading the “New Art” movement, beginning with a mysterious invitation to a beheading.

Janice is not as immediately likeable as her brother; we meet her as a mildly snobbish gallery owner. A failed artist, she clings desperately to the acclaim selling other people's work might bring her. This is only half the story, but I digress; that isn’t to be made known until later. Lake, for his part, is an archetypal starving artist. He has the potential for true genius, but he’s grown stagnant, his peers outpacing him. He’s sympathetic, clever, Van Gogh tortured. The art scene outlined in Transformation is vibrant, lustful, rich and bacchanal. It feels like one must imagine it was like to be on the bleeding edge of Modern Art. But of course, Ambergris’ characteristic violence lurks beneath the surface. Another stunning dive into the city that leaves you feeling grimy, wanting more.

and finally, The Strange Case of X
Perhaps the most unique; I won’t speak of it at length here, because to describe too much is to reveal the twist inherent in the premise. A mysterious man interrogates an even more mysterious author, called only X. X is mad, perhaps, a bit pathetic, and wildly interesting. Funny, personal, and more than a bit sad.

###

If it is not clear by this point, I love this trilogy. I tried, multiple times, to cut down the length of this review, but every word I type reminds me of another thing to talk about. I have done my best to contain myself, but I am a naturally long winded person, even more so when I’m talking about things I enjoy. This interjection, obviously, isn’t doing the length any favors. So,

Shriek, an Afterword
Where to begin? Shriek, an Afterword begins, conservatively, a half dozen times. Ostensibly, it's an afterword to the Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of the City of Ambergris written by Janice Shriek, (she’s back!) with commentary by Duncan Shriek (he’s back!) In reality, it tells the story of the siblings, from Janice’s perspective, from start to (supposed) end. This is the other half, or rather the other ninety percent, of Janice’s characterization in Transformation. Yes, Janice is a failed artist, failed gallery owner, failed author. Yes, she was for a time quite vapid and arrogant. Yes, one could fairly describe her as unlikeable at times. But an Afterword provides context, and texture to her life.

I try to avoid summarizing, but even if I were prone to it, I would find it largely impossible. The story twists and meanders, doubling back on itself. It stutter steps and lurches towards the ending, which is teased at the beginning, never letting you forget the conclusion it is inching inexorably towards. It’s maddening. It’s incredible. I wouldn’t change a thing.

If Duncan’s personality shined in Guide to the Early History it is practically blinding here, matched only by Janice’s. The siblings' love for each other is evident in all parts of the sordid tale, as well as the tension that suffuses their relationship. They contradict each other, lie and connive not just to each other, but the reader. They are unreliable as narrators, and Vandermeer makes you love them for it. The Shriek siblings are far from perfect. Both of them are deeply flawed, hurt each other intentionally and unintentionally. And yet, or maybe because of it, I found myself caring for them, relating to them deeply.

Janice’s story is tied, though not entirely dependent on Duncan’s. Not entirely unexpected, as the story is supposedly an afterword to his pamphlet. But she doesn’t feel secondary, like a passenger. She is alive, fully fleshed out. We watch as Janice grows up, scrabbles for success, finds it, drowns in it, loses everything. We watch as she recovers, ekes out a living, loses everything again, and keeps going despite it all. She survives a war, a suicide attempt, multiple ruined and ruinous careers. All the while, dealing with her eccentric brother, keeping him afloat, finding him work, trying desperately to maintain a relationship with him despite his constant disappearances.

Duncan’s story, told through Janice’s eyes, excerpts from his journal, and his characteristically funny asides, is more esoteric. Janice lives aboveground, in the city of Ambergris. Duncan, for the most part lives below it. His whole life is dedicated to unraveling the mysteries of the city, all of them centering -at least in his eyes- on the grey caps (who I haven’t said much about. Rest assured, they are there throughout, but here is where they truly become central.) He risks his life, ruining himself and his career in pursuit of it, convinced a grand conspiracy sprawls out in the tunnels underneath Ambergris. If not for Janice’s efforts, he would surely estranged himself from his sister

Despite the worldshaking stakes of Duncan’s story (and Janice’s, where they oft intersect,) Shriek, an Afterword doesn’t feel any less personal for it. Yes it is about the grey caps, and the New Art movement, and the War of the Houses. But it is more importantly about two siblings, who’s relationship feels (in my expert opinion as a sibling) very real, despite the unreal world it inhabits. I laughed, I cried, I cursed in anger. Vandermeer has done it again.

###

And he continues to do it.

The final entry into the vast world of Ambergris, Finch is not a detective novel. The main character is not a detective. John Finch is insistent on it. Set about a century after the disappearance of Duncan and Janice Shriek, this is the wackiest incarnation of Ambergris yet. After decades of war between Houses Hoegbotton and House Frankwith and Lewden, the grey caps Rose, taking over Ambergris. The city is a fungal hellscape ruled over by the grey caps, cruel in their inscrutability, inscrutable in their cruelty. Their surveillance is perfect, their spore cameras present in all corners of the city for all of history, their Partial agents living cameras with a gleeful propensity for violence. The only reason anyone has any secrets is simple: the grey caps simply don’t have the time to scrub through all the footage and root out dissenters.

Unsavories they do catch are sent to the work camps, horrific conditions and forced labor focused on one goal. The completion of the terrible towers in the bay. They grow taller every day, no one knowing what it will mean for Ambergris when they are completed. The last hope for the city, the rebels, chased into the hellish HFZ. Fractured, maybe destroyed outright. Everyone counting on them to come back, not many believing they ever will. Finch is a detective, or at least the grey caps call him one. Forced into investigating a mysterious case by his strange, sadistic handler. A grey cap he calls Heretic. Two bodies, a man and a grey cap, found in an apartment. The grey cap missing its legs, an impossible clean cut. No clear cause of death. A paper with strange words found on the man’s body, stranger symbols.

Finch’s investigation leads him to the dark corners of Ambergris, made darker by six years of grey cap occupation. Former spies who vanish without a trace. Sadistic criminals from out of town, looking to profit off of the cooling corpse of a city. Nobody is who they seem, nothing what it looks like. Every door leads to another door. The prose is elegant in its simplicity. Clipped sentences, barely more than fragments. Finch’s dark thoughts leak onto the page in italics. The few relationships Finch has are strained. Friends who are more informants. A partner who’s more fungus. A girlfriend more a phantom. Nobody is who they seem. Finch is a noir detective flick slathered in garish fungal colors, spores painting the sky unholy tones. Unbelievably entertaining, heartbreaking at times, funny at others. Jeff Vandermeer belongs in jail, probably.

[Kris Sellgren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jeff Vandermeer wrote a series of connected novellas and short stories about the city of Ambergris, contained in this collection. I started and couldn’t get into the first novella contained in this book, so I skipped around and read stories that I liked better. In a strange way, I both loved and did not finish this collection.

“The Strange Case of X”: This short story is about a writer in an insane asylum, who has begun to believe that Ambergris is more real than ordinary reality. It is very well written and I didn’t see the twist coming at all.

“Finch”: This stand alone science fiction novel is is perhaps one of Vandermeer’s best books. It is a hard-boiled detective story with a science fiction setting. Finch is a detective in Ambergris, now conquered by weird mushroom people called gray caps. His gray cap boss assigns Finch to an apparent double murder case, where half of a gray cap body—very neatly sliced in half—and a human body were found in an apartment. His research into the case takes him to very strange places, including parallel universes. Fungi introduced by the gray caps are everywhere in the city, overtaking buildings and trying to colonize humans. The exotic biology of the many types of fungi serves many gray cap purposes, including surveillance and distribution of narcotic mushrooms. As Finch delves deeper into the mystery, no-one is as they seem (including Finch). The most memorable scene is a confrontation between Finch and a crime boss, as the boss’s thug rapidly whittles and shows Finch little figurines of everyone important in his life: his cat, his pet lizard, his detective partner, his girlfriend. It is a very effective unspoken threat. This enjoyable story is a great introduction to Vandermeer’s work, and put his “Southern Reach” trilogy in a new light for me.

[Jonathan Hannaford · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent series. I’ve become a big fan of Jeff VanderMeer after reading Borne and his Southern Reach books. Like all of his other work, he excels in the construction of a world that is so distinctly other. Each book is in a different format: a collection of short stories, a memoir, and a novel. The differences in each medium help develop the image of Ambergris as a gritty, violent, ever-changing city. The city, people, and stories all stick with you well after you’re finished reading.

All of the books host a collection of varied and well-developed characters. VanderMeer mixes in action, despair, humor, and horror effortlessly in his prose. Shared characters and events are subtly layered throughout the series, making 3 books feel like one cohesive story.

[Paul Guthrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection is actually three novels: City of Saits and Madmen (actually a collection of 4 stories), Shriek: An Afterword and Finch.

All take place in Ambergris, a fungus infected city located just to the left of your imagination.

The books track more than a thousand years of history there. The dedication to worldbuilding and tone is impressive. Yet it also gets deeply personal at times, especially in Shriek, which explores obsession, addiction, loss, and personal transformation better than most memoirs.

[pee-bee · Rating 5 out of 5]

After completing the Area X trilogy, and now the Ambergris trilogy, I am convinced that Jeff VanderMeer is my favourite author. His creativity, enthusiasm, and pure genius for writing poetic, ethereal, and eccentric fiction has won my heart over.

This series is phenomenal, read it as soon as you can. It's like no other world I've ever had shared with me, and the way Jeff brings it together in three distinct, but all equally necessary, approaches is nothing short of impressive.

[pee-bee · Rating 5 out of 5]

After completing the Area X trilogy, and now the Ambergris trilogy, I am convinced that Jeff VanderMeer is my favourite author. His creativity, enthusiasm, and pure genius for writing poetic, ethereal, and eccentric fiction has won my heart over.

This series is phenomenal, read it as soon as you can. It's like no other world I've ever had shared with me, and the way Jeff brings it together in three distinct, but all equally necessary, approaches is nothing short of impressive.

[Christian Buttner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some time has gone by since reading all three books separately: I am lucky enough to have all three 1st editions, all signed by the author.
They were beautiful enough for me to order this omnibus when it came out and Mr. VanderMeer was kind enough to personalize it for me as well.
He started on City of Saints and Mad Men over 20 years ago and it was quite the undertaking as it is a literal history of a fictional city told through 10 short stories and novellas, each distinct in style and substance: ranging from pamphlets complete with date appropriate illustrations on the city itself to horror stories to historical essays: all blended together to paint a unique and entertaining history of a city sitting somewhere in time that is like a hybrid of New Orleans and London with a lot of fungus and squid hunting (not to mention the horrors of colonialism) thrown in...altogether a brilliant introduction to Ambergris.
The second book: Shriek, An Afterward, which somehow feels longer (it is a novel, though once again Mr. VanderMeer cleverly mixes thing up by interposing a second narrative within the main narrative) is the autobiography of Janice Shreik, a one time sensation in the city's exuberant art scene and eventually a bitter but still humorous has-been, locked up in a pub's ground floor boarding room typing up her story which is as much that of her equally eccentric though far more academic brother Duncan a scholar and historian, but now another washed up could have been who had the misfortune of making two large mistakes for those times in the city of Ambergris. I won't spoil it but some relationships are ill-advised (in any time period really, even in a fictional city) and some subjects (particularly in Ambergris) are verboten. So Janice writes about herself and oozes nostalgia for her heydays of endless partying and schmoozing and what she thinks of her brother and wonders what happened to him (he dissapeared some time ago - his research into the city's past swallowing him up)...and here, in the margins of her autobiography we find Duncan's notes and corrections and anecdotes which add more humor to the whole...for Duncan has returned after Janice has finished her work and now she has "disappeared" and her brother needs to set some things right as far as this autobiography/biography goes...
In Shreik, the author almost reminds me of Nabokov in his way of effortlessly shifting prose and his beautiful description of the city itself, it's architecture and culture: it easily becomes the third character in novel.
It is such a richly and realistically described place one wishes to be there and walk it's streets, engage it's people in it's cafe's and art galleries and maybe even poke around in a cellar or two after a local ale.
The 3rd book, Finch, jumps a hundred years forward and yet again into a whole new style: that of the detective-noir with a new weird beat. Think Philip Marlowe meets his match in a walking, talking, killer mushroom and that's putting it poorly. I actually read Finch 1st as it's the 1st of the books I stumbled upon and so maybe that's why it's my favorite. That and I love Raymond Chandler. And weird shit. So put that together and I'm hooked. Finch is meant to kind of bring the history and tale of Ambergris to a sort of conclusion and it does a good job, with lots of action, beautiful writing and a haunting uniqueness that makes you want to read it again.
These three books (now together in a new gorgeous tome) is one of my favorite series of stories of all. Ambergris is easily one of my favorite literary haunts and one can only hope VanderMeer will allow us to walks it's streets again in the future...
It is placed upon my bookshelves along with Michael Moorcock, Fritz Leiber, Thomas Ligotti and the other gods of weird fiction.

[Newton Nitro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ambergris (City of Saints, Shirek: A Posface, Finch) - Jeff VanderMeer | Clássico do New Weird! Fantasia Estranha, Steampunk Surrealista e Fungos Inteligentes! | NITROLEITURAS #steampunk

Uma obra-prima da literatura New Weird contemporânea e parte das minhas pesquisas e referências para o meu projeto atual de RPG steampunk pós-colonialista transahumanista narrativista PbtA, o Steam Runnerz RPG - Mercenários Transhumanos da Era do Éter (Sistema 2d6World Pbta).

Antes da Área X, havia Ambergris. Jeff VanderMeer concebeu o que se tornaria sua primeira série clássica de culto de obras especulativas: a Trilogia Ambergris. Agora, pela primeira vez, a história da metrópole de Ambergris é coletada em um único volume, incluindo City of Saints and Madmen, Shriek: An Afterword, e Finch.

Ambergris (City of Saints, Shirek: A Posface, Finch) - Jeff VanderMeer | 880 pgs, MCD press, 2020 | Lido de 06/10/21 a 16/10/21 |

SUMÁRIO

Uma coletânea de três livros ambientados em Ambergris, uma cidade fantástica, steampunk e surreal, criada por Jeff VanderMeer, o autor da Southern Reach Trilogy ( Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance), que foi inspiração para o filme Aniquilação (Netflix).

Em City of Saints and Madmen, Jeff VanderMeer reinventou a literatura do fantástico. Você tem nas mãos um convite para um lugar diferente de todos que você já visitou - um convite feito por um de nossos mais audaciosos e surpreendentes mágicos literários.

Cidade de elegância e miséria. De fervor religioso e luxúrias lascivas. E por toda parte, nas paredes de pátios e igrejas, um fungo incandescente de origem misteriosa e ameaçadora. Em Ambergris, um candidato a pretendente descobre que uma rua iluminada pelo sol pode se tornar um campo de matança em um piscar de olhos. Um artista recebe um convite para uma decapitação - e se encanta. E um paciente em uma instituição para doentes mentais está convencido de que inventou uma cidade chamada Ambergris, imaginou todos os detalhes, e que ele é realmente de um lugar chamado Chicago. ...

Por sua vez, sensual e aterrorizante, cheio de exótico e erotismo, esta coleção entrelaçada de histórias, histórias e relatos de “testemunhas oculares” invoca um universo dentro de uma caixa de quebra-cabeça onde você pode se perder e se encontrar novamente.

Shirek: A Posface é o segundo livro dessa edição. Narrado com intensidade extravagante e sob condições cada vez mais urgentes pela figura da ex-sociedade Janice Shriek, este posfácio apresenta uma galeria vívida de personagens e eventos, enfatizando as aventuras do irmão de Janice, Duncan, um historiador obcecado por um caso de amor condenado e um segredo que pode matar ou transformá-lo; uma guerra entre editoras rivais que mudará Ambergris para sempre; e os bonés cinzentos, um povo marginalizado armado com tecnologias avançadas de fungos que estão esperando no subsolo por sua chance de moldar o futuro da cidade.

Parte tratado acadêmico, parte biografia que diz tudo, após esta introdução ao Grito da Família, você nunca mais olhará para a história exatamente da mesma maneira.

O terceiro livro é Finch, que conta como os misteriosos habitantes subterrâneos conhecidos como Gorros Cinza reconquistaram o fracassado estado de fantasia de Ambergris e o colocaram sob lei marcial. Eles dispersaram a Casa Hoegbotton e estão controlando os habitantes humanos com estranhas drogas viciantes, internação em campos e atos aleatórios de terror. A resistência rebelde está espalhada e os bonés cinzentos estão usando trabalho humano para construir duas torres estranhas. Neste cenário, John Finch, que vive sozinho com um gato e um lagarto, deve resolver um duplo assassinato impossível para seus mestres de boné cinza enquanto tenta fazer contato com os rebeldes. Nada é o que parece quando Finch e seu parceiro em desintegração Wyte negociam seu caminho através de uma paisagem de espiões, rebeldes e enganos.

RESENHA

Esse livro reúne em um único volume, os livros City of Saints and Madmen (2001) Shriek: An Posface (2006) e Finch (2009) de Jeff VanderMeer. Todas as histórias se passam na fantástica cidade steampunk, ou melhor, steamweird ou vaporpunk estranho de Ambergris.

É uma das obras mais representativas do movimento New Weird do começo dos anos 2000, uma literatura de fantasia sombria com influências lovecraftianas e borgianas (Jorge Luis Borges, um dos originadores do Realismo Fantástico latino-americano), repleta de ambiguidades, surrealismo, esquisitices, subversões e releituras de tropos (lugares-comuns) da literatura de fantasia e ficção científica.

Ambergris é uma cidade selvagem e anárquica, e bem original em termos de literatura de fantsia. O leitor observa e participa da cidade através da perspectiva de pessoas que veem este lugar como um lar e que consideram suas estranhezas como naturais.

City of Saints and Madmen , o primeiro livro de Ambergris, junto com The Etched City de KJ Bishop e a obra seminal do New Weird, a Perdido Street Station de China Miéville, revigorou o gênero antes de VanderMeer alcançar o "mainstream" com sua trilogia Southern Reach e trabalhos subsequentes.

E Ambergris continua impressionando!

O primeiro livro, City of Saints and Madmen , é uma coleção de contos e novelas vagamente entrelaçadas na Cidade de mbargris, um local tomado à força de um pequeno povo anão conhecido como Mushroom People ou Grey Caps e colonizado por humanos e outras espécies.

Os contos são sensacionais. Um dos meus favoritos é a história de um jovem artista, tecnicamente talentoso mas sem um sentido de real propósito artístico, que recebe um convite para uma festa estranha. A história se alterna entre as experiências desse personagem na festa e a retrospectiva de anos depois sobre seu trabalho por uma crítica de arte.

Outro conto segue a trajetória de um brilhante historiador acadêmico que não consegue mais trabalhar escrevendo teses históricas e, em vez disso, tem que pegar o que deveria ser um panfleto promocional para a cidade de Ambergris. Ao melhor estilo de Borges, esse panfleto se expande até ficar ridiculamente longo e cheio de digressões. Grande parte da discussão do historiador está ligada às relações dos colonos com gorros cinzentos, habitantes semelhantes a cogumelos que acabam sendo ignorados e construídos assim que os humanos decidem que não são uma ameaça.

Já o livro Shriek: An Posface, é literalmente um posfácio ao já excessivamente longo panfleto do historiador e lentamente se transforma em autobiografia, mas que conta com narradores não confiáveis.

O último romance em Ambergris é Finch, que, diferente da maioria dos contos, tem uma estrutura narrativa mais tradicional, apesar do surrealismo lovecraftiano-borgeano e dos toques pós-modernos de um narrador não confiável. É um narrativa de mistério em que um policial e seu parceiro estão investigando um duplo assassinato, à mando de seus senhores, os Grey Caps, a raça de humanóides fungóides que agora controla Ambergris. Eles esbarram em facções que irão matá-los se eles resolverem o assassinato, e em facções que irão matá-los se não o fizerem. Para piorar as coisas, o parceiro do detetive Finch está se desintegrando em uma série de esporos devido a uma doença misteriosa. Além disso, os dois se envolvem em conspirações revolucionárias e a atuação de espiões.

Finch segue uma trama tortuosa e imprevisível, focada tanto na estranheza e na progressiva insanidade causada pela degeneração de Ambergris sob os desejos alienígenas e incompreensíveis do povo fungóide, quanto no processo de auto-descobrimento e auto destruição do detetive Finch.

Recomendo a leitura de Ambergris para leitores que buscam algo original, diferente e até mesmo chocante na fantasia contemporânea!

Newton Nitro 07/11/21

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[Brandon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ambergris features some of the most dense world building any reader could ever ask for between two covers. Consisting of three separate but connected novels, this omnibus brought me fully into the world of the titular city, against my will or otherwise.

Without getting too into the weeds, this book follows the fictional city of Ambergris throughout its history, through the eyes of countless characters. There is not one stone left unturned by the end of these novels, at least in terms of complete immersion. I know more about Ambergris than I know about any of the cities I've lived in in real life, due in no small part to Jeff Vandermeer's obsession with this story.

The pacing is frankly all over the place in Ambergris. In City of Saints and Madmen, each novella within felt an appropriate length, while the entirety of Shriek made me question if I should DNF this behemoth of a book. Finch brought it back to something more manageable, but if I'm being honest with myself, this series would've been better served by reading each book independently instead of one after another in quick succession. Your enjoyment of Ambergris will depend on your overall enjoyment of the setting plus your tolerance for sloggy back stories. Unfortunately, for me, it was just too much.

All of that is to say there were things I adored about Ambergris. In general, I thought the characters were strong, the themes that were presented were given PLENTY of room to breathe, and obviously the world building is a complete standout. Vandermeer had passion coming into this project and truly left nothing on the table, and this effort won't go unnoticed or unappreciated by me.

While it was too slow for me at points, I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy the overall experience of Ambergris. I allowed myself to become engulfed by the aura of this novel, and I genuinely am glad I did. This singular collection is a monument that shows the dedication and passion that can go into bringing something to life on a page. It's easy to see why some people are enamored with this story, I just wish my tolerance for the slow parts was higher.

3/5 stars

[Qbz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall I found this really enjoyable, breaking it by part..
Book 1 had some of the most interesting stories and I liked the style of that sort of structure where its short stories that get to something hyper interesting very quickly. It didn't really answer any questions and left me wanting more.

Book 2 was mixed. While I was invested in the premise that we're following around authors of the hogboten pamphlet from book 1 and appreciated the worldbuilding progression where hogboten and sons became increasingly important, I think there was a little bit too much everyday life of the main character duo that left me wanting so much more greycap lore than I got. I kind of felt disappointed that it was introduced as following around a historian primarily focused on the silence and it didn't really give too much silence and greycap lore beyond a few scenes, which I enjoy a lot. But stuff like the extended discussion of his secret relationship with Mary dragged on a bit for me. Maybe it had some thematic relevance I wasn't smart enough to appreciate, I'm not sure.

Book 3 being a timeskip to after the rising was an interesting choice. We saw a brief view of what the rising might have looked like towards the end of book 2. Hard to say whether or not I would have preferred a book that started at the rising. I guess it might be fair to say that if the story you wanted to tell was about living in the entrenched rule of the greycaps, close to the completion of their project, starting at the rising just wouldn't have worked. I liked the character of finch but I'm not sure if i really loved the more mundane feeling conflict/plot going on for the majority of the book. On the one hand, it works well being a relatively standard type of task for a detective in the very unstandard context of this greycap ruled society. On the other hand, I didn't really feel like it gave me enough answers to the previously presented mysteries to have me leave feeling fully satisfied. I do think some ambiguity and lack of complete resolution is a good match for the story as a whole but as just a greedy reader i wanted more answers.

[Frank]

I won this book from a Goodreads giveaway in exchange for a review. However I haven't been able to finish all of it. Let me explain.

1. City of Saints and Madmen
I enjoyed this book a lot! It felt like classic Jeff Vandermeer. You can tell he's working through ideas that will eventually become more refined as his book Annihilation.

2. Shriek: An Afterword
I read probably 85% and couldn't finish it. It really is just a giant afterword. The writing is great, but I just felt myself not caring about it at all.

3. Finch
I started it, it seems like it will be better than Shriek, but i'm so exhausted from force feeding myself Shriek that I can't be bothered to read this anymore. Maybe one day i'll pick it back up again

Vandermeer is one of my favorite authors but this was an overall exhausting read. I felt like it wasn't really the right time for me to read it personally. I'll pick it up again with time

[Lee Hannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jeff VanderMeer always surprises me. I was introduced to now one of my favorite authors through his Southern Reach Trilogy. Having an opportunity to read some of his first works, the novels and stories now all compiled here together in the Ambergris set, was fantastic.

I really enjoyed seeing this more fantasy style of VanderMeer and was swept away in this intoxicating and fascinating world he built. The various stories and tales were woven together through the descriptions of a fantastical world reminding me of a modern version of a medieval setting on the brink of a Renaissance.

The characters are intriguing and I enjoyed the various footnotes which made the stories feel like a retelling of actual events even in a clearly fictitious world.

Wonderful escape!

[ghost reads]

3/16/21 City of Saints and Madmen (abridged): VanderMeer has an absolutely baffling way of crafting surreal, horrifying worlds that just work in the best, most mesmerizing way. This collection of novellas skews far closer to something distinctly "horror" than much of his later work, but that's what makes it so incredibly wonderful. Although there were some stories I didn't care for as much as others, the majority were delightful in the worst way. Particular favorites include "The Transformation of Martin Lake", "The Cage", and the unexpectedly hilarious "An Early History of Ambergris".