Reviews
Jeff VanderMeer's first book of Ambergris is a complex, humorous, awesome, inspired, boring, redundant, over-foot-notey, groundbreaking, self-absorbed and very pretty book. I can't quite call it a novel, nor a book of short stories: it's more of a patchwork, novellas and fake historical pamphlets and short stories and other bizarro little experiments that succeed at times with flying colors. At other times, they crash and burn. City of Saints and Madmen is a collection of tales set in Ambergris, a fantastic world populated with more madmen than saints. The city was "settled," in a manner of speaking, when pilgrims arrived in a beautiful city inhabited by tall, nonviolent mushroom people. Long story short, the settlers made up something to take offense at, and killed off all the mushroom people, taking the city for their own. Since then, the citizens of Ambergris has been under the threat of the mushroom people who have seemingly come from nowhere and begun to inhabit the city again, cleaning up the city at night and occasionally robbing or killing people. But, mushroom people aren't the only threat to the city's cityzens . . . dangerous dwarfs, murderous masked men, ethereal evils, frightening festivals and other, uh, bad stuff is just waiting around the corner to create carnage. "Dradin, In Love" is the opening novella, unless you count the dizzying Michael Moorcock introduction that . . . well . . . looks very nice on the page. "Dradin" is a good strong opening, setting the tone of the city of Ambergris and introducing you to some surprising cultural aspects of the city. The story ends very strongly, and has some memorable imagery. You are also left, in the end, unsure at what point in the story Dradin went mad, or if he was mad from the beginning. It's one of those stories you keep thinking about. Then, we have "An Early History of Ambergris," a historical pamphlet written by a snarky historian. This lays out the mysterious-yet-hilarious history of the city, with fun illustrations, footnotes, references to other (nonexistant) authors, and whatnot. Another very strong piece, and well placed. It gives the reader a chance to recover from the darkness of "Dradin." On to "The Transformation of Martin Lake." This is every bit as mysterious as the earlier stories, and is probably the most suspenseful part of the book. I liked the story a lot, although the ending was a bit of a whimper, and not so much of a bang. I believe that, throughout the story, the mystery works very well. However, when the mystery is still around in its entirety after the story concludes, the reader is left wanting more resolution. "The Strange Case of Mr. X" is the last of the novellas from the original version of the book. This one is VERY funny, very weird, and also provides a much needed tonal change from "Martin Lake." It ends on a very strong note, and I was still very enthralled after finishing this novella. Then, we begin our journey through the appendix. This is over half the length of the book, and doesn't include a consistent page numbering system. This is intentional, since the appendix is a series of writings that had been in the possession of Mr. X. These opuses included some goodies, like "The Cage" and "The Exchange." And, this section of the book shows VanderMeer doing some really interesting stuff. F'rinstance: "The Exchange" purports to be a story by two authors from Ambergris, and the center of the pages show the pages from their story. Below their pages are paragraphs written by a separate author, telling a different story about the authors themselves. These two stories interweave effectively. Another experiment that works less well, but is interesting in theory, is "King Squid," a pamphlet about Ambergris's native King Squids, including their biology, activities, etc. Through the footnotes and the bibliography, the author's occasional comments about his personal life tell a story separate from the sometimes not enthralling squid stuff. This story seemed more interesting in theory than execution. Some versions of this book also include an encoded story. The version I read had the story already decoded. This story, "The Man Who Had No Eyes," was interesting, but if I'd spent half a saturday decoding the fucker, I would've been shitaaay. I would've expected something at least as good as "Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner." So, as far as the appendix goes, I feel VanderMeer's ambitions slightly overreached his execution. However, I love experiments, and it's not that anything in here is BAD. It's just highly uneven, with all of the best stuff at the front. I can't say for sure that this would be better if the organization were changed; after all, if you view the appendix as something optional, something for the real VanderMeer fans, then you have an incredibly strong set of novellas, and a bunch of freebie weirdnesses to read through whenever you get curious enough. Of course, I plowed through the whole thing, reading every single footnote, reading the whole bibliography to "King Squid," and then I even thought about reading the glossary. (That's when I decided it was time to curb my dorkdom. I didn't read the glossary.) But, I'm also someone who refuses to turn off CDs before the secret song plays, even if I have to wait nine minutes for the secret song to start, and all it is is Kurt Kobain screaming loudly over a bunch of feedback for like an hour. (If you're a Blind Melon fan, you should know that you can rewind from the beginning of CD versions of the album "Soup" and hear a lame 15-second acoustic thing.) Err....back on topic: if one is to view the appendix as a part of the book and not just an appendix, this would be a 3-star book. If one is to view this as a book with an optional appendix, I would say the book itself is a 4, perhaps a 4.5. So, I'll settle on a rating of 4. I would strongly recommend this for anyone into New Weird authors like China Mieville and . . . well . . . all those other New Weird authors out there I haven't read yet. I also think this would be a good book for anyone into more literary fiction interested in exploring the fantasy/SF genres. But, if you don't like dark fiction, you probably aren't gonna like Ambergris. The stories, although sometimes funny, are consistently bleak.
This type of narrative is typically a difficult sell for me. CSM contains a number of shorter stories (novellas and novelettes) which are loosely connected, and weaves a single narrative thread through them. The reason I find this sort of thing difficult is because no sooner have I become attached to one character, they are gone and time has skipped on, sometimes by centuries. I prefer a lengthier investment. Not all the stories are equal. The first is the weakest, imo, though it picks up towards the end. Martin Lake's tale stood out to me, though it had no surprises, because the enjoyment (much of it, anyway) comes between the comparisons of what we know to be true of his experience, and what historians believe to be true of his influences. Some of the passages were a little too dry, too "rpg splat book" for my preference. I skimmed any and all endnotes, glossaries, and the pages of fake academic references. A nice touch, but not really readable in story terms. If, however, you are the kind of reader who likes to extract every iota of detail, every hidden nugget or sly joke, every tiny puzzle piece of the vast mystery that is Ambergris, then all of that is certainly there for the harvesting. I mentioned the RPG splat book feel; the sense that this is more a fantasy setting with some stories attached. It's another reason why this sort of book is generally a hard sell for me (although, I feel compelled to add, it is exactly the sort of thing my partner loves reading.) How you feel about this aspect will be completely specific to you and your tastes. If you are the sort of person who reads RPG books for fun, this is probably something of a motherload. ### Still, I've given it 5 stars, after spending a night thinking about it... so reasons why this made the 5 star list: - I didn't enjoy every story equally, but I did enjoy every story, and each one build on previous stories to add layers, richness, metatextuality, and depth - the metatextual elements were of course a big draw, and the novel's engagement with metafiction, surreality, horror was satisfying to me. A lot of analysis went into this book and there is a lot to get out of it, if you wish to do so. - the writing is lovely. Maybe this goes without saying in a Vandermeer book but on the other hand, good writing is always worth singing praises for. - the humor really appealed to me. I've highlighted one particular chapter where the insulting tone of the narrator had me laughing out loud. - it's just so *complete* as a book. The worldbuilding is breathtaking, the scale and depth and layers to it. As someone who is a weak, half-assed worldbuilder, I was duly impressed, and (I hope) I learned a lot from this read. Ambergris feels very real, both present and distant, both fantastical and believable. That in itself is a lovely achievement - It kept me very interested and engaged despite, as I said before, this not being quiiite the type of book I usually enjoy. Nice to push the boundaries, of course.
Some parts of this book were amazing. I particularly loved the Strange Case of X and The Cage. Some parts made it very difficult for me to continue reading. I hated The King Squid until I got to the very end of the bibliography and it became interesting and Ambergris Glossary was far too long for a book that was already quite long to begin with.
