Customer Reviews

Amberville

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Recall the best book you have read this year. Fiction. Well plotted, good characters, etc. You thoroughly enjoyed it. Now, replace every character in that book with a stuffed bear. Does that in any way seem like it makes the book even better?

Now do the same thing, but only in this case it is not the best book you have ever read but a thoroughly below average myster/murder/thriller/horror/fill in the blank book. Would the inclusion of stuffed bears as characters interest you enough?

And here in lies the problem with Amberville. Stuffed bears are just not a compelling enough "hook" to overcome a mediocre story. In fact, stuffed bears actively contribute to the mediocrity. There is just nothing pleasant, interesting, fascinating, in reading about a "seedy" underworld of stuffed animals.

This may work in a visual medium - I am thinking Who Framed Roger Rabbit. And in someways, if the "toys" are used to highlight something or bring attention to things that would be missed using human characters only (The Indian in the Cupboard) it works. But simply having a murder/mystery with grimy bears does not.

All in all a book that tries to be different for the sake of being different - but in this case different is not better.

This highly imaginative story may be the most unusual book I've ever read. I'm not sure I even understand the whole thing. Set in an imaginary town where the streets are painted candy colors, living stuffed animals go about their lives. But this isn't a playful story. Eric Bear has been asked by gangster Nicholas Dove to find the "Death List" and take his name off of it. Eric enlists the help of his old cronies Tom-Tom Crow, Sam Gazelle, and Snake Marek. As Eric searches for the list, the story analyzes the dichotomies of reality vs. insanity, good vs. evil, church vs. state, with gangsters, drug users, and thieves as the doers of the deeds. The story weaves in and out of the players' lives, seemingly on-the-level, but surprises await. Not everyone is as they seem. This book will have you guessing until the very end, giving you some serious ponderings along the way.

Eric, now a grown man and a successful advertising executive, has been successful in putting his reckless and somewhat criminal youthful indiscretions behind him. At least, that's what he thought. But then the local kingpin he once worked for shows up with a non-negotiable proposition. Find the hit list that his name is rumored to be on, and remove it from the list. Otherwise, he will kill Eric's girlfriend. Now, Eric must get the old gang back together and track down the "Death List" at any cost.

A compelling and straight-forward plot. The big twist? Eric, the crime boss, and all of the other characters in the book are stuffed animals. They live in a world completely populated by stuffed animals, in which the young and old are delivered and taken away by pick-up trucks. It is definitely an interesting plot twist. But is it necessary?

The idea isn't completely original (The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, The Big Over Easy: A Nursery Crime, Meet the Feebles), but that doesn't mean it isn't good. It just means that the author might want to approach the concept from an original angle.

The author does, but he unfortunately decides to play it straight. The idea of stuffed animals in a detective mystery novel begs for plenty of sarcastic tongue-in-cheek humor, but Amberville avoids silly humor and instead relies on the subtle absurdities (a small stuffed dove as a crime kingpin, for example) to deliver the humor on their own, which they never really manage to do. Even the author's approach to the way characters are named in Amberville (simply a first name followed by the type of stuffed animal they are), shows a lack of desire to truly have fun with the concept. In short, things that should be comical or farcical are just as boring as they would be in the real world.

The result is a story that could easily be translated into a realistic, non-fantasy setting and written as a straight hardboiled noir novel. Amberville doesn't necessarily fail at making the concept work, it just doesn't fully convince the reader that fantastical setting was crucial to the story.

Amberville is supposed to reveal truths about human nature, morality, religion, and the concepts of good and evil, by having stuffed animals act out the scenarios in which these philosophical debates occur. This is where the book does fail, much in the same way that White Man's Burden failed. Changing reality in some ironic or absurd way might seem deep and meaningful at first. But unless there are other connections on multiple levels, all that you are left with is an overused gimmick.

Amberville is a good book. It has a compelling story, interesting characters, and enough twists and turns to keep a mystery lover interested until the end. It just doesn't quite manage to be what it wanted to be, and that's what keeps it from being a great book.

I was eagerly awaiting this Vine selection. I love mystery books, the premise sounded very, very intriguing, and it just looked like fun.

But the execution just isn't there for me. The language is great, the imagery works, but it just doesn't sell me. I expected, I guess, that the stuffed animal aspect would play into it more - some humor, a few tongue-in-cheek jokes, etc. Instead, this might strike me as a much better novel if the characters had been drawn as people in a fantasy society. The fact that the characters are stuffed animals, but without that idea being fully exploited, just serves to jar me and pull me out of the story.

I also started to feel that it was less noir mystery and more preachy philosophy, but then I don't like the switch to the first person point-of-view in the midst of a third-person narrative. The character doing the first-person POV is the preachy one, so maybe that's where the dislike is coming from.

I cannot argue that the author has constructed a very elaborate, interesting world using good storytelling, but I guess I expected more
humor or fun to the characters in that world. I really enjoy Eric Garcia's "Rex" novels - hard-boiled PI mysteries that also involve a fantasy situation. They are just more fun and even more believable to me, because the author realizes the absurdity. Plus, they don't have the preachiness that I was not so fond of.

I was interested by this book, but not entertained.

Stuffed animals in a gritty story of crime, conspiracy, corruption and redemption. Imagine a cross between Winnie-the-Pooh and the Continental Op. Although this novel lacks the charm of Milne and the punch of Hammett, it still is an interesting first effort from a promising (and mysterious; "Tim Davys" a pseudonym) new author. The plot was satisfyingly elaborate and the story held my attention, speeding me along quickly through its 340+ pages. I have always liked Noir as a genre, and it lends itself well to parody and pastiche. I was immediately reminded of other "noir-with-talking-animals" novels (_Who Censored Roger Rabbit?_ by Gary Wolf, and _Gun, With Occasional Music_ by Jonathan Lethem) which I enjoyed, and by comparison with them was made aware of the major point in which _Amberville_ falls short: Unlike Wolf and Lethem, Tim Davys doesn't quite sell his central conceit - the fact that all the characters are stuffed animals. There is a valid narrative reason for the characters to be plush animals, but I had trouble picturing the characters as teddy bears and ponies and so forth, because the novel never really exploits the inherent absurdity of the premise. You would expect a noir novel starring a cast of stuffed animals to be comical, but there's very little humor here; _Amberville_ is very serious and straight-faced in its presentation, and the characters' physicality is simply taken for granted. Davys doesn't provide enough description of the characters to get a clear mental picture of them, and not enough environmental & social detail to make their world believable, even within the context of the story. I wasn't sold on the concept, and I think many readers will have similar trouble suspending their disbelief. The book was also peppered with numerous "first novel" mistakes: Davys habitually shifts into the narrative voice right in the middle of conversations, to TELL the reader what happened instead of SHOWING it through action or dialogue - which broke up the continuity for me and came across as a bit lazy on the part of the writer. There were also occasional spots where the language was just a bit clumsy or awkward, rang false, could have been phrased better. These stumbles aside, the plot was solid, and I thought the novel showed a lot of originality. Its content far exceeds its formal qualities, and I had fun reading it. I'll be looking for more from this author in the future.. Obviously he can come up with fascinating ideas. Presumably he will refine his craft a bit in the meantime, and really knock us all over with his next book.

It was merely okay. I think that this book is best borrowed from a friend or the library. It's not one that I'd refer to as a keeper, but it was entertaining. A bit more mature than I had anticipated, this one is not for the younger crowd.

Basically, the author takes important truths about morality and has written about them with stuffed animals as the characters rather than human beings. It's most definitely an interesting concept and it is what attracted me to the book to begin with. But, it just isn't enough. It took me a long time to get into the book, and even longer to get all the way through it as I simply would lose interest in it from time to time as another, more interesting, book would come my way.

From the back cover of Amberville one might expect a cross between Sesame Street and The Sopranos. Eric Bear, years after leaving behind a life of drugs and a job as a runner for a mafia king, opens his apartment door to find his former boss, the mafia head Nicholas Dove visiting with a request--take Dove's name off the infamous Death List (literally a list of those slated to disappear from the world) or he will have his gorillas tear apart Eric's beloved wife, Emma Rabbit.

This kicks off the reforming of Eric's small gang, Tom-Tom Crow, Sam Gazelle and Snake Marek, who have all moved on from their criminal pasts in their own ways, and a desperate hunt for the society's biggest secret, the Death List and its writer.

But after finishing Amberville readers will find it to be a very peculiar book. Somewhere between a mafia mystery and a higher-brow literary work addressing the nature of good and evil in the world, Amberville balances a deep mystery and action with deep, soulful contemplations (by mad men, or mad bears as the case may be). In fact the literary, contemplative sections which can, at times come off as lagging bits in the pacing of the plot, genuinely serve to distract and set up the reader, a sign of some truly clever writing.

Yes, the characters really are stuffed animals, living in a world where many things are very clearly defined for them (such as the good areas of town literally being painted different colors from the bad ones). And that analogy doesn't go very far, in that the type of animal a character is doesn't necessarily define who they are. And there aren't really any musing on the nature of man versus beast. But each animal is a full, fleshy--or stuffed--whole with a parallel personality type in our world.

Amberville is the kind of book you wouldn't think about reading, or you'd expect to not like, only to discover it has a lot more to offer than can be explained on the book jacket. It absolutely keeps you guessing, up to the last sentence, and asks questions but never presumes to offer answers, making it a very good read indeed.

So I was once a big fan of Winnie the Pooh. The simple way that he thought brought together into straightforward morals and exciting adventure. Later in life I also became a fan of film noir, with the dark high-contrast tones and the disturbing endings. Somebody out there decided that a person just like me needed a book. So he or she called him/herself "Tim Davys" and wrote "Amberville."

I make the comparison to Winnie the Pooh because of the solid and straight-forward way that it's written; the comparison, of course, ends much sooner than there. If you had Winnie the Pooh minus the guidance of Christopher Robin, with existential melodrama and a tad of Fight Club, not to mention drugs, sex, and violence, then sure, the comparison is apt. Otherwise, the only thing they share is stuffed animal characters.

Though I have to be perfectly honest and state that, when it's all done and told, I have to ask "Why?" As far as I can tell, the answer is "Why not", but despite a few really revealing details of the world around them, I found myself questioning more how this world really operates. Plus, the plot and the shifting styles of narration are generally well done on a basic level, but still left me wondering exactly what the point is. In the end, the morals and reveals offered leads to the question "How does this apply to us?" What this book is is a very entertaining noir thriller with stuffed animals and a big giant question mark over it. I get the impression that maybe more of the world will be revealed in later outings, but if this is all that is meant to be told then I can't claim I was fully satisfied with the world created.

Otherwise, I see this becoming something of a cult classic. I know more than enough people who'd be willing to read this based on the premise itself, and thus this book certainly makes itself worth reading at least once.

--PolarisDiB

Ok, so there is a mob overlord, Nicholas Dove, controlling the darker side of Amberville. When he gets wind that his name is on the Death List, he coerces Eric Bear, a former junkie/criminal errand boy turned advertising high executive, into tracking down the list to remove Dove's name. But is there really a list? Eric has to do Dove's bidding or risk having his beloved Emma Rabbit torn to shreds by Dove's goons. Eric pulls together his former gang buddies - Tom-Tom Crow, Sam Gazelle, and Snake Marek - and enlists their aid in his desperate quest. Along the way, he discovers that all in Amberville is not what it seems, and most of what he has believed all his life is not true.

And all of the characters are stuffed animals.

First of all, let me say that I got this book in mid-January 2009. It is now June 27, 2009, and I've just now finished reading it. I started it 5 different times and finally forced myself to see it through to the end. Did I hate this book? I actually ended up liking it more than I thought I would, but that doesn't really say a lot since I really, really disliked the story for the first 100 pages or so. The quirky use of stuffed animals (ok, aren't we all just stuffed with something? aren't we all really just acting on our animalistic instincts, etc., etc.) isn't enough to hold up this story. Take out that element, and this is a sometimes interesting but mostly bland mystery with heavy reliance on questions about why we're here, what is the meaning of our lives, who is really in control, what is a person's true self...

I really wish that I could read this book in its original language. I can't help but wonder if the English translation waters down the original intent. There has to be a reason why this book attracted such critical acclaim.

In short, the symbolism here is not very subtle, and the mystery isn't quite so mysterious. There are a few "surprise" moments, but these twists and turns, in the end, do not save this story.

I never got into this. When I ordered it I didn't notice it was about stuffed animals, and I never got past that. Well written, but not my style.