Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I started at the end, as usual..., September 23, 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
My only exposure to Jeff Vandermeer prior to this, was reading Steampunk, which was this volume of works he edited with his wife. Ann. I really enjoyed that book. I thought the idea of Ambergris intriguing. I didn't know I was beginning at the end, which isn't the author's fault or mine. I dived into it, though, so I will read this first and then go back to the other books.
I was expecting a straight steampunk sort of novel with noir like detective elements, but this is much more than that. The fantasy elements, even the dark or grotesque ones, are beautiful. From page one, I was sucked in, a now fan of those books which are cut into "day" chapters. He has a very good use of vocabulary especially describing color and locations, it reminds me of Romantic Poets, yet this isn't a poem by far. The mixture is fantastic. It's gritty and violent, yet highly lovely in spirt, the only thing I could say even comes close to it that I have read, and I don't read a lot of fiction, is Nick Cave's And the Ass Saw the Angel. The two books are completely different in plot but share the same gorgeous intensity in their gothic imagery and dark joys. It's so rhythmic in nature, I can believe the music cited at the end inspired in and why he would want to make a soundtrack to go along with the book.
The story is a mix of so many things, horror, pulp detective stories, gothic literature, poetry, magic, who-done-its, I could list a bunch of movies and books I have read that would be the fingers and eyelashes of this work. It's good for the detective story read, good for the fantasy reader, hopefully good for the goths and steampunks too, though I am sure there might be debate over that. I am smitten by the lure of Ambergris, so I will be walking backwards and reading the rest. I would tell you my opinion of the plot, but the press that made the book, expresses their opinion that spoilers should be kept to the bare minimum, so I am respecting that. I can say that I don't read a lot of fiction because I rarely get sucked into a world, but this world of Ambergris is unique and gruesomely addictive.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Return To Ambergris And The City's Strange, Flowering Fungi, November 3, 2009
Back to the timeless city of Ambergris, from VanderMeer's 'City Of Saints And Madmen' and 'Shriek: An Afterward'. Ambergris has changed a great deal over the last century. The once mysterious and quiet Gray Caps (Mushroom People) have risen from their Underground to take over the city, overpower the reigning corporate-based rulership, and now runs the city with the help of fungi based weapons, and towering purple mushrooms which disperse addictive drugs to the human population.
John Finch, not his real name, is a detective put on the case of two bodies lying dead in a tenement room. Both he and his partner Wyte, who is contaminated with fungal growth, are puzzled over the mysterious way the deaths occurred, and that one victim is human and the other a Gray Cap. They are watched over by the Partials, humans who have given themselves over to the Gray Caps and allowed fungal and other alterations to their bodies. Finch must eat the "memory bulbs" harvested from the dead, to discover the reason for their murder.
The Gray Caps, while ruling the city, are focused on building two towers, the function of which is unknown and mystifying. It seems the city falls deeper into decay the further along the towers rise. Finch finds himself deep in a complex web of fabrications and suspicion over the murder; a murder that ties in such anomalous characters as the Lady In Blue, Ethan Bliss, the dangerous Stark, Finch's neighbor Rathven, and his Gray Cap boss Heretic. Could there even be a tie to Ambergris historian Duncan Shriek, who disappeared a century ago?
Ambergris has a history: First, The Silence, discussed in VanderMeer's first Ambergris story 'City Of Saints And Madmen'; then The War Of The Houses, discussed in VanderMeer's second Ambergris novel 'Shriek: An Afterward'; and now in 'Finch' comes The Rising. Not only have the Gray Caps risen to take over the city, but the waters have risen too; where there was city and canals now lies a vast bay - Ambergris is shrinking.
There's a lot more, well, fungi, in this third trip through Ambergris. More spores, more infestation, more ruination, more rot, more types of fruiting bodies, and large tree-sized mushrooms that dispense purple spores that people wait for because the spores are the new drug of choice.
There's always been something attractive to me about fungi and fruiting bodies - they're peculiar and rather disgusting. They give me a creepy feeling, and when confronted with one in the wild I cannot stop myself from plucking it and handling it, turning it this way and that to study it, then scrubbing my hands as hard as I can to rid myself of the real (or imaginary)) slime and spores left behind.
I'm a little disappointed in The Rising depicted in 'Finch'. Part of what lured me to Ambergris was the mystery of the Gray Caps; now much of that mystery has been revealed, lessening the tension I felt reading the other Ambergris books. VanderMeer also changed his style a bit, using uncharacteristically short, stilted sentences rather than the flowing prose of the past two Ambergris novels. This works though, because 'Finch' is a rawer Ambergris, an Ambergris in more upset and peril than ever before. Can it be saved?
I highly recommend reading 'City Of Saints And Madmen' and 'Shriek: An Afterward' before 'Finch', even though 'Finch' can stand on it's own. Immerse yourself in the poetic history of Ambergris, and don't miss out on a moment of it. Enjoy!
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
yet another strong visit to Ambergris, October 16, 2009
Jeff Vandermeer's Finch is the third book set in Vandermeer's fantastic city of Ambegris and while reading the first two will certainly enhance/enrich your enjoyment of Finch, it's by no means a requirement. Ambergris is an example of metro fantasy, where the world building focuses on a single--often decaying/decadent--city rather than an entire fantasy landscape and where the city takes on almost the role of a character in the work (Mieville's Perdido Station and City and The City or Valente's Palimpsest are other examples). In Finch, Vandermeer melds metro fantasy and police noir to create a compelling read.
The story is set roughly a century or so after Ambergris was taken over by the "gray caps", a sort of "mushroom people" who are not only akin to mushrooms themselves but who use fungus in all sorts of ways--as weaponry, medicine, etc. The gray caps themselves had been driven forcibly out (actually down) of Ambergris centuries earlier in a near-genocide. Now, the gray caps employ many of the usual techniques of an occupying group, such as fear, constant surveillance (or at least the threat of such), detention/work camps, use of natives as informers and police, and the "disappearing" of individuals, along with some less common tools, such as drug-spewing mushrooms that keep at least a segment of the occupied populace docile while also forcing them into being dependent upon the occupiers. Meanwhile, the gray caps are constructing two giant towers whose purpose remains a mystery and constant source of speculation.
Enter our main character--the eponymous Finch--a detective reluctantly working for the gray caps. He's called onto the case in question when two bodies, one human and one gray cap, are discovered in an apartment (it's actually one and a half bodies as the gray cap is missing his legs).
As is always the case in these sort of nourish set-ups, the first glimpse of the crime never reveals what lies underneath, and as Finch investigates in typically nourish "world-weary" fashion, the mystery only unspools further rather than becoming clearer. More of tropes will be evident to the reader: the problematic partner (though not many partners' problems involve possibly turning into a mushroom), the mysteriously secretive female (actually two), the occasional gritty sex scene, authoritarian higher ups who may be involved in the whole mess, conspiracies, etc. By melding the two genres, Vandermeer gets the best of both worlds: he lets the reader pleasantly settle into the familiar tropes of language and narrative and character while also refreshing those tropes via the fantastic elements (fungal guns, his partner's "colonization", teleportation).
Nothing, of course, is ever what it seems, or, and this can be even trickier, what is what it seems can never be trusted to be what it seems and so takes a while before being accepted as such. The mystery in itself is compelling but becomes more so as it becomes both more deep and more broad, stretching into the political realms and then (it is fantasy after all) threatening perhaps the whole existence of Ambergris.
Finch is a well-drawn character as are several of the minor characters and their relationships, especially between Finch and his partner, have a rich emotional tone to them, despite the sparse interplay usual in noir. One character might have a bit too much going on, edges close to a bit too conveniently knowing/powerful, but doesn't cross the line and it doesn't detract much.
The city's strangeness is ever-present but never overshadows the narrative or character development. One never, for instance, feels pulled out of the moment while the author grabs us to show us "this really, really cool thing I thought of."
Finally, I'd be remiss in implying that all Vandermeer does is mix noir and fantasy. He's got sci-fi and semi-steampunk, he's got spies and rebel armies/leaders, he's got teleportation and timeshifts, swords and tanks, treachery and a history of treachery, some beautifully descriptive passages, and he's got, I'd argue, some sharp political commentary on what's been going on in our world the past decade or so and where it may be heading.
A compelling story, strong main character, and bracingly original sense of "difference"--what's not to like? Highly recommended (though again, best to have read the previous books, though not a must)
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