City of Saints and Madmen: (Ambergris)

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The Silence. I didn’t find it as chilling as I was, perhaps, supposed to, but I found the telling of the Silence compelling. VanderMeer as Shriek has a voice that rivals the best historians in our supposedly real world, and I find myself not wanting this history nor Shriek’s commentary to end.

All writers write,’ he whispered. ‘All writers edit,’ he muttered. ‘All writers have a little darkness in them,’ he sobbed. ‘All writers must sometimes destroy their creations,’ he shouted. And VanderMeer set a monumental task for himself--there are a lot of moving pieces here, and keeping them all spinning is a master's work. The structure itself is obsessed with metafiction, all of these 'in-world' documents that are supposed to come together and produce a greater whole: a scientific article about squid, a series of art critiques, a pamphlet about the history of the city, an asylum doctor's interview, letters, a story written in secret code, &c. VanderMeer's Ambergris is certainly different, if not vividly so; his fantasy city isn't medieval, but roughly Victorian, or even early 20th century. He's as likely to look to other novels for inspiration over old folk tales or mythologies. It, too, is a collage of different historical periods, different cultures, and different books, all served up with a self-conscious postmodernism (if that isn't redundant) that proves VanderMeer ain't Delany. Mostly, it's the urban setting that turns VanderMeer's tales away from heroic quests and into the realm of the personal and interpersonal. And that strikes me as the right direction for fantasy to be going in. One of VanderMeer’s characters describes the Other as “the Darkness”, which then takes on the form of a manta ray. Much of the self-awareness takes the form of a jokey, silly tone, and much like in Iain Banks, it seems to be an ill fit for otherwise dire and serious stories. More than that, VanderMeer is constantly harping on it without much payoff--there are some truly clever pieces of wit, here or there, but for every one that hits its mark, we have to wade through ten others that don't.

But only one writer has a darkness that cannot be destroyed, he thought to himself as he clutched his wife to him and kissed her and sought comfort in her, for she was the most precious thing in his life and he was afraid—afraid of loss, afraid of the darkness, and, most of all, afraid of himself." For me, a simple juxtaposition is not enough. You don’t sit two or more characters together, unless you expect some chemical reaction to occur and your expectation is satisfied. 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. I'm struggling with how to think about this book. 3 stars is inadequate to express how I felt about many of the individual stories contained in the collection. By themselves, they were very good - atmospheric, creepy, well-written, well-imagined, etc.

But self-deprecation is only effective when it is honest, when it acts as a genuine reveal of character, not just a sarcastic defense mechanism--a schoolyard dodge, 'if I say it first, then they can't make fun of me for it'. We learn about the horrible fungus and the silent retribution of the Gray Caps whose nation was violated to build the city. We learn about the King Squid, the top of the food chain in the River Moth, who may be trying to kill us all. We learn a lot of things, but very rarely through the standard style of narrative. This is exactly the kind of literature that I love - I love being left with material that I turn around in my mind, looking at it first from this angle, then from that, without it ever completely yielding all of its mysteries. Ambergris began in 1992 with "Learning to Leave the Flesh", a short story conceived for the Clarion writers' workshop at Michigan State University. Although it does not reference the city directly, it mentions locations that would reappear in later work, such as Albumuth Boulevard and the River Moth. Considered a "proto-Ambergris story" by the author, "Learning to Leave the Flesh" wouldn't be included in the book until its 2004 edition. I suppose all fantasy worlds are collages of some sort. Your standard derivative Tolkien stuff, your D&D and high fantasy, is all a vaguely medieval Western Europe, with some drastically altered Eastern Europe folk tale stuff added (I'm thinking trolls and elves and whatnot), with an altered form of Greek deities added. But that format has become so widely used that it seems homogeneous and normal.I was already pulled in by the first story, "Dradin, In Love", but when I noticed the next story was a heavily footnoted "history", complete with referential glossary, I knew I had found an author who gets as lost in the worlds he creates as I do as a reader. Then I continued reading...