Also like Wolfe (and Banks again), there are some very cliche problems with character and point-of-view. Just like in bad Steampunk (meaning most of it), where authors completely forget the 'punk' and make all of their characters upper class and educated, VanderMeer doesn't give us any views from oppressed or minority classes. It's all about the difficulty of being a smart, middle-class white male artist (or scientist). City of Saints and Madmen: The Book of Ambergris is a collection of fantasy short stories by American writer Jeff VanderMeer, set in the fictional metropolis of Ambergris. The setting was further explored in the novels Shriek: An Afterword (2006) and Finch (2009). This is excellent stuff. Jeff VanderMeer takes influence from the baroque, surreal fantasists of yesteryear, such as Mervyn Peake, Lord Dunsany, or even H.P. Lovecraft (in his less horrific moments), and combines this influence with the more modern elements of steampunk and urban fantasy that can be seen in authors like China Mieville. Out of this mix, he has created his own world, which mostly focuses on the city of Ambergris, a sprawling riverside land that has fallen into functional anarchy after decades of benign neglect by its rulers. In these four novellas, Ambergris is the true main character, rather than any of the people who appear in the stories, and it's the unique elements of Ambergris--the "mushroom dwellers", Albumuth Boulevard, famous composer Voss Bender, Hoegbotton and Sons, etc.--that give this book its narrative unity, despite focusing on completely different characters from one story to another. "Dradin In Love" starts things off with a tale of an apostate priest who has come to Ambergris in search of a job and finds love, in the form of a woman he spies through a third-story window. We are first introduced to Ambergris through the naive and quite possibly insane eyes of Dradin, and what we see colors our opinion both of the city and of Dradin himself. The second story, "The Hoegbotton Guide To The Early History of Ambergris by Duncan Shriek", is completely different in tone, purporting to be a historical overview of Ambergris and maintaining that tone throughout the main text. Said main text is subverted, however, by copious footnotes in which we learn more and more about the character who authors the historical overview, Duncan Shriek. His feuds with other historians and personal place in the history of Ambergris is slowly illuminated through these footnotes, and they make an already interesting fictional history far more entertaining. The third story, "The Transfiguration Of Martin Lake", combines elements of the first two stories, switching as it does from art criticism penned by Janice Shriek, giving a detailed analysis of the major paintings of Martin Lake for yet another Hoegbotton Guide, to a narrative about the life of Martin Lake, specifically an episode that sheds light on why he painted the things he did in the first place. Finally, we end with "The Strange Case of 'X'", a shorter story with an atmosphere of creeping horror and an entertaining if somewhat predictable twist ending. This is the least substantial of the four stories here, and although it is entertaining, it's not as fascinating as the world-building and the mysterious twilight atmosphere of the three preceding stories. The Cage" is short, yet very visceral and effective. Probably the most overt horror story of the collection, though they're all varying levels of depraved.

And the second point that I didn’t like—that I’ve vaguely alluded to previously—is that this book is in fact a collection of short novellas rather than a single novel. I am just not a fan of short stories; they never have the meat to satisfy me. This book is close to being the exception to the rule, but I would have preferred an interweaving long narrative about Ambergris. Instead, COSAM presents a somewhat chaotic (like the city itself) series of varied scenarios featuring Ambergris. The first, and longest, story features a missionary just returned to Ambergris from the jungle where he failed at his mission. He is suffering a sort of post-traumatic stress syndrome and jungle poisoning. The second novella is a detailed telling of the history of Ambergris (as best as it can be known) from the perspective of a crotchety old historian who doubts he really knows what happened. The third features the tale of a mediocre artist in Ambergris invited to a “beheading” that leaves him forever altered. The fourth novella is the aforementioned writer in the psyche-ward. Ps. The creative impulse and writing itself are two of the major themes explored herein. The book concludes with an Appendix almost as long as all the previous novellas that features twelve different sections ranging from an amateur squidologists research on squids to a glossary of Ambergrisian people, places and things. All written from unique points of view. Although I admire and appreciate the connected quality of these stories, it’s not what I generally seek out. (And if you don’t think the glossary was written by someone who was once a personal friend of E. Gary Gygax, then you don’t know your saving throw from your +2 long sword.) Cuentos que parecen ensayos y ensayos que parecen cuentos, todos ambientados en la ficticia ciudad de Ambergris. Y me han gustado bastante, algunos diría que son excepcionales, como el segundo relato, narrado a modo de guía turística por el historiador Duncan Shriek. Hay datos “históricos” mezclados con cierto humor, añadiendo elementos new weird, misterio y algo de terror. Cuenta la fundación de Ambergris y haciendo hincapié en el Silencio, donde tuvieron lugar hechos realmente macabros. Otro buen relato es el relacionado con el Rey Calamar, que de nuevo parece un ensayo sobre un elemento importante de Ambergris. Hay más buenas historias, como la primera, ‘Dradin enamorado’, donde se nos narra las aventuras y desventuras de este misionero que acaba de llegar de nuevo a Ambergris después de un tiempo en la selva, y que de repente ve a una joven en la ventana de un tercer piso de Hoegbotton & Sons, y aquí empieza su obsesión por conocerla. I'm intrigued as to where the city is set, or shall I say, which real-world location it is based on. Also included---for reasons that absolutely confound and elude this reviewer---is the obnoxiously horrendous and viciously cruel “Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of the City of Ambergris”. Complete drivel and a disgusting cold sore on an otherwise unblemished complexion of literary beauty. In my opinion.)

New Weird is a genre-bender in all senses, adding heavy fake academics, amazing depth, horror sensibilities, passion, and a dose of THINGS THAT CAN'T BE RIGHT. But are, of course, in the tale. Most of the time, these aspects flabbergast the characters as much as it does us. It's charming and endlessly diverting. :) This is essentially a fully immersive, highly self-referential collection of stories about the city Ambergris, the Freshwater Squid in the river that passes by, the mushroom people that are its original inhabitants, and the humans that try to make the city their own. There are glossaries, bibliographies, and all sorts of other bits, each with a story to tell. Some of the stories appear to be previously published (it's a little hard to tell from the credits). Perhaps, there can be no truth in a story told by or in the first person, unless it is verified by the second person. 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.

If we do bad things, we will feel guilt or remorse, and we will want to relieve or assuage our guilt. Women are largely absent, except as objects of desire. We're not allowed into their heads, to see their point-of-view, we aren't asked to explore their struggles or concerns. Even as objects of desire, there's never any relationship or intimacy, just distant, creepy obsession. Indeed, the only genuine, long-term romance represented in the book is between two men. The Man Who Had No Eyes: This was mind-blowingly compelling. I stayed up until 3:30 am decoding the last paragraph. The act itself, the writing, as X tells us, is a bringing into existence and a prolonging of what already exists. The writer as god, and all of us as the writer. That X/VanderMeer implicates us in his own creation, in this his greatest moment of genius. The readers are the writers are the madmen are the saints are the gods of Ambergris and Earth. The following year, a deluxe edition of City of Saints and Madmen appeared in hardcover format from Prime Books. All four novellas from the first edition were revised, and new material was added as an appendix to the book: It starts to feel like being at a party with a guy who has to make some comment about everything, who keeps mentioning that people think he's funny, who tells you how funny his jokes are before he tells them, says 'wait for it!' before each punchline, and then explains the joke once it's done.

I tend to allow an author like David Mitchell to get away with loose or almost thread-bare connections. The stories of City of Saints and Madmen are set in Ambergris, an urban sprawl named for " the most secret and valued part of the whale" and populated by humans after its original inhabitants—a race of mushroom-like humanoids known as "gray caps"—were violently driven underground. These creatures, though removed from the eccentricities of daily life in Ambergris, continue to cast a shadow over the city with their unexplained nocturnal activities.