false 230852 10 In <i>City of Saints and Madmen,</i> Jeff VanderMeer has reinvented the literature of the fantastic. You hold in your hands an invitation to a place unlike any you have ever visited&mdash;an invitation delivered by one of our most audacious and astonishing literary magicians. <i>Ambergris...</i>City of elegance and squalor. Of religious fervor and wanton lusts. And everywhere, on the walls of courtyards and churches, an incandescent fungus of mysterious and ominous origin. In Ambergris, a would-be suitor discovers that a sunlit street can become a killing ground in the blink of an eye. An artist receives an invitation to a beheading&mdash;and finds himself enchanted. And a patient in a mental institution is convinced he's made up a city called Ambergris, imagined its every last detail, and that hes really from a place called Chicago... By turns sensuous and terrifying, filled with exotica and eroticism, this interwoven collection of stories, histories, and eyewitness reports invokes a universe within a puzzlebox where you can lose&mdash;and find&mdash;yourself again. 522014 2002 City of Saints and Madmen total:398|5:162|4:135|3:68|2:21|1:12| 398 1608 764 74 3 6 false false Tue Mar 31 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Mar 15 12:37:35 -0700 2009 Mon Mar 30 20:58:18 -0700 2009 more...]]> 2 5 false false Mon Apr 06 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Mar 17 16:50:18 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 06 20:51:16 -0700 2009 more...]]> 1 3 false false Fri Aug 29 12:07:51 -0700 2008 Sun Aug 24 19:01:06 -0700 2008 Fri Aug 29 12:07:51 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 3 false false Mon Jan 19 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Sep 01 10:36:20 -0700 2008 Fri Jan 23 21:00:26 -0800 2009 City of Saints and Madmen.

For several years now, I’ve almost exclusively read books as research for my second novel. With few exceptions (when the books wer...more...]]> 4 2 false false Wed May 07 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Thu May 01 19:17:55 -0700 2008 Sat May 24 20:45:31 -0700 2008 more...]]> 3 2 false false Sun May 03 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Mar 02 19:47:20 -0800 2008 Mon May 04 10:03:35 -0700 2009
As a whole however, I'm not sure it w...more...]]> 2 2 false false Sat Nov 24 13:44:38 -0800 2007 Fri Dec 07 00:30:40 -0800 2007 more...]]> 5 3 false false Thu May 07 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Jan 24 08:06:39 -0800 2009 Thu May 07 20:27:25 -0700 2009 1 *WARNING: This is not really a review, but City of Saints and Madmen requires something else entirely, and there may be a spoiler or two, but considering the book's form I doubt that will matter.*

Dradin, In Love
As Dradin experiences the rain, I am straining with the brightness of o...more...]]> 0 1 false true Mon Mar 17 10:58:00 -0700 2008 Thu Jan 03 16:01:19 -0800 2008 Wed Jan 09 06:44:55 -0800 2008 Vandermeer seems to think of himself as a writer of strange stories. But the problem is that his brand of strangeness has been done many times before, which kind of takes away the whole "strangeness" idea, ...more...]]> 5 1 false false Tue Aug 14 10:21:43 -0700 2007 Tue Aug 14 10:23:24 -0700 2007 City Of Saints and Madmen is made up of a series of stories connected by their setting. There’s a depth to Ambergris, a heft that only comes from a fully-realized world. Middle-Earth has it, as does Arrakis: a sense that the craziest things make perfect sense because you’re so grounded in the w...more...]]> 2 1 false false Sat Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sat Sep 22 12:27:21 -0700 2007 Sat Sep 22 12:27:21 -0700 2007
The author has created a multi-dimensional world (reminds me of Calvino's descriptions of Venice) with a rich history of...more...]]> 3 0 false false Fri Mar 27 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Mar 19 11:32:32 -0700 2009 Fri Mar 27 16:38:07 -0700 2009
...more...]]> 3 1 false false Fri Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Fri Jul 13 11:23:17 -0700 2007 Fri Jul 13 11:32:05 -0700 2007 more...]]> 3 0 false false Sun Nov 30 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sat Nov 08 13:29:12 -0800 2008 Sun Nov 30 16:37:46 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 0 false false Wed Jul 08 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Jun 23 12:17:31 -0700 2009 Wed Jul 08 00:09:29 -0700 2009
...more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Dec 07 16:03:24 -0800 2008 Sun Feb 08 04:29:38 -0800 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Mon Oct 16 00:00:00 -0700 2006 Thu Jan 31 06:52:21 -0800 2008 Sat Feb 09 05:19:28 -0800 2008
Imagine a city, the city of Ambergris. An old city, with a strange and bloody history. Imagine the people who populate that city - an idolized composer, a dilettante politician, a mad writer, a steadfast merchant and so forth. Imagine a city built on geno...more...]]> 2 0 false false Wed Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Thu Sep 06 17:34:55 -0700 2007 Sun May 04 00:50:13 -0700 2008
Unfortunately, City of Saints and Madmen is going to be one of the few left partially ...more...]]> 3 0 false false Thu Jun 11 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Jun 04 01:32:40 -0700 2009 Thu Jun 11 01:58:14 -0700 2009
Additionally, I...more...]]> 1 0 false false Thu Jan 15 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Tue Aug 04 23:19:09 -0700 2009 Tue Aug 18 23:42:47 -0700 2009 more...]]>