City of Saints and Madmen (Ambergris, #1)

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City of Saints and Madmen (Ambergris #1)

by Jeff VanderMeer (Goodreads Author), Michael Moorcock (Introduction)

3.93 of 5 stars 3.93 · rating details · 1,966 ratings · 183 reviews

In City of Saints and Madmen, Jeff VanderMeer has reinvented the literature of the fantastic. You hold in your hands an invitation to a place unlike any you’ve ever visited–an invitation delivered by one of our most audacious and astonishing literary magicians.

City of elegance and squalor. Of religious fervor and wanton lusts. And everywhere, on the walls of courtyards an...more

Paperback, 704 pages

Published December 18th 2007 by Bantam (first published 2001)

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Mar 03, 2012 Traveller rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: alternate-world, dark_fantasy, bizarro-new-weird, metafiction, urban-fantasy

Disclaimer: The rating for this book is based on the first four stories:
"Dradin, In Love"
"An Early History of Ambergris"
"The Transformation of Martin Lake" and
"The Strange Case of X" ; all of which appear in the first edition of the book.

Following are my impressions as I read the stories:

"Dradin, In Love"
I'm intrigued as to where the city is set, or shall I say, which real-world location it is based on.

Initially, I thought the Amazon jungle, but now, after mention of an Occidental woman and...more

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Jan 11, 2013 Ian Graye rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Ian by: Traveller

Shelves: reviews-5-stars, reviews, read-2013

Some Fantastic Metafiction

“City of Saints and Madmen” (“COSAM”) not only explores a world of New Weird author’s Jeff VanderMeer’s creation, it gives a detailed insight into the method of his creativity.

It’s not just a fantasy novel, but a highly accessible and rewarding exercise in metafiction.

It’s a composite of works: short stories or perhaps novellas, fictional notes, fragments of drafts, reminders, observations, word sketches, drawings, illustrations, doodles, dream diary entries, the histor...more

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Jan 23, 2009 David Katzman rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Fans of literary speculative fiction or just odd, fantastical literature

If Proust had been a hella Dungeon Master and then dropped all the monsters and sword play…you might end up with something like 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 were short), I’ve been committed to that focus religiously. (As religiously as an atheist-buddhist-jew can be.) Not all the books I’ve read were chosen for concrete research, per se—such as, “I’ve invented a character w...more If Proust had been a hella Dungeon Master and then dropped all the monsters and sword play…you might end up with something like 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 were short), I’ve been committed to that focus religiously. (As religiously as an atheist-buddhist-jew can be.) Not all the books I’ve read were chosen for concrete research, per se—such as, “I’ve invented a character who survived a botched lobotomy so I’m going to read books by Ann Coulter”—but sometimes I choose books to get a taste of stylistic influences that might be complementary. In this case, City of Saints and Madmen gave me the impression of a sensuous style and fantastical weirdness. Tastes great, more filling.

I was right. It’s a pretty sweet book, wonderfully written in most ways, yet it still let me down as a whole for two particular reasons that are my own bias. First to the good: As I implied by the Proust reference, his writing ability is outstanding. His sentences never achieve the labyrinthine subliminity of Proust, but he certainly has an impressive and natural command of language, grammar and sentence structure that aspires to the Proustian. The quality is erudite, rich and evocative. He also switches personas adeptly from one first-person narrator to another.

This book is a fantasy novel, of a sort, but with none of the standard trapping of the genre. It’s features a quite convincing parallel earth much like our own set roughly in a Victorian era in a city of chaos, religion, violence and commerce. But Vandermeer tweaks and twists just a few elements of our reality to spawn a déjà-vu paradigm—it’s like our world…and yet not. A few elements that push it into the fantasy realm include: a race of mushroom-eaters who live underground, speak an unknown language, and may have disappeared an entire city of people in one single day without leaving a trace; a tremendous variety of giant and possibly intelligent squid; some odd animal life; very aggressive fungi; and the potential to travel between our reality and the one of Ambergris, the city that this book centers around.

Despite the lack of elves, beholders, magic swords, trolls, frost giants and 20-sided dice, a Dungeon-Master personality comes through for me via the absolutely meticulous history and detail that make up Vandermeer’s world of Ambergris. I was both a D&D player and Dungeon Master, and I recall spending days on end drawing convoluted maps and shaping entire continents, inventing names of rivers, towns, countries, kings and queens, cities and, of course, dungeons. Mapping out every square inch, filling it with monsters and allies, traps and treasure. Ambergris is much the same. Vandermeer works quite hard to give the impression (and successfully at that) that he is channeling an alternate reality through this novel. In fact, one story within COSAM features a character in a madhouse who claims to be a writer from Chicago writing about a city called Ambergris. (view spoiler)

Anywho, this brings me to my first minor bias against this book. Several of the stories herein end too patly. Like the one I just described. It’s the twist ending, the clever payoff, the surprise you didn’t see coming (or did, because it wasn’t quite that well disguised.) Yes, there is a great deal of ambiguity, mystery and unknown in COSAM, but there are also a few too many stories that tie up neatly like a riddle rather than like reality. Nothing is ever so tidy. So that bothered me.

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.)

Despite my personal qualms, I do highly recommend this work. The writing is outstanding and the tone ranges from disturbing to hilarious and everything in between. Weird and freakish. Flip through it and see what you think. Definitely recommended for fans of literary speculative fiction (as they say.)
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Apr 06, 2009 Sandi rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy, 2009

GoodReads definition of two stars is "it was ok". That pretty much sums up what I thought of "City of Saints and Madmen" by Jeff VanderMeer. Some of the stories were really good, like "The Cage", "The Transformation of Martin Lake" and "The Strange Case of X". If all the stories had been that caliber, I might have given this book four stars. Unfortunately, VanderMeer gets too into his conceit of the book being the story of the city of Ambergris. The section that was an early history of Ambergris...more

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Aug 29, 2008 Matthew Gatheringwater rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction-and-fantasy

I once read that a group of mystery writers including Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, and G.K. Chesterton formed a detection club and swore to abide by a code of authorial ethics to ensure fair play for their readers. This seems like such a good idea that I wish writers in other genres would consider forming a similar club and that Jeff VanderMeer, in particular, would be a member.

Many reviews of this book mention its "puzzle-like" quality, but if this book is a puzzle, it is one in which th...more

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May 24, 2008 Andrew rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 a...more 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.

Apparently "City Of Saints And Madmen" is now available in a much longer and more expanded edition, with 700 pages instead of 200. I have this version on order and look forward to reading the additional content when it arrives. However, for now, I'm quite satisfied with the shorter edition that I read, and feel that it stands on its own as a significant and entertaining work.

Addendum, 5/24/08: Not long after finishing this original version of "City Of Saints And Madmen", I obtained the expanded 2006 edition, which features something like a dozen extra stories and other miscellaneous pieces tacked on (as mentioned above). All of these works were added as an "AppendiX", purporting to be a collection of documents found in Patient X's room after he disappeared (fear not, that is not a spoiler for "The Strange Case of 'X'"). Some of these were even better than the four original novellas, in particular "The Cage", a story that purports to be written by Ambergris-based writer Sirin. This one scared the crap out of me, I don't mind telling you. Some of the more surreal and meta- stories included in the Appendix, such as "King Squid", a fake scientific monograph, and "The Exchange", a story published as an illustrated booklet, each page of which features copious annotations by "X", were interesting not only as stories themselves but also as artifacts that had greater meaning in the context of the rest of the book. Vandermeer was already moving towards these multiple-level conceits with some of the original stories, especially "The Hoegbotton Guide To The Early History Of Ambergris, by Duncan Shriek", but he takes them to a higher level with some of the stories attached in the appendix, and as a result, I can now say with authority that a reader won't get the full experience of reading this book unless they read the expanded version.(less)

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May 04, 2009 Brooke rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2009, fantasy, short-story-collections

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.

As a whole however, I'm not sure it worked for me. It's supposed to be a collection of stories about the city of Ambergris. It's a city filled with mysterious mushroom people, artists, a festival that involves squids and slaughter, and mystery. Abou...more

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Dec 07, 2007 Nathanimal rated it 2 of 5 stars

I really wanted to like this book, and fantastic things did happen, as promised. I really liked the ritual murder with the bird masks (though the main character's untrue emotions and reactions during that part kept un-riveting me). I liked the story about the writer who lived in two worlds (though the gotchya ending was kind of an eye-roller). And I liked the mushroom people and the king squid material. I think this novel was supposed to be a marriage between fantasy and meta-po-mo writing like...more

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Oct 14, 2010 Jeremy rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: The brave and the bold

Recommended to Jeremy by: Mieville. The bastard.

What a bizarre book.

After reading Finch first, and only later finding that it was part of a series/cycle/shared universe thing, I was of course intrigued, and opted to start at the apparent beginning. City of Saints and Madmen started off well enough, vacillating from poetic to hilarious, hitting every note it aimed for perfectly.

And then. Then came the Strange Case of X. That story and its consequences, I feel fairly certain, are responsible for my lack of enthusiasm for this book, and a bit of...more What a bizarre book.

After reading Finch first, and only later finding that it was part of a series/cycle/shared universe thing, I was of course intrigued, and opted to start at the apparent beginning. City of Saints and Madmen started off well enough, vacillating from poetic to hilarious, hitting every note it aimed for perfectly.

And then. Then came the Strange Case of X. That story and its consequences, I feel fairly certain, are responsible for my lack of enthusiasm for this book, and a bit of my reticence to read Shriek. Having read Finch and the first half of City and seeing nothing akin to it, the sudden and irrevocable introduction of the strange skein of metafiction was jarring and uncomfortable. Nowhere else in my experience of Ambergris was this type of story even alluded to, so it just...well, it fucked it up is what it did.

I'm all for metafiction. I loved The Raw Shark Texts. I love Breakfast of Champions. That stuff can be incredibly fun. But when it's introduced midway through a book, never really solved (whether concretely or in subtle hints that you have to puzzle out for yourself) it's distracting and detracts from the overall experience. The fact that that line of narrative is dropped entirely by the time Finch was published, and is (as far as I know) entirely absent from Shriek just boggles my mind. It's unnecessary and weird.

This is not to say that the quality of writing drops at all. VanderMeer knows how to slap words together, and it's a credit to his skill that I finished the book after everything that happened in and after the Strange Case of X, despite my discomfort with the narrative direction it took. I have read very few books wherein the prose was as brilliant, beautiful, and above all flexible as in this one. His style changes frequently, and everything he tries works. He can do haunting and humorous seemingly effortlessly.

BUT.

That damned X.

I guess it doesn't really ruin this book. It ruins the picture of the Ambergris cycle as a whole, at least for me, but even with the confusion and the missteps, City of Saints and Madmen is still eminently readable, and worth at least a trip to the library. But if after "Dradin, in Love," you like Ambergris enough to read the following books, I would advise anyone who hasn't yet read this to close the book just before The Strange Case of X and return it to the library or sell it to a secondhand bookstore. I wish I had. Finch would be much more satisfying in retrospect.(less)

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Jan 18, 2011 Jason rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-2010, e-books, read-2011

I did not know that this was a book of short stories that themed on the city of Ambergis. I should have read some reviews before hand. I often lose interest in short stories and subsequently did with this book. I made it through the first 3 stories, the first being the best of the three and started into the fourth. I can see some similarities between Jeff VanderMeer and China Mieville but I feel that they are definitely of a lesser quality. I liked the setting but had no character bonding to hol...more

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May 07, 2009 Brad rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Ruzz

Shelves: fantasy, speculative, to-read-again, weird

*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 our first sunny day reflecting off the silky pages of City of Saints and Madmen, and I am struck by the sensuality of the experience a mere forty pages into VanderMeer’s opus. The weight of the book is comfortable in my...more

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Jan 09, 2008 Sarah added it

Shelves: put-aside

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Based on the first story in here, "Dradin In Love," I am skeptical.
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, now doesn't it? To me, this story evokes a strong early 19th-century aesthetic without adding anything new to it. Perhaps if this story had been written two hundred years ago, for example, the protagonist's discovery that his...more Based on the first story in here, "Dradin In Love," I am skeptical.
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, now doesn't it? To me, this story evokes a strong early 19th-century aesthetic without adding anything new to it. Perhaps if this story had been written two hundred years ago, for example, the protagonist's discovery that his love was in fact an automaton might have been timely, disturbing, and provocative. But here, both the device and its treatment are basically recycled from E.T.A. Hoffman with a veneer of steampunk-tinged nostalgia. There's a lot of potential in this story; the writing itself is rich and vivid, and the story is shot through with some very interesting undercurrents, especially that of the idea of the jungle in the European colonial imagination. But the problem is that Vandermeer doesn't explore this undercurrent. He simply evokes it, which, again, would be all we could possibly expect if he had been writing a century or two ago, but now? If I want the simple appearance of 19th-century themes, I will read 19th-century literature, which is often far more strange and grotesque than it gets credit for. But if I am going to read a contemporary author, I expect to encounter at least something I wouldn't have predicted. But alas, Vandermeer is too enamored of his retro aesthetic to look at it with any critical distance. Dradin's former lover in the jungle remains the exoticized, savage Other whose body represents the land to be tamed and colonized. Ho-hum. I've seen this trope before in a hundred other places, and if Vandermeer had just examined it and turned it on its head or done something unexpected and truly strange with it, I would have been thrilled. I love the literature of the early 19th century, and I love to see its aesthetic taken up by contemporary authors. All I ask is that they do something with it that could not have been done before. Otherwise, what's the point?
Also, I just have to add: a scheming dwarf with a father named Alberich is a pleasingly sly allusion. A scheming dwarf with a father named Alberich and the last name of Nibelung, though... that's just beating us over the head with it.
Still, I will eventually read the rest of it. I do at least enjoy his use of language, and the history of Ambergris is proving a much more enjoyable read than "Dradin In Love." We'll see.(less)

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Aug 14, 2007 Peggy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: darkforcesbookgroup

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 world the author has created.

Before we reach the "beautiful cruelty" of the book’s end, we’ve gotten a tour of various parts of the city, we’ve met the mysterious original inhabitants of Ambergris, the gra...more

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Sep 22, 2007 Tiffany rated it 2 of 5 stars

It's hard to review genre fiction I'm unfamiliar with. But as one generally unfamiliar with fantasy and scifi, I rate City of Saints and Madmen as generally uneven.

The author has created a multi-dimensional world (reminds me of Calvino's descriptions of Venice) with a rich history of art, religion, violence politics and colonization.

The first part is interesting but the appendix drags on and on...too bad because there are interesting things in there, but they're mixed in with really tedious stu...more

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Feb 09, 2010 Andrew rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who have finished China Mieville's superior works

Shelves: ithinkthisiswhereiputstuffivefinish

I picked this up after reading breathless reviews, and while I like what Vandermeer's doing, this book is so ridiculously indebted to China Mieville that it should seriously just be called "Loser Street Station." It's not a bad collection by any means, but I can't help but compare it to Mieville's vastly, ridiculously superior Bas Lag books because both authors are doing the exact same thing.

Vandermeer also has a jokey, Pratchett'y streak that comes through from time to time that feels incredib...more

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Sep 26, 2012 Jonathan Hamlet rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: literaryish-fiction

It's tough to classify these novellas and stories. They have pieces of urban fantasy and some new weird mixed in. Mostly, they're a sizzle reel for how good of a writer Jeff Vandermeer is. There's a lot of ground to cover in the bewildering city of Ambergris, a fictional universe that Vandermeer brings to life slowly and organically. High fantasy it isn't, as Ambergris seems to be a bit of a Victorian and early-modern mashup. It's a difficult read at certain parts, but worth it as each story wit...more

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Apr 19, 2012 David Rush rated it 3 of 5 stars

The star “I like it” is perfect for my review of of Saints and Madmen by Jeff Vandermeer' rating it right in the middle.

And to be honest I only read the four parts before the appendix. Those being 1. Daradin in Love. 2. The Early History of the City of Ambergris. 3. The Transformation of Martin Lake and The Strange Case of X.

I have to confess a reader's weakness for avoiding footnotes, end-notes and appendices. I try but more often than not, especially in fiction, it feels like the author didn't...more

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Apr 21, 2011 aboxofcereal rated it 5 of 5 stars

I have the Prime hardcover edition where even the book cover has a story written on it. A man rows toward the horizon, the city of Ambergris looms heavy in the distance, and has a mysterious encounter with a mythical King Squid. Vandermeer runs all the way home with this idea of his City of Saints and Madmen as a tangible, real life artifact from the world of Ambergris, which might not be as imaginary as the author had once thought it to be. His creation has got legs, like the King Squid, it can...more

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Mar 15, 2011 Lori L (She Treads Softly) rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff VanderMeer is a collection of short stories and supporting material that is classified as postmodern fantasy. The connection between the stories and other material is that they are all set in VanderMeer's fictional city of Ambergris.

VanderMeer has created a totally new, unique world in Ambergris and for that he is to be applauded. Although humans currently live in Ambergris, they are not the original, or only inhabitants. Originally a race of mushroom-like human...more City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff VanderMeer is a collection of short stories and supporting material that is classified as postmodern fantasy. The connection between the stories and other material is that they are all set in VanderMeer's fictional city of Ambergris.

VanderMeer has created a totally new, unique world in Ambergris and for that he is to be applauded. Although humans currently live in Ambergris, they are not the original, or only inhabitants. Originally a race of mushroom-like humanoids nicknamed "gray caps" had a city on the same site, but they were violently killed or driven underground and their city was mostly destroyed. In Ambergris you will celebrate the Festival of the Freshwater Squid, which is even more dangerous than walking down Albumuth Boulevard. And you will want to get off the streets at night when the gray caps come out.

Since City of Saints and Madmen features recurring characters and self-referential plots, you need to take your time reading it because the details and characters will matter. Even though it is very involved, dense material, it will not be difficult or drudgery to read because VanderMeer is a very good writer and there is a lot of humor found in the stories and supporting material.

I enjoyed the footnotes in "The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of Ambergris." In "The Strange Case of X," the institutionalized X is a writer who carries around his book, City of Saints and Madmen. He is convinced he is really from a city called Chicago and made up Ambergris. "The Transformation of Martin Lake" is a World Fantasy Award winning short story. Even the Glossary, A Note on Fonts, and About the Author sections should not be skipped.

I should note that there were earlier editions of City of Saints and Madmen that do not have all the material found in the 2006 edition. I wanted to read City of Saints and Madmen before VandeerMeer's other two books set in Ambergris, Shriek: An Afterword and Finch.
Very Highly Recommended - but it's not going to be for everyone; http://shetreadssoftly.blogspot.com/
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Apr 22, 2010 Loren rated it 4 of 5 stars

From ISawLightningFall.com

Poor J.R.R. Tolkien. Sure, it's great to have a genre-defining work as your legacy, but since John Ronald Reuel shuffled off this mortal coil, no one has come close to replicating the feat of his masterwork. Attempts to create (or, in his particular verbiage, sub-create) as thoroughly as Tolkien did have resulted in either poorly realized or hopelessly artsy imitations. It's lonely at the top. But if I had to name one work that has shimmied a good way up the peak, it wo...more From ISawLightningFall.com

Poor J.R.R. Tolkien. Sure, it's great to have a genre-defining work as your legacy, but since John Ronald Reuel shuffled off this mortal coil, no one has come close to replicating the feat of his masterwork. Attempts to create (or, in his particular verbiage, sub-create) as thoroughly as Tolkien did have resulted in either poorly realized or hopelessly artsy imitations. It's lonely at the top. But if I had to name one work that has shimmied a good way up the peak, it would be Jeff VanderMeer's City of Saints and Madmen.

Ambergris. City of wonder and terror, beauty and squalor. City ringing with calls to prayer from Truffidian priests and muttered threats from thieves who would open your throat as soon as your purse. You need to watch where you step in Ambergris. Yes, it's where Voss Bender wrote his operas, where Martin Lake painted his most marvelous works and where the Festival of the Freshwater Squid is celebrated every year. But many forget that walking down Albumuth Boulevard to pick up a volume from Borges Bookstore or inspect the wares at Hoegbotton & Sons could prove fatal. And when the sun sets, you want to get off the streets. That's when the gray caps come out from the beneath the city, the ancient fungus people who scatter multi-colored molds and harvest the city's refuse. If you aren't careful, they just might harvest you.

One might be tempted to describe City as a collection of short fiction, but that isn't entirely accurate. A few novellas read more or less like what you would expect. A failed Truffidian missionary faces peril while wooing a winsome lady in "Dradin, In Love," and a painter owes his big break to a moment of unspeakable violence ("The Transformation of Martin Lake"). But VanderMeer likes to employ odd forms while telling his stories. "The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of the City of Ambergris by Duncan Shriek" piles on ephemera about the city through a footnote-laden travel guide written by a grumpy, arthritic historian. Editorial glosses on an illustrated short subtly reveal a deadly falling out between author and artist ("The Exchange"). And a psychiatrist investigating "The Strange Case of X" interviews an unusual patient -- one named Jeff VanderMeer.

All of the compendium's strangeness could've made it inaccessible, but VanderMeer does two things to ensure the stories are apprehensible to the common reader. First, his plots aren't overly complicated. Second, he cuts his dense, Tolkien-esque setting with lots of humor. An educational pamphlet entitled "King Squid" contains a 37-page bibliography filled with absolutely hilarious titles. (Among them are The Latest Horrifying and Yet Oddly Magnificent Adventures of the Courageous Squid Hunter and How to Order Your Bibliography for Maximum Reader Impact.) After a quote by a monk in "Early History of the City of Ambergris" stating that he had found "a bath of pure gold that was beautiful beyond description," a footnote sniffs, "Apparently, since [he:] fails to describe it." And a glossary snarkily notes that once-warring political factions have become reduced to teaching piano lessons and throwing darts. City may seem byzantine at some intersections, terrifying at others, but it's certainly worth exploring.(less)

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Apr 16, 2010 Dale Philbrick rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The version of "City of Saints and Madmen" that I read consisted of four novellas about the city of Ambergris (I've read reviews of newer publications of the book which contain more stories). The first story "Dradin In Love" is a seemingly straightforward story of a man seeking the affections of a glimpsed stranger. But the story devolves into a violent introduction to the traditions of Ambergris. I found the second story, a travel guide/early history of Ambergris, to be the most interesting and...more

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Jan 18, 2011 Davea rated it 1 of 5 stars

The first novella was convoluted and only OK.

The second novella, "The Hoegbotton Guide tot he Early History of Ambergris," was terrible. It is written from the perspective of a historian several hundred years later, and it could not be more boring. There are hundreds of footnotes, the first of which says that the reader will not understand the story without reading the footnotes, but at the end, the reader realizes that the footnotes are just tripe. There is a long glossary after the end of the...more

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Mar 27, 2009 Nikki rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: speculative-fiction, fantasy

Confession: I didn't actually read all of the appendix of this. I intend to finish it some day, but it's not the kind of book I feel like I can sit down and just blitz on through. The... bittiness annoys me: I do like short stories/novellas, but this isn't the easiest collection to read.

The comparisons between Perdido Street Station and this book are obvious. I felt the cities were characters in both books -- more clearly so in this book, where there's no single recurring, central character. It'...more Confession: I didn't actually read all of the appendix of this. I intend to finish it some day, but it's not the kind of book I feel like I can sit down and just blitz on through. The... bittiness annoys me: I do like short stories/novellas, but this isn't the easiest collection to read.

The comparisons between Perdido Street Station and this book are obvious. I felt the cities were characters in both books -- more clearly so in this book, where there's no single recurring, central character. It's an interesting collection of stories with all kinds of different tones and styles and genres, even, all centred around the fictional city of Ambergris. The writing and descriptions are quite rich, and you build up a very clear mental image of this city.

Ignoring the appendix, there are four stories:

Dradin, In Love -- This one was richest in very visual descriptions of the city. I kind of felt overwhelmed, a bit thrown in at the deep end, but I did like the descriptions. It was also the most straightforward short story -- not masquerading as anything else. The ending was weird, and clever, but also kind of predictable.

The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of Ambergris -- This was slightly drier, masquerading as a sort of history pamphlet. The footnotes made me laugh, but it was kind of irritating to go back and forth between text and footnotes. The style was clever, but the story wasn't as enjoyable as the first one.

The Transformation of Martin Lake -- This combined story-telling with a sort of... art criticism thing. Again, clever, and more interesting because there was also normal short story narrative. It kind of discusses misinterpretations of art and rolls its metaphorical eyes at people who pretend they understand author intent through psychoanalysing them.

The Strange Case of X -- At this point it felt like it was "too clever by half". Which is how I generally feel about authors appearing in their texts, so perhaps that isn't an unexpected reaction from me. It was kind of obvious to me, and yeah, it's a clever story device but it also wasn't that surprising. Not so much world-building or anything, just pure "lookit my clever plot device, look!".

Appendix -- Stuff related to the previous story. Some of it is interesting, some of it not, for me.(less)

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Oct 31, 2010 Brad rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: magical-history

A remarkable pleasure, one of the most engaging fantasy worlds I've experienced since Mieville's Bas-Lag.

In a comparison between Mieville and Vandermeer, I find that Vandermeer comes off superior: His prose is minimalist and clean, while Mieville tends towards long, unstructured streams of adjectives.

The joy of this genre is discovery, so I will leave the ancient city of Ambergris only lightly sketched out: It is a river city, dedicated to The King Squid. Its history is explored via story and t...more

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Feb 10, 2010 Architeuthis rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2000s, fiction-that-speculates

Jeff VanderMeer's first book of Ambergris is a complex, humorous, awesome, inspired, boring, redundant, over-foot-notey, groundbreaking, self-absorbed and very pretty book. I can't quite call it a novel, nor a book of short stories: it's more of a patchwork, novellas and fake historical pamphlets and short stories and other bizarro little experiments that succeed at times with flying colors. At other times, they crash and burn.

City of Saints and Madmen is a collection of tales set in Ambergris,...more Jeff VanderMeer's first book of Ambergris is a complex, humorous, awesome, inspired, boring, redundant, over-foot-notey, groundbreaking, self-absorbed and very pretty book. I can't quite call it a novel, nor a book of short stories: it's more of a patchwork, novellas and fake historical pamphlets and short stories and other bizarro little experiments that succeed at times with flying colors. At other times, they crash and burn.

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.

"Dradin, In Love" is the opening novella, unless you count the dizzying Michael Moorcock introduction that . . . well . . . looks very nice on the page. "Dradin" is a good strong opening, setting the tone of the city of Ambergris and introducing you to some surprising cultural aspects of the city. The story ends very strongly, and has some memorable imagery. You are also left, in the end, unsure at what point in the story Dradin went mad, or if he was mad from the beginning. It's one of those stories you keep thinking about.

Then, we have "An Early History of Ambergris," a historical pamphlet written by a snarky historian. This lays out the mysterious-yet-hilarious history of the city, with fun illustrations, footnotes, references to other (nonexistant) authors, and whatnot. Another very strong piece, and well placed. It gives the reader a chance to recover from the darkness of "Dradin."

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.

"The Strange Case of Mr. X" is the last of the novellas from the original version of the book. This one is VERY funny, very weird, and also provides a much needed tonal change from "Martin Lake." It ends on a very strong note, and I was still very enthralled after finishing this novella.

Then, we begin our journey through the appendix. This is over half the length of the book, and doesn't include a consistent page numbering system. This is intentional, since the appendix is a series of writings that had been in the possession of Mr. X. These opuses included some goodies, like "The Cage" and "The Exchange." And, this section of the book shows VanderMeer doing some really interesting stuff.

F'rinstance: "The Exchange" purports to be a story by two authors from Ambergris, and the center of the pages show the pages from their story. Below their pages are paragraphs written by a separate author, telling a different story about the authors themselves. These two stories interweave effectively. Another experiment that works less well, but is interesting in theory, is "King Squid," a pamphlet about Ambergris's native King Squids, including their biology, activities, etc. Through the footnotes and the bibliography, the author's occasional comments about his personal life tell a story separate from the sometimes not enthralling squid stuff. This story seemed more interesting in theory than execution.

Some versions of this book also include an encoded story. The version I read had the story already decoded. This story, "The Man Who Had No Eyes," was interesting, but if I'd spent half a saturday decoding the fucker, I would've been shitaaay. I would've expected something at least as good as "Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner."

So, as far as the appendix goes, I feel VanderMeer's ambitions slightly overreached his execution. However, I love experiments, and it's not that anything in here is BAD. It's just highly uneven, with all of the best stuff at the front. I can't say for sure that this would be better if the organization were changed; after all, if you view the appendix as something optional, something for the real VanderMeer fans, then you have an incredibly strong set of novellas, and a bunch of freebie weirdnesses to read through whenever you get curious enough. Of course, I plowed through the whole thing, reading every single footnote, reading the whole bibliography to "King Squid," and then I even thought about reading the glossary. (That's when I decided it was time to curb my dorkdom. I didn't read the glossary.) But, I'm also someone who refuses to turn off CDs before the secret song plays, even if I have to wait nine minutes for the secret song to start, and all it is is Kurt Kobain screaming loudly over a bunch of feedback for like an hour. (If you're a Blind Melon fan, you should know that you can rewind from the beginning of CD versions of the album "Soup" and hear a lame 15-second acoustic thing.) Err....back on topic: if one is to view the appendix as a part of the book and not just an appendix, this would be a 3-star book. If one is to view this as a book with an optional appendix, I would say the book itself is a 4, perhaps a 4.5. So, I'll settle on a rating of 4.

I would strongly recommend this for anyone into New Weird authors like China Mieville and . . . well . . . all those other New Weird authors out there I haven't read yet. I also think this would be a good book for anyone into more literary fiction interested in exploring the fantasy/SF genres. But, if you don't like dark fiction, you probably aren't gonna like Ambergris. The stories, although sometimes funny, are consistently bleak.

(less)

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Jan 27, 2013 Ben rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi-fantasy, 2013

A mixed bag. Vandermeer is clearly adept at world-building (that appears to be largely the point of the book), but the individual stories vary in success. Some are completely engrossing -- The Transformation of Martin Lake, The Strange Case of X, and The Cage in particular. Others -- including the Guide to the Early History of Ambergris and Learning to Leave the Flesh -- were interesting enough. Still others -- such as King Squid -- I freely admit that I skipped entirely. And a 75-page glossary...more

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Apr 26, 2011 Brad rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another 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.

VanderMeer's Ambergris is certainly different, if not vividly so; his fantasy city isn't medie...more

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May 15, 2010 Matt rated it 3 of 5 stars

A compilation of four novellas and an appendices of short stories written over several years by Vandermeer centered on his city of Ambergris. At times, experimental and engaging; other times, tedious. Though all the stories orbit Ambergris, my interest in each ranged widely.

The four main novella’s are all entertaining and well written. The second novella, The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of Ambergris successfully plays with form by incorporating the narrating historian’s crusty voice in...more

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Nov 30, 2008 Jessie rated it 3 of 5 stars

There were parts of this book, primarily the first 3 novellas, that deserve a 4 or even 5 star rating. They introduce you to the fascinating, frightening, and alluring city of Ambergris. The more you learn about the city, the more intriguing it becomes. I love that mushrooms and squid play such major roles in the city's history and culture. After reading this, you'll never look at mushrooms the same again-- which is crazy and awesome. Ambergris is a place where some unfortunate souls suffer from...more

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Jul 08, 2009 Melanie rated it 5 of 5 stars

About half-way through. This book is like nothing I have read before. The imagery is amazing. The author's knowledge and development of the fantasy word is extremely detailed and compelling. It is not an easy read, you have to pay a lot of attention but, so far, it is well worth the effort.

This book is not for everyone, I can see that, but for those of you who enjoy a journey into a darkly fantastic world, this is the place to go. The book is really a series of separately published pieces that w...more

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About Jeff VanderMeer

Jeffrey Scott VanderMeer is an American writer, editor and publisher. He was born in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, but spent much of his childhood in the Fiji Islands, where his parents worked for the Peace Corps. This experience, and the resulting trip back to the United States through Asia, Africa, and Europe, deeply influenced him.

In 2003, VanderMeer married Ann Kennedy, then editor for the small B...more

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The Steampunk Bible: An Illustrated Guide to the World of Imaginary Airships, Corsets and Goggles, Mad Scientists, and Strange Literature

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City of Saints and Madmen (Ambergris #1)

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