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Shriek: An Afterword (Ambergris, #2)

Jeff VanderMeer

Start date: November 29, 2015

Discussion: CITY OF SAINTS & MADMEN

Why we're reading this: Part of the rich and imaginative world-building to be found in Jeff Vandermeer's Ambergris trilogy.…more
[close] Part of the rich and imaginative world-building to be found in Jeff Vandermeer's Ambergris trilogy.

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CITY OF SAINTS & MADMEN

Intertextual references in COSAM
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last updated Nov 23, 2015 08:51AM

The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of Ambergris
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last updated Nov 17, 2015 08:41AM

What Members Thought

May 03, 2009 Brad rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: pb-and-j-dipped-in-hot-chocolate, in-the-shower, exceeded-my-expectations, fantasy, fascinating, one-of-the-greats, fantasy-urban-fantasy, about-imagination

We book lovers can’t help speaking of authors as “the next ....” We’re always keeping our eyes open for the next Jane Austen or the next Ernest Hemingway or the next Salman Rushdie or the next Ursula K. LeGuin, and we gleefully trumpet their arrival in our reviews. Of course, what we really ought to be looking for is the first China Miéville, the first Lisa Moore, the first Neal Stephenson, the first Iain Banks, the first whomever. When we find those authors who are truly themselves, we’ve reall ...more

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Oct 19, 2015 Amy (Other Amy) rated it really liked it

Shelves: 4-stars-loved-it, adulting-is-hard, library-i-love-you, kids-and-folks, sibling-study, reviewed, apocalypse-now-and-then, books-on-books, close-encounters, story-in-a-story

He said: "A machine. A glass. A mirror. A broken machine. A cracked glass. A shattered mirror." I remember now the way he used the phrases at his disposal. Clean, fine cuts. Great, slashing cuts. Fractures in the word and the world.

"Some things should not be articulated. Some words should never be used in exact combination with other words." My father said that once, while reading a scathing negative review of one of his essays. He said it with a tired little sigh, a joke at his expense. His who ...more

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Jul 01, 2021 Kate Sherrod rated it it was amazing

Shelves: audio-reads

The conceit of this novel -- that it's an afterword to a minor scholarly work that has gotten out of hand -- is delightful, as is its extra touch of being itself mysteriously annotated by the original author of the scholarly work. The author of the scholarly work, Duncan Shriek, is a historian of talent and unique experience but poor reputation; the afterword is by his sister, Janice Shriek, herself a notable figure in a certain epoch of the weird fungal kingdom-cum-colonial- city-state of Amber The conceit of this novel -- that it's an afterword to a minor scholarly work that has gotten out of hand -- is delightful, as is its extra touch of being itself mysteriously annotated by the original author of the scholarly work. The author of the scholarly work, Duncan Shriek, is a historian of talent and unique experience but poor reputation; the afterword is by his sister, Janice Shriek, herself a notable figure in a certain epoch of the weird fungal kingdom-cum-colonial- city-state of Ambergris. The work is supposed to be a tourist's pocket history of the city, containing only hints of Duncan's controversial and hard-won insights into the city's aboriginal inhabitants, the Grey Caps, and these heavily excised and diluted by Janice to keep it publishable, she tells us in the course of her novel-length afterword, which is being written in bizarre circumstances in a bizarre place at a bizarre moment in Ambergris' bizarre history -- and somehow, though Janice hasn't perceived it, Duncan is commenting on her work, which has warped into their joint autobiography. Sometimes his comments are the snotty come-backs of a younger brother, sometimes the hot headed rush to defend the honor of the love of Duncan's life, whom Janice loved not even long before his Love betrayed him, and sometimes just a slightly different version of a shared memory.

This unusual format is perfect for audio, and while I was a bit exasperated at first to hear Bronson Pinchot again, he either had a better director or was just better suited to this novel's need for a first person voice interrupting (usually gently) the excellent female narrator, Cassandra Campbell. Their performances had a believable sibling chemistry even though they were never directly in dialogue with each other.

For all that, the world is still the real star, here, with its echoes of China Mieville's New Crobuzon and Gene Wolfe's Port Mimizon. There's a war between two great business houses in the backdrop of the Shrieks' adventures in academia and the art world; there are also tremendous mysteries surrounding the Grey Caps, among whom few Ambergrisians spend any time since they are now confined to their weird fungal undercity, but whom Duncan has studied closely enough to come to the conclusion that not only did they not accept defeat when their land was taken and their original above- ground city razed centuries ago, but might not even consider themselves defeated. Maybe, indeed, they consider themselves to have acquired new livestock. Or something.

But of course Duncan is just a crackpot, which is why Janice has to defend him in print. Right?

Fantastic stuff. Onto Finch! ...more

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Dec 28, 2019 Jonathan Eisen rated it it was amazing

I love the books JVM is writing now--especially those of the Borne series--but there is a certain feeling I get reading his earlier novels (the Ambergris books, Veniss Underground) that no other books or movies can give me as effectively. There is this deep, underlying violence that guide these worlds, and although a violence is shown to us (in sometimes gruesome detail), what is ultimately felt is just a little off-kilter. The first book, "City of Saints and Madmen" (one of my favorite books of ...more

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