Rating: 
Summary: a Seminal Work
Review: Mr. Vandermeer has built a fabulation of a place, it is no longer simply an imaginary one. It has been built mortar by mortar from the stuff that clings to the walls of Hell and Jeff Vandermeer's polyglot mind. It seems to now exist within the boundaries of this volume. And Vandermeer now dusts the crumbs of the Divine off the cobblestones with his whisk broom of an imagination.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent, but I wish it were longer
Review: Really enjoyed this book, Jeff has a wild and coherent imagination. Only wished the book contained the stories I later learned were only available on the extended edition.
I suppose in the end I'll end buying the other and give my copy to a friend who also appreciates good literature.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent, but I wish it were longer
Review: Really enjoyed this book, Jeff has a wild and coherent imagination. Only wished the book contained the stories I later learned were only available on the extended edition.
I suppose in the end I'll end buying the other and give my copy to a friend who also appreciates good literature.
Rating:
Summary: I can't give this more than five stars?
Review: The four weird, grotesque novellas contained in this book are among the best works of fiction I have ever read period, particularly "Dradin, in Love". Having the four of them in one omnibus does wonders to (on?) one's psyche. Though each delves into the (usually) humorously bizarre, each takes a very different tack to wend its way towards its scintillant heart, so that all four stories end up wondrously bouncing off, bleshing, and commenting on each other, despite their wide distribution of publication dates.There really is no other author who writes like Jeff VanderMeer, especially here in the four core Ambergris stories, but names like Angela Carter (of whom VanderMeer is quite the fan), Jorge-Luis Borges (who owns a splendid bookshop, by the way, on Ambergris' main drag, Albemuth Boulevard), M. John Harrison, Lucius Shepard, Lewis Carroll, Thomas Pynchon, Vladimir Nabokov, and even Cordwainer Smith come to mind through free association. Strange lifeforms abound: giant squid, malevolent mushrooms, swarthy dwarves, living saints, raving priests, burning birds, and more fungus than you could choke a squad of mad yaks with. Literary, baroque, yet eminently -- nay, *compulsively* readable, the Ambergris novellas are precisely my cup of frothing tea, and therefore are yours. IF YOU BUY ONE BOOK THIS YEAR, BUY THIS ONE. It will change your life. Really. Hark! I can hear the happy cries of pain from the Festival of the Freshwater Squid! Come, let's join the fun!
Rating: 
Summary: A good, but imperfect and short, collection
Review: This book is a collection of four stories set in the city of Ambergris. Though there are tenuous links between the four, they are separate works and I will discuss them separately. "The Early History of Ambergris" was the first of the four I read, though it is actually second in the book. It is an extremely funny account of the city's history, told through the persona of an imaginary historian. Despite the humor, it seems more real than one would expect, and I found myself forming opinions on the authenticity of imaginary documents. Now that I have read the acknowledgments, I find that the writing style is actually a real historian's. I must find out more about that guy. "Dradin, In Love" is the first story, though I read it second. It is a Kafkaesque nightmare, starting out in mere confusion and spiralling downward into madness. Unfortunately, it doesn't contain anything really interesting; it's just a sequence of progressively more disturbing images, few of which are particualrly original or aesthetically interesting. Not that another review on this page gives away something extremely important about this story. "The Transformation of Martin Lake" is much better. It chronicles a series of dramatic events in the life of an Ambergrisian artist. Though magnificent for what it tells, it is also infuriating (in a good way) for what it does not tell. It is also genuinely scary, more so than much so-called "horror" fiction. I would call this the best story here. "The Strange Case of X" is the shortest story, and feels almost like an addendum. It is very interesting, as so many stories about madmen tend to be. VanderMeer's descriptive language is wonderfully hallucinatory. I regret that it was published here, however, as this caused me to assume from the start one of the story's crucial surprises. Though the stories included here were very good, I was disappointed that the city of Ambergris itself did not figure more strongly into the book. Other reviewers here and elsewhere have said that the setting is incredible, but it didn't come alive for me in the same way that Middle-earth, New Crobuzon, or the other truly great settings do. I also felt somewhat shortchanged, given how little text there is here relative to the book's price. In his introduction to this book, Michael Moorcock writes that "It's what you've been looking for." I have indeed been seeking something like this collection, but it didn't quite fulfill my hopes. I do recommend it, though. It's very different from anything else I've read, and VanderMeer has some truly original ideas. In his next books, I may indeed find what I am looking for.
Rating:
Summary: A Treasure-Trove of the Imagination
Review: This book is filled with riches - from the dust jacket story through the four novellas and the textual, illustrative and typographical variety of the Appendix to the final hilarious paragraph (with accompanying photograph) on the back flap of the jacket. A book that belongs on the shelf with Nabokov's "Pale Fire," Calvino's "Invisible Cities," and Borges's "Labyrinths"!
Rating:
Summary: Very strange but very good
Review: This is a book aimed at a highly specialized and sophisticated audience but one that can have far-reaching effects. We don't think it will change the face of speculative fiction-despite its brilliant moments and the impressive things it has to say about the nature of art-but it may find a long life in the academic community from whom many of the tricks in the narrative were generated and whose population will offer an audience that will enthusiastically embrace its subject.
WHO SHOULD READ THIS:
Any graduate student in English or Fine Arts or Cinema or any such field of study should acquire this in some fashion and read it (we say some fashion because those parties are usually far too poor to purchase a $40 deluxe edition of an obscure book). They will be greatly rewarded in intellectual capital which is their currency. Others of you-especially those who enjoy the short story form-should heed the unspoken message of Moorcock that this is a true work of originality and it should be read if that is what you're looking for.
WHO SHOULD PASS:
The thing is weird! If strange, weird things confuse you (take for example, Naked Lunch, Existenz, or some of the stranger moments in the Matrix trilogy) then you should have deep reservations about delving in to this thing. People who are creeped out by camping in the wilderness overnight or traditional Catholics watching The Exorcist will find themselves deeply frightened and disturbed from reading The Early History of Ambergris. Aspiring writers may quit their profession after reading The Transformation of Martin Lake. This book is strange and deeply unsettling in many ways. Avoid if these things are a bother to you!
READ THE ENTIRE REVIEW AT INCHOATUS.COM
Rating:
Summary: A Must Read
Review: This is a fantastic book. If you want to read something different and interesting - this is it. You will enjoy the characters, the richly envisioned world, and the prose itself (as baroque and as rich as Ambergris). Don't expect it to be simple, but do expect to spend some time really reading - isn't that what you really want to do?
Rating:
Summary: Dark and Sweet -- like Puppet Theatre drenched in honey!
Review: VanderMeer is one of the few modern fantasy writers worth reading. His imagination is enormous and sombre, cool and elusive as a chilled shadow, and no less fluid. It is a pleasure to read VanderMeer, because his tales are visual and yet musical, neither the word nor the image dominating the other. This book condenses and serves much of what he has done in recent years, and it is a satisfying platter, with a taste strange but sweet, worthy of a lick at the corners of the lips and a dreamfilled slumber afterwards. Comparisons are odious, we all know that, and yet I am reminded of some of the great French fabulists when I read VanderMeer. I never exaggerate. This book is utterly marvellous!
Rating:
Summary: A flemish work of exquisite texture
Review: Vandermeer's words are beautiful hues in a Flemish painting. Ambergris is any town in all its colours,and one cannot admire enough the splendid tapestry of a strange alternate world.Vandermeer has truly a Byzantine mind. I recommend this book to all who wants something original,for a change, something voluptuously dark like Storm Constantine at her best,something that's not so biologically "yucky" as China Mieville's "Bas Lag" ("La-bas",really!) novels.Vandermeer's stories are a refined work of art.
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