Rating: 
Summary: Vivid writing, humorous
Review: A captivating book. Interesting and very funny lead character, although I agree with a previous reviewer that he is most interesting when wicked. Setting and story struck me as somewhat undeveloped: strange fantastical beasts, settings and occurences are unexplained. But then I hardly cared what was happening in the story, I was eager to simply read the chapters for the stirling prose and wit. Well worth your time, I'll be reading the sequel.
Rating:
Summary: Weird and Wonderful
Review: After I had finished reading this novel, I ran across it again, of all places, in a supermarket. Why on earth was it there? It is not a national bestseller and is weird, non-conventional, and literate. It is the type of book, like the Gormenghast Trilogy, that is absolutely wonderful but not likely to become a favorite of the masses (at least not right away). Most of the complaints about the book is that Ford didn't write it the way someone else would. One of the reviewers here said as much because he/she thought it was stupid that Ford had Cley loose his ability to read the Physiognomy, simply because it was not what he/she would happen. Also, in his review column in Asimov's, Norman Spinrad complains about Cley going through a moral epiphany and becomes a "conventional" hero. While, I think that the turn around was to sudden and wish that Cley's acid wit did not dissapear and this kept me from giving it five stars, I think they are minor flaws. Plus, Cley's wit does not dissapear completely and is somewhat more prominent in Memoranda than the later part of the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Falls short of expectations.
Review: Don't believe anyone who says that "The Physiognomy" is irresistibly entertaining. For the first seventy or so pages (a good portion of this 200-page book) I had to resist the urge to toss this of Jeffrey Ford's creations across the room. The viewpoint character, one Physiognomist Cley, is a tough pill to swallow from page one: he believes himself the very crown of creation, and harbors a deep loathing for everyone else; he literally has to supress the urge to punch his partners in conversation; he is a notorious drug addict, and has protracted hallucinations every few pages; at night, he dreams of kicking people in the seat of the pants. The lugubrious arrogance and aloof cynicism of his narration instantly kills any pretense of fun.For a good while it seems that Mr. Ford's only gift is that for surprisingly original juxtapositions, with virtually no substance connecting them. The novel's setting can be loosely termed as "steampunk"; the reader relishes in the well realized originality of the semi-divine Drachton Below and his toy metropolis, his perverse clockwork zombies, the outlying forests filled with all sorts of Bosch demons, and the tiny frontier villages filled with slowly calcifying miners. Unfortunately, there is little or nothing connecting this imagery, and the entire novel has an unrealistic, dream-like quality to it: Ford's sulfur mines hardly seem like such a horrible place (despite the fumes, Cley doesn't seem to develop TB, and at night he relaxes in a pleasant cottage with a monkey butler), and the bulk of his characters seem to be automata. For a while I hoped that the emerging metaphysical elements would connect into a unified whole by the end, lending the book a somewhat lasting impression. I ever built up an entire scheme of cyclicity and time loops which seems to fit the novel quite well, but, no, I was wrong: the novel ends without resolving many of the reader's questions, focusing on the prosaic matters instead. Mr. Ford's "The Physiognomy" sorely lacks a definite mythos. It fails miserably as a novel about characters, and doesn't have enough to make it a novel about ideals.
Rating:
Summary: I Still Don't Know My Reaction
Review: I admit it. I read this book,and soared through the pages. The prose was engaging- I created a flow and you were dragged through this novel. But after the book was finished and placed beside my bed- I wondered about what I had just read. It was quite descriptive/cryptic, and actaully quite sick and perverse. It was the battle between good and evil- but not really. More between bad and wicked. There wasn't really one character I could indentify with, or even root for. In the sequel it gets even worse as the most sympathetic character is an educated a demon- and we are forced to feel bad for his civility. I still don't know if I liked the book- the style was fine, but as a whole it left a deep chill in my bones.
Rating:
Summary: I Still Don't Know My Reaction
Review: I found this tale about the transformation of Physiognomist First Class Cley to be dark and somewhat slow going despite the remarkable characters and ideas that abound. Cley, as we meet him, is a most unsympathetic and brutal personage. Sent on a mission from the "Well-Built City", fashioned by Master of the Realm Drachton Below as a massive mnemonic device to contain and stimulate his memories, to the backwater mining town of Anamasobia in the Northern Territory, Cley finds he is overcome by the circumstances and the curious inhabitants of the town. His accelerating descent forces him to the island of Doralice where he is left to suffer in the hands of the strange Corporal Matters brothers and the true ruler of Doralice, Silencio the ape. He is eventually released and continues on his path to redemption. I definitely read through all of this adventure with sustained interest in the fate of Cley, the almost perfect Arla, the partially roboticized Calloo and the many other bizarre and extraordinarily imaginative characters, and the amazing circumstances in which they find themselves. The book is dense with wondrous ideas and events that continue to amaze right to the end. Given that, it is strange to me that the dark forboding feeling never completely leaves one. There is much that is curious here. As the Well-Built City is the embodiment of the mind of Master Below, so this book gives substance to the strange and wild and fascinating imagination of its author. I wonder how far his excellent prose and style can take us. I am definitely looking forward to reading Fords continuing adventures of Cley as he gradually recovers his humanity in a world far from our human experiences. Dark, but highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Very dark and intense, heavy with fascinating concepts
Review: I found this tale about the transformation of Physiognomist First Class Cley to be dark and somewhat slow going despite the remarkable characters and ideas that abound. Cley, as we meet him, is a most unsympathetic and brutal personage. Sent on a mission from the "Well-Built City", fashioned by Master of the Realm Drachton Below as a massive mnemonic device to contain and stimulate his memories, to the backwater mining town of Anamasobia in the Northern Territory, Cley finds he is overcome by the circumstances and the curious inhabitants of the town. His accelerating descent forces him to the island of Doralice where he is left to suffer in the hands of the strange Corporal Matters brothers and the true ruler of Doralice, Silencio the ape. He is eventually released and continues on his path to redemption. I definitely read through all of this adventure with sustained interest in the fate of Cley, the almost perfect Arla, the partially roboticized Calloo and the many other bizarre and extraordinarily imaginative characters, and the amazing circumstances in which they find themselves. The book is dense with wondrous ideas and events that continue to amaze right to the end. Given that, it is strange to me that the dark forboding feeling never completely leaves one. There is much that is curious here. As the Well-Built City is the embodiment of the mind of Master Below, so this book gives substance to the strange and wild and fascinating imagination of its author. I wonder how far his excellent prose and style can take us. I am definitely looking forward to reading Fords continuing adventures of Cley as he gradually recovers his humanity in a world far from our human experiences. Dark, but highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: FORD IS AMAZING
Review: I have always been on the look for the right book-- the right author. Someone who would come up with a page-turning plot while being able to utilize the beauty of prose in every chapter. FORD did it all. Ford doesn't 'talk' too much, leaving the reader enough space for them to follow the story with intelligence.. his philosphies can also be seen.. scattered on unique characters like arla and cley. If you are in for an intelligent fantasy novel, the physiognomy is the perfect choice.
Rating:
Summary: Mixed feelings . . .
Review: I have mixed feelings about Jeffrey Ford's science fantasy novel The Physiognomy. While I rank it above the average, it's still frustrating to read a book with so much potential so needlessly wasted. Jeffrey Ford had great ideas for it but I didn't like the way he handled many of them. I'll let you know about my biggest gripes in a minute, so keep reading. For this review, I split the novel into three parts. Act one is, in my humble opinion, the best chunk of the book. Here we witness as Cley, renowned physiognomist of the Well-Built City -- the urban brainchild of overlord genius Drachton Below --, is sent to the rural landscapes at the edge of the known world on a trifling mission he's not very pleased to carry out. Cley is a cruel and conceited individual, intelligent but at the same time blinded by his own knowledge and an addiction to a drug known as Sheer Beauty. With a charming personality such as this, it's no surprise he vents his frustrations on the hapless peasants, whom he rates pathetic creatures after only a quick glance at their physiognomic traits. Jeffrey Ford shows great talent for dark humour in his portrayal of Cley, but it's a pity it only lasts for the first part of the novel. Granted, Cley isn't a character you could easily identify yourself with, but I still liked him a lot at this stage. (...) Cley is also perhaps the only truly well-developed character in The Physiognomy, while all the others seem flat by comparison. Unfortunately for him, though, things are about to change. The story goes a bit downhill from here. Luckily not into the Forbidden Zone of Badness, but downhill nevertheless. For starters, things happen too damn fast at times, especially from the second act on. Jeffrey Ford seems in a hurry to finish the book, and its scanty 244 pages add to that impression. During the second part of the novel, Cley endures a set of conditions that gradually change him into a man of healthier disposition. Possibly because the narrative seems so rushed, his moral metamorphosis felt awkward to me. Not unlikely, but still awkward. Or perhaps the surrealism of the world around Cley made it feel that way, I don't know. What I think is a pity is that the protagonist begins to flatten and lose complexity as a result. Oops. On the other hand, Jeffrey Ford writes up some more cool concepts, fewer than in the first part, but fortunately not as squandered. The third act gives us Cley's return to Drachton Below's Well-Built City. Without going into particulars for the sake of spoilers, I'll just say I didn't appreciate the novel's kind-of vacuous antiscientific message, nor did I like to see Cley made into a wimp at the end. The rating goes down a notch here as far as I'm concerned, though I understand other people's views on the subject might vary. Like I mentioned at the start of the review, The Physiognomy boasts quite a few first-class concepts -- I'll tell you of Drachton Below's pet, a clockwork-animated werewolf, just to tease your appetite. Sadly, Ford leaves a trail of undeveloped ideas behind, instead exploring those I wouldn't like to go into -- for instance, he describes an expedition to Paradise in more detail than I'd have cared to have. The bottom-line is he ended up murdering the whole thing's sense of wonder for nothing, and any author who pulls one of those without a pretty damned good reason gives me cause to lop a couple of points off the book's score. So, when the time comes to fill your shopping cart, is this book worth picking up? I'd say yes. The Physiognomy is an original and interesting read in spite of its flaws, the mass market paperback is cheap, and the whole thing wouldn't take you more than an idle weekend afternoon to finish. Personally, I'd encourage you to give it a try. You might even like it better than I did.
Rating:
Summary: A Good Horror/Fantasy Novel with a Disappointing Ending
Review: I really enjoyed this book, the tale of a destructive man, Physiognomist Cley, who goes through a tranformation and realizes the error of his ways, and then tries to help those whom he has hurt in the past. The book is richly textured and has many fascinating characters, including Cley, Silencio, and the Master. The segment of the book dealing with the sulfur mines of Doralice is truly great in evoking an atmosphere of desolation. However, the last few chapters "wrap things up" in a generally predictable way, leaving room for a sequel. This book would have been a classic if it had been a one-shot with a less formulaic ending.
Rating:
Summary: Original and fun
Review: If you're hoping to see a concise study of physiognomy turned into a piece of fiction, look elsewhere. This is just really original and fun. Great weird characters, very dream-like, hallucinogenic interludes, great writing and a pace that keeps the story moving. Definitely not for the hard sci-fi buff, some things are never explained and it gets to be almost a bit light-hearted after the main character 'changes' - I liked him better in the beginning of the story. Didn't know there was going to be a sequel, I don't really see where he can take it from that ending but I'll probably find out.
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