Viriconium Nights

Rating:
Summary: brilliant
Review: I don't have much to say about this collection that the previous two reviewers haven't said, but I'd like to recommend a book from the same author if you enjoyed Viriconium Nights: A Storm of Wings. It's out of print but you should be able to find a used copy from amazon or elsewhere.

Rating:
Summary: Incomprehensible but Good
Review: Incomprehensible. Harrison's writing is clean and enjoyable, but I only fathomed the first of eight stories. Laden with enigmatic dialogue and mysterious symbolism, I don't believe he meant them to be understood. But that doesn't mean I didn't like them. I did. Supposedly there is a common theme binding them, and I did detect that theme in most, but not all, of the stories. Overall, the book tastes very much like Vandermeer's Ambergris tales. Harrison probably hangs out with Gene Wolfe.

Recommended Conditionally. (Condition: You like scratching your head.)

Rating:
Summary: Incomprehensible but Good
Review: Incomprehensible. Harrison's writing is clean and enjoyable, but I only fathomed the first of eight stories. Laden with enigmatic dialogue and mysterious symbolism, I don't believe he meant them to be understood. But that doesn't mean I didn't like them. I did. Supposedly there is a common theme binding them, and I did detect that theme in most, but not all, of the stories. Overall, the book tastes very much like Vandermeer's Ambergris tales. Harrison probably hangs out with Gene Wolfe.

Recommended Conditionally. (Condition: You like scratching your head.)

Rating:
Summary: Subtle, allusive, endlessly entertaining
Review: M John Harrison cut his teeth on these haunting pieces, travelogue of a city which is never the same place twice. The ultimate fantasy and the end of fantasy, for me. After walking these strange, shifting streets and eavesdropping on their hyper-realistic but completely unreal denizens, I could never take Tolkien or Tad Williams seriously again. I read it in the UK edition "Viriconium", which also contains "In Viriconium", a novel set in the same world, with an introduction by Iain Banks. Brilliant stuff--but Harrison's last two novels, "Signs of Life" and "The Course of the Heart" are even better. How a writer of this stature could have remained "unknown" for so long amazes me.

Rating:
Summary: An evening's read, and at least a fortnight's dreams
Review: M.John Harrison is often lumped together with fantasy/sci-fi writers. However, he draws together many genres, particularly in these short stories. While reading this book I drifted in and out of stories which, as in real life itself, have no conclusion, but have the most exquisite way imaginable of reaching their non-conclusion. He tells tales of a city Viriconium (sometimes Uroconium, somtimes Vriko) which doesn't seem to exist in any discernable time or place. The names of streets sound vaguely familiar - smatterings of French and German, the inhabitants perform bizarre and meaningless rituals that show traces of the English countryside traditions of Harrison's own youth. For the most part, you feel that you are in a fantasy setting - characters include warriors, a dwarf, and the Mammy Vooley - the thousand-year old queen of Viriconium, a living mummy who dribbles into her dust-filled lap as her bearers carry her in procession through the streets, but then someone goes into their house and switches on an electric light and you think "hey?". The book ends with a story of two old men in present day England, who have heard and read much of Viriconium, and who spend their time visiting the bookshops of Huddersfield, because they have heard a rumor the at the back of a cafe in one of these bookshops is a toilet whose mirror is the gateway to Uroconium. Some of the stories also have an aspect of horror, the same sense of urgency and terror as a good H.P.Lovecraft or Edgar Allan Poe.

As the reviewer from Time Out said "An evening's read, and at least a fortnight's dreams". I never return to books after reading them - I have far too many unread books to make time for that, but this is a book which I have gone back to again and again just to drink in the atmosphere of Viriconium.