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Synopsis
City of elegance and squalor. Of religious fervour and wanton lusts. And everywhere, on the walls of courtyards and churches, an incandescent fungus of mysterious and ominous origin. In Ambergris, a would-be suitor discovers that a sunlit street can become a killing ground in the blink of an eye. An artist receives an invitation to a beheading - and finds himself enchanted. And a patient in a mental institution is convinced he's made up a city called Ambergris, imagined its every last detail, and that he's really from a place called Chicago.
Ambergris is a cruelly beautiful metropolis -- a haven for artists and thieves, for composers and murderers. And once there, anything can happen.
City of Saints and Madmen includes the World Fantasy Award winning novella The Transformation of Martin Lake. New & Used
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What Reviewers Are Saying
Jeff VanderMeer is truly a unique author, even when compared with veritable giants such as Sanderson and Gaiman. His use of language and structure when creating the worlds his character’s inhabit breathes life into the mundane, allowing the reader a depth of insight rarely seen in modern fiction.
‘City of Saints and Madmen’ is the first novel in the ‘Ambergris Trilogy’, and is largely comprised of short stories, faux-historical manuscripts and typewritten letters from the world’s inhabitants. VanderMeer plays fast and loose with his timeline, with different pieces taking place across a multitude of eras. Whilst this may be confusing to some, his dismissal of linearity allows the reader to build a more complete picture of the society the stories exist within.
There are peaks and troughs, no doubt. Whilst VanderMeer’s writing remains positively poetic throughout, some stories stand up on their own better than others. ‘Dradin, In Love’ , his first offering, is an absolute delight, blending fantasy trappings with Lovecraftian prose. It’s a wonderful feeling when an author spins a yarn the reader truly cannot predict, and VanderMeer evokes discomfort and curiosity in equal measure. I was rather unsure as to the narrator’s reliability until the final third, and the ending pays off that uncertainty in spades. ’The Transformation of Martin Lake’ is equally impressive, highlighting the author’s ability to draw conflict and wonder from the mundane. Truly, I’ve never been more enthralled in dense description of fictional pieces of art than by that which VanderMeer excels in.
On the other hand, certain tales failed to resonate with me to quite the same degree. I found ‘In The Hours After Death’ to be particularly disappointing, within which VanderMeer relies far too heavily on dense, surrealistic prose to create atmosphere. Consequently the plot became lost amongst the trees, as it were - the world building, whilst beautiful, entirely obscuring the story being told. For all that previous tales impressed, this one in particular lost it’s way by failing to balance story, structure and world effectively. I could offer no more insight into the author’s intent here by the end than I could at the very beginning, a blemish on an otherwise fantastic collection.
In summary, ‘City of Saints and Madmen’ is an intriguing introduction to the world of Ambergris, albeit one marred by a sense of over-ambition on occasion. As one of the cornerstones of New Weird, VanderMeer excels at finding the brilliant in boring and creating vast cityscapes that feel entirely distinct from more settings smattered across the face of genre fiction. If you enjoy novels that reject convention, or perhaps even the works of fellow New Weird pioneer China Miéville, then you’re going to love the world of Ambergris.
‘City of Saints and Madmen’ is the first novel in the ‘Ambergris Trilogy’, and is largely comprised of short stories, faux-histori
There are peaks and troughs, no doubt. Whilst VanderMeer’s writing remains positively poetic throughout, some stories stand up on their own better than others. ‘Dradin, In Love’ , his first offering, is an absolute delight, blending fantasy trappings with Lovecraftian
On the other hand, certain tales failed to resonate with me to quite the same degree. I found ‘In The Hours After Death’ to be particularly
In summary, ‘City of Saints and Madmen’ is an intriguing introduction
Unsettling, erudite, dark ... Ambergris is one of my favourite haunts in fiction * China Mieville * This is fiction to stand alongside that of Calvino and Borges * Guardian * VanderMeer keeps going deeper, and finding new forms of gold * Locus * Beautifully written, virtually hallucinatory work . . . enormously rewarding * Publishers Weekly *