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augustinajosefina · 1 year ago

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A request

Please suggest books to me! Preferably in the glove kink/lesbian space atrocities, urban fantasy or dark academia genres but I'll happily try any SF/fantasy at least once.

So far I've read and loved:

Before 2023

The Imperial Radch (Ancillary Justice/Sword/Mercy) - Ann Leckie

Jean le Flambeur (The Quantum Thief/The Fractal Prince/The Causal Angel) - Hannu Rajaniemi

The Windup Girl/The Water Knife - Paolo Bagicalupi

Memory of Water/The City of Woven Streets - Emmi Itäranta

2023

The Locked Tomb (Gideon/Harrow/Nona the Ninth) - Tamsyn Muir

The Masquerade (Traitor/Monster/Tyrant Baru Cormorant) - Seth Dickinson

Teixcalaan series (A Memory Called Empire/A Desolation Called Peace) - Arkady Martine

Machineries of Empire (Ninefox Gambit/Raven Stratagem/Revenant Gun/Hexarchate Stories) - Yoon Ha Lee

The Murderbot Diaries (All Systems Red to System Collapse) - Martha Wells

The Broken Earth (The Fifth Season/The Obelisk Gate/The Stone Sky) - N. K. Jemisin

Klara And The Sun - Kazuo Ishiguro

Xuya universe (The Citadel of Weeping Pearls/The Tea Master and the Detective/Seven of Infinities plus short stories) - Aliette de Bodard

This is How You Lose the Time War - Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

The Goblin Emperor/The Witness for the Dead/Grief of Stones - Katherine Addison

Some Desperate Glory - Emily Tesh

2024

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue - V. E. Schwab

The Craft Sequence (Three Parts Dead/Two Serpents Rise/Full Fathom Five/Last First Snow/Four Roads Cross/Ruin of Angels) - Max Gladstone

Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution - R. F. Kuang

Dead Country - Max Gladstone

Hands of the Emperor - Victoria Goddard

Read and liked:

The Moonday Letters - Emmi Itäranta

Piranesi - Susanna Clarke

Great Cities (The City We Became/The World We Make) - N. K. Jemisin

Autonomous - Annalee Newitz

Dead Djinn universe (A Master of Djinn/The Haunting of Tram Car 015/A Dead Djinn in Cairo/The Angel of Khan el-Khalili) - P. Djèlí Clark

Even Though I Knew the End - C. L. Polk

Station Eternity - Mur Lafferty

The Mythic Dream - Dominik Parisien & Navah Wolfe

Shades of Magic (A Darker Shade of Magic/A Gathering of Shadows/A Conjuring of Light/Fragile Threads of Power) - V. E. Schwab

The Luminous Dead - Caitlin Starling

Last Exit - Max Gladstone

The Stars Are Legion - Kameron Hurley

Ninth House/Hell Bent - Leigh Bardugo

Machine - Elizabeth Bear

Our Wives Under the Sea - Julia Armfield

She Is A Haunting - Trang Thanh Tran

Sisters of the Revolution - Jeff & Ann Vandermeer

Station Eleven - Emily St John Mandel

Nettle & Bone - T. Kingfisher

Monstrilio - Gerardo Samano Córdova

Was uncertain about:

Light From Uncommon Stars - Ryka Aoki

The Kaiju Preservation Society - John Scalzi

Paladin's Grace - T. Kingfisher

The House in the Cerulean Sea - TJ Klune

In the Vanishers Palace - Aliette de Bodard

Uprooted - Naomi Novik

What Moves The Dead - T. Kingfisher

All The Birds In The Sky - Charlie Jane Anders

And read and disliked:

To Be Taught, if Fortunate - Becky Chambers

A Psalm for the Wild-Built - Becky Chambers

The Priory of the Orange Tree - Samantha Shannon

The Calculating Stars - Mary Robinette Kowal

The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson

How High We Go in the Dark - Sequoia Nagamatsu

Shadow and Bone - Leigh Bardugo

The Passage - Justin Cronin

In Ascension - Martin MacInnes

(My pride insists I add that I have, in fact, read other books as well. Just to be clear.)

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corpsepng · 1 year ago

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Pls make a list of books you recommend to aspiring writers<3

Ok. Aspiring/burgeoning writer starter kit:

In writing anything you officially become a writer so that’s step one haha, no need to aspire too much. BUT. I’m going to soapbox for a bit using this ask as an excuse love u kissing u etc. So. This will barely be about books, but sort of the recipe of what I (personally and subjectively) think will help anyone who wants to grow their craft. (I know because I've been writing seriously for 14 years)

The act of writing is the best practice you can get but having a well from which to draw on creatively and skill wise in order to DO that practice is the trickier part. And sometimes we can be found lacking because we’re either NOT refilling that well enough, consciously enough, or only with the same sorts of things so it gets stagnant. This is a long one so I’ll shove it under the cut haha.

The recipe:

Study craft

Broaden horizons

Diversify consumption

Consume with intention

Apply with reference

1) Study craft: this is the easiest to make sense of, right? I want to get good at writing so I read books about writing yada yada. Whatever you’re writing, it’s made up of a lot of moving parts, and you can dedicate time studying EACH PART, but figure out what you have the least experience with, or the most difficulty with, and start there. Also, before I go on to preach about why you shouldn’t solely stake your growth on some dusty old books, here’s some dusty old books I recommend:

The Elements of Style (strunk/white/kalman) (really quick and abbreviated advice, read every bit of this but remember: rules are important to know so you can decide which are worth following and which are in need of breaking for the pursuit of your goals. And nobodies perfect, or editors wouldn’t have a job)

Bird by Bird (Anne Lamott) (excellent work about fostering a process, important for everyone who finds themselves a little lost on how to just. Start)

Wonderbook (Jeff Vandermeer) (I haven’t read this one but knowing Vandermeers work this is on my TBR and I KNOW it’s going to be enlightening)

How to Read Literature like a Professor (Thomas C. Foster) (perfect for those who can see others stories working but unsure how to make their own work, I personally didn’t read much of this one but this will help people to more critically engage with what they’re consuming)

Save the Cat Writes a Novel/Joseph Campbells Hero’s Journey/On Writing and Worldbuilding/etc (all of these are on structure and craft in a concrete sense), I would recommend either choose one OR getting the abbreviated/digestible versions through YouTube because a lot of these can repeat themselves. I’m working on a playlist of writing craft/structure videos that I found helpful, so keep an eye out for that)

So. Studying craft should be a multidisciplinary process. Articles online, videos on niche media, books on craft or copying things from your favorites, looking for yourself in the movies you watch or fiction you read. Punctuation, prose, structure, rhetoric, character, world building, pacing, etc. Unfortunately, no matter how seasoned you become as a writer, you will always be learning new things about the craft itself.

It should be fun and I honestly feel like an enlightened little scientist when I see something that really cracks the open the magic for me (ex: scenes that serve more than one purpose are OF COURSE going to be more engaging that scenes with only one purpose- duh) (of COURSE magic systems should have a cost) (of COURSE the characters cant always win OR always lose)

2) Broaden horizons: consuming fiction and studying it is key to knowing how to reproduce it. We start with the training wheels of imitation before we ride away full speed into truly unique original storytelling. But the most impactful and thought-provoking stories are more than just fiction, so you need to know more than stories. Science, history, art, craft, math, music, cooking, psychology, religion, whatever!

Everyone always parrots “write what you know��, but what you KNOW can expand to influence what you write- so keep learning new things all the time and for fun, because you never know what could help your story. Your knowledge is not limited to experience alone, and research is your best friend. ASOIAF was so loved because George RR Martin loved not only fantasy, but British history. The Folk of the Air series is so loved because Holly Blacks special interest is faeries.

Note: this does not mean the study of OTHER PEOPLES trauma and experiences in an appropriative way, rather, become worldly. Because sure, knowing what a gunshot feels like adds realism, but I don’t care about realism if I don’t care about your characters or world. Science fiction is the best example of this: so many of those stories stick with us generationally because they’re pointing a lens back at humanity, asking big philosophical questions with science, which is something that touches us all.

But it doesn’t even need to be Big and Thematic like that. My dear friend @chaylattes has a project where she’s applied her love of plants to the world building AND plot, and has INVENTED whole plant species that enriched their work with something so exclusively Chay. No one else could write Andromeda Rogue because Chay, with specific interests and knowledge, put that specificity into the story.

3) Diversify consumption: surrounding yourself with more of the same means you’re going to regurgitate the same, derivatively. To be a hater for a moment: I can tell within the first chapter if someone only reads/watches one kind of media (m*rvel, fairy smut, grim dark nonsense, etc), and it’s distracting. When I read that derivative work, I’m not thinking about THEIR story. All I can think of is the people who did it first, and better.

Alternatively, the best work draws on the unexpected. Fantasy work taking notes from horror, science fiction including humanistic romance, romance with elements of mystery. RF Kuangs work feels so smart because she’s literally a PHD candidate who’s reading of academic writing. Cassandra Clares work is so interpersonally messy and hard to look away from because she watches a lot of reality television.

Genre is less a set of cages to lock yourself inside of and more so the sections of a great big fictional playground- and you need to start playing. Rules, again, are guidelines that can be bent for the sake of your stories. I predominantly write scifi/fantasy/horror but some of my favorite stuff is literary fiction, historical nonfiction, thrillers, and poetry.

And if you can’t bring yourself to read different genres, it takes significantly less effort to WATCH different genres. Television and film are stories too, and can absolutely be learned from.

4) Consume with intention: this is easier said than done. I, embarrassingly, admit that I did not have any reading comprehension skills until I was at least 19. I was consuming, but I wasn’t thinking a damn critical thought, just spitting it back out in a way that sounded smart.

Critical thinking skills (I say, on the website that historically lacks such a thing) are a muscle that needs to be exercised just as often as your writing muscle. Reading new work, studying craft, learning new shit- none of it matters if you can’t APPLY it all to a story. One can take a clock apart to learn how exactly it ticks, but it won't tell time like a watch until you put it back together.

The key is asking questions, all of the time about everything. That whole “why the curtains were blue” nonsense comes to mind, but if you want to be a good writer, (edit: a writer that cares about whether or not their work is vapid imitation of better work) learning to ask WHY the curtains are blue really does matters.

Ask why in ALL stories you consume, including your own. Why do Ghibli films make me feel calm? (Motifs of undisturbed nature, low stakes plots and quiet scenes of reprieve between action, characters that care about one another and aren’t afraid to show it) Why do I fly through a Gillian Flynn novel but take 8,000 years to read other books? (Concise descriptions, realistic but evocative premise, witty voice, contained and fast paced plot, an abundance of questions driving the mystery leading up to a satisfying crash of answers at the end) Why were the curtains blue, the coffee cup chipped, and the lipstick stain on the rim red instead of purple or pink? And why did the colors matter at all when the scene is about a father at a kitchen table? (You tell me!) Answers may vary.

You can put the work into learning the answer at the source (ie: listening to authors talk about their own work), or through the external interpretations of a critic (proceed with caution here), sure. These are even good when learning HOW to think critically if you don’t even know where to start. But your growth as a writer depends on your ability to answer your OWN questions.

(Why do I feel tense in this scene? Is it because the character says they’re sweating and struggling to breathe? Is it because I’ve been told the monsters close? Is it because the sentences are getting shorter and the author keeps repeating descriptions of that monsters massive bloody teeth coming closer? Or is it because I know the gun in her hands has no bullets because another character already tried what she’s about to try?)

(Why do I feel sad in this scene? Is it because the characters mom just died? Is it because the character can’t even verbalize that sadness to others? Is it because none of the other characters seem to care enough to ask? Is it because of the wilted flowers in the corner? Or is it because there are daisies in the bouquet, and those were the moms favorite?)

I can nod and smile at 1000 opinions about “why X did Y and the end of Z” or “why X is Y and not Z” but how I felt when I consume something, how I was affected and how it made ME PERSONALLY answer my critical questions, that’s what’s important. That’s how we manufacture gay subtext in everything, because sometimes gay is a feeling as opposed to a fact.

Also, if those subjective answers are inconsistent among readers/viewers, the writer likely had their own intentions a little muddled. So, and I know I’m getting tangential but stay with me: romance. You know how you’re supposed to feel happy or convinced that the people falling in love are like, in love? And want to put yourself in that position or whatever? I CANNOT consume most romance media because it all comes off as categorically terrifying to me. I ask myself why the characters are doing what they do, reacting the way they react, saying way they say, and none of it feels romantic. I want to file a restraining order, and that’s the failing of the author, who did not make enough conscious choices in their work and accidentally created horror while writing their color by numbers trope slop of a “romance” novel.

5) Apply with reference: is like taking all your ingredients and finally cooking. You want people to notice and respect when you add certain literary devices, descriptions, character choices, but not to the detriment of your work. Shows like stranger things are popular but divisive because their intertextuality and reliance on nostalgia bolster an otherwise unoriginal idea. They weren’t trying to reinvent the wheel, they were writing a love letter to Stephen Spielberg, and are riding that wave into the ground. But the fairy dick renaissance doesn’t feel nearly as palatable as season one of stranger things did because a lot of times they aren’t using the ingredients in their own way, rather, following the recipe to a T and selling it as new. Food really is the perfect metaphor and sorry in advance because I’m really going to run with it here lol.

When I eat a meal, first of all I know I'm eating food, so don't try and trick me into thinking otherwise or I'll only get annoyed. I want to be able to taste all of what’s in front of me, spice, salt, sweet, bitter, etc and know what what you said you've fed me is really actually truly what I've eaten. One ingredient, or writing choice, shouldn’t overpower another, or surprise me so much I can’t take another bite. I shouldn’t try something you call “sauced and baked yeast patty garnished with fermented milk and smoked meat” and think “this shits pizza” because you didn’t even try to jazz it up more than what the instructions on the digiorno box said. I also shouldn’t bite into something you call a pizza and only taste bread because you really like bread and forgot that a pizza is more than just bread.

But inversely, avoiding all ingredients gets you weird, nary inedible shit like charred milk reduction with lamb mist or whatever. Show me you have knowledge in your genre by referencing it AND remixing it, show me that you studied craft by foreshadowing properly or pacing well, show me you’re more than an AI writerbot by deepening your work with your unique and human influence, show me you read broadly by adding surprising ingredients, and show me that you mean every word you write because you made the curtains blue instead of yellow, and topped your pizza with pepperoni instead of pineapple.

Congrats on making it all the way through my rambling, hope I made sense and that this helped!

#mail.txt #writeblr #writerblr #writing advice #writing resources #writing tips #writing help #anon

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utilitycaster · 9 months ago

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thanks for the book answer! would you share your fiction favorites in general?

Hi anon,

I'll post a few but I think to clarify - this is also kind of just going to be a list. I meant more like...are you looking for book recs? If so are you looking for specific things (eg: queer characters, fantasy and if so which subtype, sci fi and ditto, literary fiction, etc.) Or do you just like, want a list of books I have liked.

Anyway this is a list of a handful of books/series/authors that I'd count as favorites, loosely grouped, but I didn't go into any details about anything.

Fantasy I read a teen and has permanently shaped how I interact with fantasy fiction; some of this is YA

a large swathe of what Diana Wynne Jones has written

The Belgariad and Mallorean by David Eddings

The Old Kingdom series by Garth Nix

Sorcery and Cecelia by Caroline Stevermer and Patricia Wrede (this came up on the comfort reads panel I watched yesterday and it is indeed a comfort read for me) and Mairelon the Magician by Patricia Wrede (set in the same sort of world)

Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

I read some of the Patternist series by Octavia Butler as a teen but then didn't revisit it until adulthood

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (Piranesi is very different and also excellent but that came out when I was an adult, but it's still a favorite)

The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley (I also read a bunch of her fairy tale-based books which I don't know if I'd call them favorites still but I do think they're an influence)

Sandman by Neil Gaiman

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Middlegrade/YA fiction I read as a kid that also permanently shaped something

Several Ellen Raskin books but especially The Westing Game

Elizabeth Enright's books but especially the ones about the Melendy family and Gone-Away Lake

Fantasy and SF I read as an adult and would consider exceptional/a favorite

The Broken Earth Trilogy by N. K. Jemisen

The City and the City by China Mievelle

The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir

Phedre's trilogy of the Kushiel's Legacy series by Jacqueline Carey (have not read the others in the series so this isn't saying they're bad, I just can't speak to them)

The Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Leguin

Arcadia by Iain Pears

The Terra Ignota series by Ada Palmer

The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie

The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold

The Night Watch books from Discworld by Terry Pratchett; I have read like, one other Discworld book and it didn't have Sam Vimes in it so I didn't really care

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delaney

Literary fiction/not sf I read as a teen or adult

(there's notably a lot less of this because I do lean heavily towards fantasy but)

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead by Olga Tokarczuk

#answered #Anonymous #ngl I used to be a MASSIVE rereader but i do not have the time so this is based on a scan of my bookshelves #and the last 8 years of my goodreads #in addition to what i know i have reread a bunch #m's book recs

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morhath · 5 months ago

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Mid-Year Book Freak Out

@aroaessidhe tagged me let's gooooo

Number of books you’ve read so far: 139

Best book you’ve read so far in 2024: I've reread two previous five-star reads: There Are No Accidents by Jessie Singer and Translation State by Ann Leckie

Best sequel you’ve read so far in 2024: Most of the sequels I've read this year have been rereads and I don't want this whole post to be rereads. Let's say What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher and We Speak Through the Mountain by Premee Mohamed.

New release you haven’t read yet but want to: Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera (which I have out from the library right now).

Most anticipated release for the second half of the year: Absolution by Jeff Vandermeer (new Southern Reach!), A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher, and The Sky on Fire by Jenn Lyons.

Biggest surprise favorite new author (debut or new to you): Maybe Ryoko Kui? I, like everyone else, got really into Dungeon Meshi earlier this year. I read the whole manga in like three days. I suppose Seth Dickinson counts in a way, since I bounced HARD off the third Baru book and was pleasantly surprised to find that I really liked Exordia. I also enjoyed "Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole" and might seek out more work by Isabel J. Kim.

Newest fictional crush: I don't think I have any newer than Miles Vorkosigan, who still dates back a couple years.

Book that made you cry: Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie. (Reread.) Raven Stratagem by Yoon Ha Lee (the servitor who stays behind...) (Reread.) "Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole". Exordia. Night Watch by Terry Pratchett. (Reread. For some reason, Reg really got me this time around.)

Most beautiful book you’ve bought so far this year (or received): I'M REALLY TRYING NOT TO BUY BOOKS but The Siege of Burning Grass by Premee Mohamed has a cool cover and I preordered it because I looooove her work.

Book that made you happy: Dungeon Meshi, and just about every single reread, which is too many to list.

What books do you need to read by the end of the year?: Uhhhh there's this one about plane crashes I just bought that I'm really excited for, but overall "need" seems a little strong.

I'll tag @agardenandlibrary @longsightmyth @hypokeimena @falliblefabrial and @a-ramblinrose

#life #reading #books #tumblr business

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everycorner · 10 months ago

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what are some of your fav books tho 👀

oh hey. here's some:

The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe

the collected plays of Sarah Kane, but especially Cleansed and 4.48 Psychosis

Dionne Brand's long poem Ossuaries

The Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff Vandermeer

Alan Garner's Weirdstone trilogy

Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake

Autobiography of Red and An Oresteia by Anne Carson

any James Tiptree Jr short story collection

every book Porpentine has released

i can give you a punch card which you can redeem once you've reached 4+ holes

#lemme know if you wanna hear my thoughts about any of them <3

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13eyond13 · 11 months ago

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Do you have any non-manga book recs? I would like to read more too, any genre

Sure! Here are 30 books I enjoyed reading sometime within the past decade or so, in order of date originally published: BOOKS TO READ (or not, 's entirely up to you):

Pride and Prejudice (1813) Jane Austen Wuthering Heights (1847) Emily Bronte Crime and Punishment (1866) Fyodor Dostoevsky The Time Machine (1895) H.G. Wells The Metamorphosis (1915) Franz Kafka The Hobbit (1937) J.R.R. Tolkien Rebecca (1938) Daphne Du Maurier Confessions of a Mask (1949) Yukio Mishima Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) George Orwell Lord of the Flies (1954) William Golding The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955) Patricia Highsmith Rabbit, Run (1960) John Updike We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962) Shirley Jackson In Cold Blood (1966) Truman Capote Interview with the Vampire (1976) Anne Rice The Mosquito Coast (1981) Paul Theroux Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (1985) Patrick Suskind Misery (1987) Stephen King The Silence of the Lambs (1988) Thomas Harris The Midwife's Apprentice (1991) Karen Cushman Middlesex (2002) Jeffrey Eugenides Oryx and Crake (2003) Margaret Atwood The Road (2006) Cormac McCarthy Heart-Shaped Box (2007) Joe Hill The Hunger Games (2008) Suzanne Collins Gone Girl (2012) Gillian Flynn Annihilation (2014) Jeff VanderMeer The Fisherman (2016) John Langan The Marrow Thieves (2017) Cherie Dimaline Paradise Rot (2018) Jenny Hval

#books #book recs #reccs #ask #anon #p

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librarycards · 8 months ago

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Book rec ask….Very interested in your fiction recs.

Borne - Jeff Vandermeer This Thing Between Us - Gus Moreno Piranesi - Susanna Clarke Embassytown - China Miéville Comemadre - Roque Larraquy

I didn't highlight it very much in the list, but I also really like sci-fi, particularly Ann Leckie and Ursula K. Le Guin :) This is so fun, appreciate you!

awesome list! fun fact - i use "embassytown" as one of a few litmus tests to see how weird/opaque of a book someone can actually handle. you've passed the test. here are some:

Jesi Bender, Kinderkrankenhaus

Tochi Onyebuchi, Goliath

Jay Besemer, The Ways of the Monster

NM Esc, Last Week's Weather Forecast Made Me Nervous

Andrew Joseph White, Hell Followed With Us

Renee Gladman, Event Factory

also: obligatory "you may like my book" link. alas, we are in Promo Mode.

enjoy!

#anonymous #ask #book rec #i gave you weird shit you're welcome!!!

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eaterofbooks · 1 year ago

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Oceanpunk as a subgenre has been getting some attention recently, so I’m hoping I’ll find more readers who love oceanic sff, because I am obsessed.

Ocean Themed SFF I have read and loved

The Deep by Rivers Solomon

Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield

Tentacle by Rita Indiana

Current Futures: A Sci-Fi Ocean Anthology by Ann VanderMeer (editor)

The Past Is Red by Catherynne M. Valente

Ocean Themed SFF on my radar

Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor

Trouble the Waters: Tales from the Deep Blue by Sheree Renée Thomas (Editor)

Flowers for the Sea by Zin E. Rocklyn

Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller

2043… a Merman I should Turn to Be by Nisi Shawl

Chlorine by Jade Song

Also shoutout to How far the Light Reaches by Sabrina Imbler (non-fiction, memoir/essays) for being everything I ever needed

#sci fi #sff #oceanpunk #oceanic fiction #oceanic sff #queer sff #climate fiction #books #booklr #book recommendations #seapunk #oceanic weird

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last-domain · 1 year ago

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I finished Jeff Vandermeer's Ambergris in the last few days. They were good, Shriek: An Afterword might be my favourite, but it's hard to compare it to City of Saints and Madmen. Mostly because CoSaM is more of an anthology, with some truly exception pieces and some made made weaker by proximity to them.

(I will add a cut here. I have written more than I expected, with more information than you might want before reading. Proceed with caution.)

Frankly, while I still loved Finch, I found its ending weak. Perhaps I will come around in later re-readings, but I can't help but feel it lacked the necessary full catharsis for the tension built up before it. Additionally, while necessary due to its premise and format, its prose and handling of the core concepts of the series felt clumsier.

It gave too much, too freely, and the presentation of this was more plain. It reduced the dread and tension to the familiar (but not mundane) and explicable (as much as is possible for such topics).

Regretably continuing to heap up negativity: There were three primary threads that failed for me. Threads that perhaps would remedy the above if they had reached me.

The thread of the protagonist's father,

The protagonist's previous identity, and

The (only sometimes) subtle villain. (Spoilers abound!)

I did not connect to the emotions tied to the father past a point. I felt it held a personal significance for Vandermeer, but I do not share his history and could not find it sufficiently affecting. Not for a lack of sympathy, but empathy – it felt too close to something powerful for Vandermeer alone. (I will point out some parallels in my personal experience that could theoretically, in the most calculating and impersonal way possible, lend me the experiences needed to translate the themes; if only to better demonstrate how they failed, or how I failed them.

(My father is dying from stage four blood cancer. He has been made a pariah. He has betrayed, and been betrayed. There is love, tinted with confusion, for I can not, and may never, truly know him. I don't understand who he is or why he did what he did. He is a known quantity only in hindsight, a stranger in the present. We share a deep connection through our names, in our sympathy for each other, in the frank and bleak acceptance of the hand we have been dealt. That we are weak, limited and short-sighted men doing what we can in a vicious world.)

There is a connection, but I do not feel enough of it, and I suspect it is crucial to this story. The great reveal is buried amidst more of the same: relentless exposition and an ever-urgent escalation. It lacks the necessary 'pull back' that gives impact to such a moment -- The opportunity to take to the stage alone and reach past words.

The same can be said for the protagonist's past life and identity. It lacks room to breathe, boxed in claustrophobic company with players and events too large to permit its scale.

Too much is divulged too regularly for the tightening of emotional chords, and thus resonance. We know more than is needed each time the topic becomes relevant, until what could have been crescendo arrives flat.

Just a known and expected fact among many.

Once he was James, now he is John. Once he was a bastard, now he is a different bastard. The difference between a womaniser who loves whiskey and cigars and a cynical unwilling detective who loves whiskey and cigars is not enough to merit the weight implied when this information is presented.

We know, unfortunately.

Finally (and this is far more than I anticipated to write on just this one novel) is the villain.

They feel like someone has stitched them into the story after enthusiastic and misguided recommendations from the publisher (I cannot say editor, because the glamorous Ann Vandermeer is Jeff's wife and editor, and has never disappointed.).

Like using a ball of twine and a knitting needle to sew back together a rich but torn silk tapestry. It is functional in the literal sense, necessary in the mechanical, but still confusing and upsetting to see.

Risking outright spoiling everything: I felt a rush of baffled familiarity towards the end of the book.

Suddenly, I was reading the most inventive and creatively liberal written adaptation of a video game ever envisioned.

Specifically: Half-Life 2.

Now, while Shriek: An Afterword and Finch were both published after the games release, City of Saints and Madmen preceeded Half-Life 2 by over three years, if you wholly discount the time spent writing the books. More still, the whole series is too significant and developed to be informed and transformed that quickly. These are the sort of stories that take a half-decade or more to plan and build up.

I admit, I haven't read or listened to Vandermeer talk about his work, much. Just the excerpts at the ends of his novels and a few short posts, about his disappointment in Alex Garland's adaptation of Annihilation and re-wilding lawns. So perhaps he has spoken on this. I am afraid to learn if he has.

To explain more; it is not just in specifics of content that I drew connections, but in tone. Towards the end, it truly does begin to feel like the plot of a game. It becomes too abrupt, too direct and too normalised as the verisimilitude of the world shifts from horror and a languorous living city resplendent in cruelty, beauty and pleasure -- to a shallow pool of one-note characters, alien invasions and resistance to an all too comprehensible (if mindlessly evil) occupying force.

The villain itself is, well... absurdly tied in? As if they are sewn across the book to rejoin wandering scenes; to shuffle and shuttle the actors to their places in the next scene (once, very literally), and then, with a metaphorical but embarrassingly exaggerated wink to the audience, reminds us the story takes place in a world of mysteries before (again, literally!) vanishing. To which our man clumsily muses to himself (and thus us) "It sure is a scary and mysterious world we live in. Welp. Not my problem anymore."

Okay... so. This came out far more passionate a diatribe than I expected. I had wanted to quickly note the negatives before moving on to the positives, as to not leave anyone reading on a sour note. I love these books. Have loved City of Saints of Madmen for years, and I don't truly regret reading the sequels.

There is a genre in fiction that I would describe as 'The City'. I am tempted to attach 'monster', '(anti-)hero', 'protagonist', 'beast', 'ancient' or 'eternal'. But we all know these tales; in Gaiman's Neverwhere, Dishonored's Dunwall, Miéville's New Crobuzon, Bioshock's Rapture, Pratchett's Ankh-Morpork, Disco Elysium's Revachol, David Edison's City Unspoken, Jon Ware's Eskew, and any number of the countless fictional depictions of London, Hong Kong, Cold-War Berlin, Los Angeles and, of course, New York.

This "genre" is a favourite of mine. Most strongly felt when the unity and vision for their subject (of affection) is unified in vision, deeply defined, longingly familar, tantalisingly strange and unique in a ubiquity of perspective between its physical architecture and the absurd views of its inhabitants.

These are places where you can refer to both the (un)mapped streets and their citizenry as "The City" interchangeably without negating the autonomy and presence of either.

Places that cannot be described as "Like x city, but with y concept" without utter disservice.

Places that are alive and changing and wanting and hostile and loving.

Places that are cruel and ugly and comforting and utterly remarkable.

Ambergris is one such place, a paragon of its kind. It is so much more. Its paths are winding and beautiful and deeply unsettling. It is wrong in all the right ways. It is a cathedral built in the mind, a channel of lasting silences and roaring senses flowing through them. It is a place no one has ever been, that lives now inside me.

It really is something.

"If you don't feel a certain sadness toward the past, then you probably don't understand it."

#jeff vandermeer #finch #city of saints and madmen #shriek: an afterword #ambergris #book review #I suppose?

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