As great as this book was, we were originally irritated by that aspect of it we dubbed "self-aware" that presented itself so much in the appendices. To us, those appendices were very much like the bonus sections of a platinum/diamond anniversary/special collector's edition DVD that ends up revealing more than the audience really wanted to know. That being said, we are faced with a single inescapable fact: Martin Lake is still with us; purple mushrooms are still with us; opera feels differently as a work of art. This is all from VanderMeer and his book. Over and over again, in reviewing other books, we find ourselves comparing the best and most brilliant to City as a kind of yardstick. This is an obvious enough clue even for us; the first rating was overly reactionary and inaccurate. City deserves an elevated rating of 6 matching it with some of the best work done in the field (Wolfe, Stephenson, Martin, etc.). Any enthusiast of speculative fiction should read and relish this book.

Nothing here we’d like to point out. Just this: critics adore this book. In part, they should. It is very good and an enchanting read to lovers of speculative fiction. But the general tenor of the praise is so effusive! Those “in the know,” so to speak, know VanderMeer. But the book is not flawless. We think it relies a bit too much on the reader having (at least) some passing understanding of academics and how they think about authors and literature... this may prevent the book from fully reaching a large enough audience to propel it in to greatness. Huge sales may yet prove us wrong in this!

“But this is not simply convincing story-telling. Through the diversity of forms employed, the nature of narrative itself is questioned. It is, as we see, quite possible to tell a story through a case report, or a treatise on biology and zoology, or a history. If these are fiction, then what of other narrative forms of the same nature?”

--sfsite.com, Ian Nichols

Nichols captures exactly what we feel is so very excellent about this book: it is diverse, and strange, and questioning. While the questioning of the narrative itself that VanderMeer employs is well-known and discussed in academic circles in the upper floors of the ivory tower (any New Historicist critics out there?) the way he goes about it is delightful.

“Make the most of the tapestry of tales and visions before you. It is a rare treasure, to be tasted with both relish and respect. It is the work of an original. It’s what you’ve been looking for.”

--Michael Moorcock, quoted from the Introduction

This would have been greatly more accurate if the final sentence had read: “If that’s what you’ve been looking for.” It is a tapestry. It is rare. It should be tasted rather than drank. It caters to someone who is looking for something strikingly original.

Let it not be said that disliked this book! That is absolutely not the case. It is some of the finest and most inventive writing out there and certainly one of the greatest bursts of creativity this side of Miéville. City is something between a novel and a series of connected short stories. It recalls, in many ways, Ursula K. Leguin’s Always Coming Home that was composed as a kind of archaeological study of a fictional world. City presents in this fashion with some traditional short stories but like Always Coming Home, it is interspersed with fictionalized maps, glossaries, histories, and other scraps of material that might be dug up by a tourist visiting another place.

Even better, we’ve never read anything anywhere as—we’ll use this term again—“deliciously” creepy and funny at the same time. This is especially the case in The Early History of Ambergris. It is a short story regarding the founding of this city written by the most pompous and amusing academic—who sees fit to sprinkle his narrative with all kinds of politically motivated and self-aggrandizing remarks—but whose subject matter is of the most threatening and serious in nature. That kind of jarring juxtaposition is an amazing accomplishment in itself and holds the reader balanced on the knife edge of tragedy and comedy. These are the events that stay with a reader and linger in the memory. Certainly mushrooms will never feel the same!

The Transformation of Martin Lake is a story that sears itself into the minds of any aspiring artist using any sort of medium. Like The Early History, it is set once again in the backdrop of the slightly absurd. It too is of such a psychologically horrifying nature as to possibly scare off those would-be artists and turn them into careers featuring accounting, waste disposal, or some similarly mundane line of work. If anybody ever warned how artists become insane, suicidal, or otherwise deranged (see Sylvia Plan and Vincent Van Gogh) this short story can read like a psychological treatise in dramatic form. 

The Strange Case of X is another work of shocking originality. The subject matter of the author himself set in a shifting setting of real and unreal used in ways that would make those people steeped in the tradition of United Federation of Planets holodecks run screaming for their mommies when they get to the end.

Taken by themselves, these stories are some of the best out there and almost, almost, almost, earn this book a 6. In fact, without the appendices, we’d give this book a 6… definitely if there were more than 4 stories in the thing.

But instead of continuing with his fine work in Ambergris and story-telling—why Jeff why couldn’t you continue with another one or two short stories to fill out Ambergris and earn yourself beside the greats?—VanderMeer decides to play even more games. Learned games, we’re the first to realize and admit, but it’s still game playing and reveals a certain amount of juvenilia still resident in VanderMeer’s work. The Appendix takes up a full half of the deluxe edition and comprises a series of musings and fragmentary texts regarding Ambergris, which is what calls to mind the reference to LeGuin above. Letters, notes, glossaries, self-published texts of spurious scholars, even a story written in cipher. None of these “diverse” forms are bad but they’re not exactly on target. They’re the kind of thing that gets published separately or posthumously—not in double-the-price deluxe editions. These sections tax the momentum that the brilliance of the early stories had stored up and disperses them in ways that are adverse to the whole. (In fact, it’s just like taxes in that regard!)

More to the point, it damages the book’s scope. The stories themselves are concerned, almost exclusively, about art but concerned in a way that has some relevance to many people. The Appendix narrowly focuses that concern into solely the artists’ realm and thus constricts the audience to levels that cannot support a higher rated book. VanderMeer is to be congratulated and encouraged but City will not be his life’s work. Yet we feel that we can look forward to great things from this author.

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.

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.

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!