Author: Jeff VanderMeer
Cover Artist: Scott Eagle
Publisher: Prime Books
Binding: Paperback
Publication Date: 2002

“What can be said about Ambergris that has not already been said? Every minute section of the city, no matter how seemingly superfluous, has a complex, even devious part to play in the communal life. And no matter how often I stroll down Albumuth Boulevard, I never lose my sense of the city’s incomparable splendor - its love of ritual, its passion for music, its infinite capacity for the beautiful cruelty.”

Thus we are introduced to the city of Ambergris, the centerpiece of Jeff VanderMeer’s City of Saints and Madmen and as much of a character as any of the eponymous personages that wander its pages.

“City” is comprised of an interesting mix of stories including, as well as a number of scholarly (yet occasionally humorous) pieces (attributed to various people from Ambergris) that all combine into one surreal mosaic of the city of Ambergris, where the gray caps lurk just behind the scenes, fungus sprouts in profusion and artists inspire fanatical loyalty or hatred.

There isn’t much common style across the book, as there are a couple of novella-length stories and some short stories, as well as the aforementioned “scholarly” pieces that provide some background to Ambergris. It’s an unusual approach but rather interesting, made more so by the distinct artwork and “cover” pages that precede each of the sections, as well as the different fonts and page styles used for the second half of the book (the “AppendiX”, which purports to be a collection of stories gathered by a mysterious patient of an asylum in Ambergris known only as X, who is clearly intended to be VanderMeer himself). Even the cover of the book (the original edition from Wildside Press, as opposed to the recent re-release from Spectra) features a brief story about a fisherman and his encounter with a giant squid, with the title of the book and VanderMeer’s name cleverly worked into the text.

With such a diverse collection of work in one volume, you might expect it to be uneven in quality, but I’d have to say I enjoyed the book from cover to cover. In particular, I enjoyed the introductory story Dradin, In Love (a surreal tale of a missionary recently returned to Ambergris who falls in love with a woman only seen in a window high above the street), as well as the World Fantasy Award- winning story The Transformation of Martin Lake (an interesting story about an artist and the sudden changes his artwork undergoes). As well, the section entitled An Early History of Ambergris is a intriguing story about the founding of Ambergris presented as part of a “travel guide” to Ambergris, replete with (often amusingly sarcastic) footnotes by the fictitious author.

The latter half of the book has some interesting work as well, including The Cage (a dark tale that plays up one of the themes of VanderMeer’s Ambergris work: the constant encroachment of fungus throughout the city), The Strange Case of X (in which an unidentified stranger clearly meant to be VanderMeer elaborates on his delusion that Ambergris is real), and In The Hours After Death (a story about what transpires in one man’s “life” after death).

To be sure, City of Saints and Madmen is a very unusual work, but an excellent one on many levels. VanderMeer paints a surreal picture, yet does so with a flowing prose brush.

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Topics: Ambergris, City of Saints and Madmen, Collection, Jeff VanderMeer, Prime Books, Scott Eagle, Short Fiction