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<FONT FACE="Verdana"><I>City of Saints and Madmen</I> is certainly the flashiest of the three, with its myriad styles. It leaves a lot to the imagination, in the best possible way, and is probably the most purely enjoyable book in the Ambergris cycle.<BR>
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<I>Shriek</I> is also very rewarding, and I think the most accomplished of the set. The depth of characterization in the book is beyond almost anything else in genre. It’s quite different from its predecessor, which I find refreshing, although I can see where it wouldn’t push a reader’s buttons in the same way as <I>CoS&M</I>. <BR>
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<I>Finch</I> is yet another departure, a successful one in my opinion, but again not necessarily a likeable one. In many ways, it wraps up the mysteries that the previous books set up, which I think lends to the deflating feeling that some have described.<BR>
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James<BR>
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On 5/14/10 5:24 PM, "Jordon Flato" <jordonflato@gmail.com> wrote:<BR>
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</FONT><BLOCKQUOTE><FONT FACE="Verdana">Huh...I found it to be the most compelling of the three. I found FINCH to be the most underwhelming, mostly because if felt like a well written China Meiville story: nice and pretty but with not as much, what, soul? to it?<BR>
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On Wed, May 12, 2010 at 6:12 AM, Craig Brewer <cnbrewer@yahoo.com> wrote:<BR>
</FONT><BLOCKQUOTE><FONT FACE="Verdana">I know this isn't the place for Vandermeer discussion...but for those interested, I'd have to say that _Shriek_ is the least successful of Vandermeer's three Ambergris novels. The premise is a blast (a missing brother has left behind a book, found by his sister, who decides to write an afterward to it explaining their lives...but the sister is now missing and the brother has found the book and is now commenting on her afterward by inserting notes as she tells it). But the execution becomes bogged down a bit halfway through once we basically know the whole story. And the character examination to me became a bit repetitive rather than illuminating at the same point.<BR>
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The book that introduces the city of Ambergris, _City of Saints and Madmen_, though would I think be plenty interesting to Wolfe (and Crowley) fans for its variety of styles/mysteries/histories/wonders.<BR>
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</FONT><FONT SIZE="2"><FONT FACE="Tahoma"><HR ALIGN=CENTER SIZE="1" WIDTH="100%"><B>From:</B> Mike Myers <mimyerspdt@yahoo.com><BR>
<B>To:</B> The Urth Mailing List <urth@lists.urth.net><BR>
<B>Sent:</B> Wed, May 12, 2010 7:49:25 AM<BR>
<B>Subject:</B> Re: (urth) Jeff VanderMeer<BR>
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Shriek is a great book, one of my all time favorites. <BR>
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--- On <B>Tue, 5/11/10, JBarach@aol.com <I><JBarach@aol.com></I></B> wrote:<BR>
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From: JBarach@aol.com <JBarach@aol.com><BR>
Subject: (urth) Jeff VanderMeer<BR>
To: urth@lists.urth.net<BR>
Date: Tuesday, May 11, 2010, 3:32 PM<BR>
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</FONT><FONT SIZE="2"><FONT FACE="Arial">URTHers --<BR>
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I glanced at a copy of Jeff VanderMeer's recent novel, <I>Shriek -- An Afterword</I>, and discovered that it has a blurb by Gene Wolfe: <BR>
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"Here is a desert island book, a tale you can lose yourself in for days, a novel of character in which the setting -- the magnificently gritty city-state named Ambergris -- proves as the light fails to be the finest character of all."<BR>
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http://www.amazon.com/Shriek-Afterword-Jeff-VanderMeer/dp/0765314665<BR>
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I wish someone were keeping track of all the books Wolfe has blurbed....<BR>
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John<BR>
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