Review of The Physiognomy by Jeffrey Ford

Looking back through history, some of mankind’s most intriguing pseudosciences are those that draw connections between appearance and value.  Judging the human book by its cover, phrenology and physiognomy purport to be able to measure morals through the dimensions and attributes of body.  Somehow maintaining plausibility for centuries, it wasn’t truly until the turn of the 20th that the practices were quelled from the public eye.  But what a tool of power it would have been.  A malleable concept if ever there were, a king or high-minded official might condemn a person based solely on the dimensions of a nose—even if their own physical characteristics fit that of a murderer or rapist.  Taking the idea and putting it to use in fiction, Jeffrey Ford’s 1997 The Physiognomy (re-released by Open Road Media in 2015) is the redemption of one such high-minded official.  His story defining the word ‘malleable,’ it’s about as swimmingly macabre as dark fantasy gets.

Cley is a physiognomist living in the Well-Built City.  A despicable, bilious, narcissistic criminal of an official, he is the right-hand man of the city’s even more despicable ruler, the sorcerous Drachton Below.  Falling out of favor at the outset, however, Cley is sent on a punitive assignment to a small mining town in the distant, dirty reaches of the realm to weed out the thief of a strange white fruit.  With miners petrifying in the blue dust they collect each day, demons in the nearby forest, a beautiful young woman with greater physiognomy talent than he, and a strange thing calling itself the Traveler haunting his dreams (or his reality), Cley’s time in the town of Anamasobia spins his already bizarre world to the surreal. Catching the thief is only a doorway to stranger things.

Review of City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff Vandermeer

I cannot think of a suitable place to begin my review of Jeff Vandermeer’s 2004 City of Saints and Madmen, my notes shooting off in wild directions.  I guess the title sums up the book perfectly; it is a smorgasbord of odd, paranormal, tragic, sinister, delicate, macabre, slithering, comedic, dreamlike, twisted ideas, with the eerily weird, eerily strange forever hovering in and around.  But as abstract as it may be, Vandermeer always keeps one toe in our reality, making the collection an art piece that can be enjoyed at several levels.

City of Saints and Madmen is an extremely varied conglomerate of writing.  From short story to transcribed interview, historical abstract to scientific monograph, letter to appendix, bibliography to memoire, all the pieces directly and indirectly describe the fictional city of Ambergris and its variety of inhabitants, human to mushroom.  The streets and buildings, homes and back alleys a muddy labyrinth of the industrial era, the mood of moist fungus overhangs all.  “The Story of Mr. X” regards a writer held against his will in the basement of a building.  “The Cage” tells of an antique collector and a strange piece he feels compelled to buy one day from a family experiencing a plague (of sorts).  “King Squid: Being a Brief Monograph Explaining Both the Phenomena of the Giant Freshwater Squid of Related Squid Folklore (Including the Festival of the Freshwater Squid)” is a monograph by Frederick Madnock on the rumors and scientific merits of the creature—entirely fictional, of course.  And there is much more, including an encrypted story within a story and the laugh-out-loud bibliography to Madnock’s paper.  Each piece with its own typeface and layout, the book was obviously prepared with care and an eye to the aesthetics beyond semiotics.  The entire book tied together by place, name, and idea, it was also prepared with multiple purposes in mind.

Review of "Veniss Underground" by Jeff Vandermeer

There are a few red lights that go off when reading an author’s first major published work.  A main character as an artist or Greek myth used for plot structure are signs that the next bus to Literary Pretense may be boarding, a mind fresh from English 101 behind the wheel.  Avoiding the trappings of these fragile motifs, Jeff Vandermeer’s debut novella—err, novel—Veniss Underground shows every sign of a writer who received the praise of his professors and is confident in his ability to put a fresh perspective on such well-worn tropes.  Thus, Nicholas may be a Living Artist (more later) and the framework of Veniss Underground based on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, the setting and imagery remain wholly original.  Scenery twisted like cyberpunk on acid, its details macabre to the bone—a surreal dream, Vandermeer seems poised to make a place for himself in fantasy of the 21st century.

Veniss Underground is a window of time in the lives of three characters: the twins Nicholas and Nicola, and Nicola’s ex-boyfriend, Shadrach.  A far-future, unnamed city—called Veniss by Nicholas—is the setting, and technology, including genetic and biological engineering, have permeated society to the point life is as pliable as putty.  Divided into three sections, the book begins with Nicholas and his despair that life in their post-revolution city will get better.  The despondency so acute, Nicholas gives up his career as a virtual artist and goes to work for the underworld persona Quin as a living artist—a bioneer, someone who genetically engineers creatures, animals, nightmares, dreams, and all manner of biological material between.  Her brother fading from society, Nicola goes looking for him, only to be swallowed by the same business.  Shadrach is the only one remaining and must do his best to find the two and solve the mystery of what Quin is doing in the underworld.  Life in the multiple levels below Veniss’s streets having had millennia to fester into the deepest, darkest nightmare the outcasts of humanity can make of it, Shadrach’s mission requires every ounce of fortitude he possesses to bring the mystery of the twin’s disappearance into the neon of day.  

The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in the bedrock of Veniss Underground, there is also a strong undercurrent of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness flowing beneath the story as Shadrach plunges ever deeper into the underworld.  The “Kurtz” he finds truly a twisted remnant of humanity, descending Vandermeer’s river is like entering a nightmare of the sub-conscious.  The prose is fluid and sharp along the journey, and the descriptions drip with some of the most phantasmagorical imagery fantasy has produced this century.  The smells of animals and garbage fill the streets, and visuals of oozing liquids and throbbing organs fill the void.  Like William Gibson, Vandermeer’s sparse tone cuts the scene open like a razor, letting the reader’s imagination wander excitedly through the scenes—the dystopia, the underworld, the nightmares, and most certainly the weird.  The animals Quin and his crew create (the Living Art) lend a circus touch the story, the reader having to fully suspend their belief when talking meerkats serve crab for dinner.  Be warned, Veniss Underground’s feet are not set in our reality.

The faults of the novel are a matter of taste.  More a fix-up of two short stories bookended by a throw-away intro and epilogue, never does the narrative expand into novel scope.  Nicholas’ story told in the third person, Nicola’s in the second person, and Shadrach’s once again in the third person, one wonders what Vandermeer was attempting to accomplish beyond experimenting with style.  Nothing is gained from Nicola’s part by having her dictate to the reader what you are doing.  That being said, nothing is lost, either.  Her jaunts through the Snow Crash-esque enclaves of Veniss are just as visually affecting as the third person description of Shadrach’s trip to the underground cathedral.  Again a matter of taste, certainly some readers will enjoy the change of pace and narrative distance separating the character sections.  Vivid imagery the heart of the novel, most will be able to forgive the rather shallow characterization that comes with.

In the end, Jeff Vandermeer’s debut, whether novel, novella, or fix-up, is an eye-catching piece of art written in savory prose that promises of great things to come.  With an almost ghoulish delight, his far-future, genetically displaced underworld of Veniss comes to life in terms Dante, Homer, even Dali never imagined (Vandermeer describes it as: “when beauty and horror could be synonymous”).  The character Quin highly reminiscent of Mr. Motley from Perdido Street Station (the idea of bio-alteration suffusing the novel in general), fans of Mieville will want to check out Veniss Underground.  Likewise, those willing to open their minds to an acid trip interpretation of a William Gibson visit to Hades may also want to have a go.  Not the first scratches of a recent English major graduate, Vandermeer’s first published work indicates a craftsman at work, and one readers on the modern fantasy scene will want to check out.

Review of "Iron Council" by China Mieville

Though never delineated in any descriptive sense, Mieville’s first two books in the Bas-Lag world were set within a loosely-shaped, unspoken corral of ideas.  Potentialities certainly existed, but were not endless; Mieville came across as too erudite for the possibilities of the world to be infinite.  After all, Bas-Lag was not some washed out D&D setting or 46th generation Star Wars sequel that was desperately trying to refresh itself.  The ideas of Perdido Street Station alone so unique, whole series of books and stories could have been told within the confines of New Crobuzon.  One’s head still spins with the plethora of phantasmal notions contained between its covers.  With Iron Council, unfortunately, Mieville unlatches the gate and turns his story loose in the pastures of the infinite beyond.

Telepathy, warlocks casting spells – err, hexes, teleportation, psychic mind control, and a variety of other ill-timed, poorly described, and feebly connected plot devices flood the plot of “Iron Council” and leave it a wet, muddled mess.  Sixty pages til the end and Mieville is still introducing new ideas – miasmas, air elementals, time golems, an “onrushing skeletal insectoid animal thing”, etc.  It’s overdone.  Where he was selective in Perdido and The Scar, balancing elements from the real world with the fantastic, Iron Council’s scales tip heavily in favor of the convoluted.  On all too many occasions I found myself asking: “Well, why didn’t the mind controller just use his skill to stop that…”, or  “That’s funny, nobody thought of using that in Perdido, but here it is so obvious…”  And so while Judah’s golems, the Inchmen, and a few other original ideas fit seamlessly within the scope of Bas-Lag, the vast majority feels like filler intended to impress, but in effect does no more than overwhelm. 

The fact that the book is spilling over with ideas of the fantastic is ironic considering it is the most overtly idealized and political of the Bas-Lag books.  In a return to New Crobuzon, the Vodyanoi’s bloody strike on the River Tar in Perdido has moved to the next degree in Iron Council.  The working class interests of railroad workers versus the corrupt authoritarianism of their overlords is the ideological struggle of the day.  Obviously bringing to bear his Marxist background, Mieville nevertheless treats each with relative equanimity.  Characters on both sides make moral sacrifices, and the resolution of their conflict is not what the reader expects.  That being said, the narrative is heavily weighted in favor of the point of view characters displaying socialist tendencies, while the authoritarian characters fight only in hordes, their evil of the purest black and white.

Story-wise, Iron Council is the tale of Judah Low, an ordinary young man working for the railroad until seeing the effects of Manifest Destiny on the native population.  Learning their magic (in Dances with Wolves style), Judah goes on to use his skills as a golem animator (golemist??) to help the railways workers - cactacae, Remade, and humans among them - fight against the oppressive mercantile backing the railroad’s development.  These first sections of the novel set in untamed and unchartered lands, Mieville reserves the second setting for familiar territory.  Seeming alien and unfamiliar this time around, New Crobuzon is once again the scene of action.  Volunteering at soup kitchens is Ori, a young man with a revolutionist’s heart who feels “there’s too much talk and not enough action” in politics.  The activist group he becomes involved with and their resistance efforts balance what is otherwise a narrative fully occupied by the railroad digging ever deeper into the wilderness, internal conflict abound.  Mieville is able to draw these two settings together to close out the novel, but at the expense of plot plausibility.

Beyond dividing setting, Iron Council also finds Mieville experimenting with style.  Minimalism the desired effect, the story is continuously punctuated by short, staccato blasts of sentence in an attempt to emulate the masters of simplicity (think McCarthy, Gibson or Chandler).  But while The City & the City sees Mieville in perfect stride, the tone suitably sparse yet smooth, Iron Council is unfortunately his baby steps in the arena, every bump felt along the road.  Novel structure is also toyed with.  The best part of the book may in fact be a 150 page flashback in which Mieville performs a nice bit of storytelling, laying out the history of the Iron Council and its perpetual train.

In the end, had Mieville toned down the number of new ideas forced into the plot, been more consistent in style, and more sparing with thematic content, Iron Council could have lived up to the expectations generated by the first two books of Bas-Lag.  Instead, the novel comes across as an unfocussed effort lacking the impact and wholly original worldbuilding of its predecessors.  For thematic aim, however, Mieville cannot be faulted, his intentions pure.  If such inconsistencies are not a bother to you, then Iron Council may be highly regarded.  Otherwise, with iIts devices and themes unnecessarily convoluted, sadly, Iron Council is a train gone off its tracks. (The number of similar elements significant, readers of this novel maybe interested in Ted Chiang's Seventy-Two Letters, and vice versa.)

Review of "The Scar" by China Mieville

A knock-out punch on the 21^st century fantasy scene, Mieville had some big expectations to live up to following the success of Perdido Street Station.  The Scar does not disappoint.  The fresh perspective, the imagination, and the social commentary in Bas-Lag have all been taken to the next level.   Where Perdido aimed at setting, plot, wordplay, The Scar takes the same elements and more evenly balances them across theme and character, producing another quality fantasy novel for the times.

Like Perdido, The Scar tells the story of a variety of characters.  Stage time, however, sees itself returning more often than not to Bellis Coldwine, a linguist by trade, and Tanner Sack, a Remade prisoner.  The beginning of the novel finds the two sharing a transport across the sea, the former in capacity of translator to the captain, and the latter part of the prisoner cargo being delivered.  In the wake of unforeseen events, the lives and expectations of Bellis and Tanner are quickly turned upside down, the characters finding themselves the latest pressganged into living on a massive floating city known as Armada.  The ugliest, motliest collection of battleships, stolen cargo boats, tugs, and clippers ever found in fiction, Armada is the libertarian dream of every pirate. 

What New Crobuzon is to Perdido, Armada is to The Scar.  Seeming to love every stroke, every letter, every grotesque word, Mieville goes into a similar level of detail in describing the massive floating city.  This time around, however, he seems to have relaxed a little.  Instead of wadding description, fistfuls of thesaurus at a time, onto the narrative, his style is more comfortable.  Words are chosen carefully to convey deeper meaning but in a paucity of number, rendering the novel a less gnarled, smoother read. 

There are readers who have complained about the ending of The Scar, claiming it’s either weak or anti-climactic.  However, such is the maturity – and daring - of Mieville’s sophomore novel.  The joy in the journey, the novel’s ending more than fits the events preceding it.  Many readers of the second half of Le Guin’s Earthsea Cycle (Tehanu, Tales from Earthsea, and The Other Wind) likewise complain of the soft manner in which she finished the books.  But must every fantasy novel have a blood-and-guts clash of titans to finish it off?  Like Le Guin, Mieville should be lauded for the mature fashion in which his conflict is resolved through rational rather than explosive or macabre means.  Readers lauded the manner in which Mieville broke the mold with Perdido Street Station, why not be gratified by the atypical note on which The Scar ends? 

Further comparisons are needed.  Though not wooden, Isaac’s portrayal in Perdido was nevertheless inconsistently human.  Yes, he got angry when Motley kidnapped his girlfriend, but his chasing of slake-moths around the city was never properly motivated.  His moral indifference killing creatures while studying the mechanisms of flight did not match the profound sense of moral urgency he felt saving the world from those terrors of the sky.  In The Scar, on the other hand, Bellis, Tanner, and most of the other characters are more consistently rendered as living, breathing humans.  Background and character insight are related properly in motivating his “heroes”.  Bellis not an especially amiable person, the fact that readers dislike her rather than feel no emotion at all indicates Mieville is doing something right.  Not all protagonists can be altruistic saviors defending honor - a fact the author thankfully relishes in.

Mieville has been quoted as saying: “I think that all science fiction or fantasy has inevitably allegorical aspects, but I also think it's important not to suggest that that's what the book is ‘about’: you have to give the fantastic permission to be its own end, to follow its own dynamic.” Nothing could exemplify this more than The Scar.  For readers who prefer the supernatural, the monsters, and the creativity of what fantasy is on the surface, then it is all there on the page, one claw, huge eyeball, and squid creature at a time.  One original idea after another, the cray-men, avancs, and new varieties of the Remade add to the species of Bas-Lag. 

For those who prefer to see their characters and story grounded in concepts more fundamental, Mieville likewise offers a mature look at the themes of possibility, separation, cultural stance, and acceptance.  The titular theme is not an idea Mieville approaches from a single line of attack.  One of the characters can be quoted as saying “A scar is healing.  After injury, a scar is what makes you whole.”.  Following this single line of thematic reasoning would have Mieville stepping in the footprints of countless previous writers, and so it is when learning of Armada’s leaders, a couple who scar themselves anew daily to symbolize their love, that another dimension is added.  And there are two other major fashions in which Mieville explores the theme.  Thus, in addition to being an appropriate title, the novel also represents itself well in the world of literary fantasy.

In the end, The Scar finds Mieville exploring new territory as a writer while expanding his familiar world of Bas-Lag in plausible, visceral fashion.  Unique imagination and thematic output on strong display, readers of both literary and genre fantasy will find something to like about the novel.  Certainly one of the voices the beginning of 21st century fantasy will be remembered for, the novel comes highly recommended.  (A word of advice: though Perdido Street Station need not be read before, it would certainly serve as an excellent introduction to the world of The Scar.)

Review of "Perdido Street Station' by China Mieville

Perdido Street Station, British author China Mieville’s second novel, is an original work of fantasy that’s sure to turn heads.  Whether homage or theft, elements from a wide variety of sources present themselves in the book.  The visceral descriptions of character and place are in the spirit of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast works or Michael Swanwick The Iron Dragon's Daughter. The monsters are in the vein of H.P. Lovecraft, an overt Gene Wolfe, or any comic book.  And the story elements draw upon a wide variety of sub-genres--steam- to cyberpunk, horror to epic fantasy.  That being said, Mieville is able to combine these disparate elements into such an enticing mix of monsters and mayhem that the setting, characters, and the storyline plumbing their depths form a cohesive whole unique in fantasy.

Perdido Street Station resides at the heart of Mieville’s fictional New Crobuzon.  Like London or New York’s main terminals, its trains disperse into surrounding suburbs, boroughs, and neighborhoods that have a unique cultural, economic, or social status.  Home to a wide variety of human and xenian species, Mieville goes to great lengths, particularly in the first third of the book, to properly set the scene.  The cactus, frog, and insect-esque peoples populating the city are all detailed.  There are also lengthy descriptions of the crusty grime and stagnant filth that saturate the dark alleys and narrow streets, the smoke languoring ominously overhead, and the polluted sludge calling itself a river flowing through the city.  While this may not appeal to readers with a weaker stomach, the dystopian disgustingness nicely compliments the ever-evolving mix of steampunk tech that the city’s population depends on, produces, and exploits. 

Playing a witting - and sometimes unwitting - hand in New Crobuzon’s propagation of technical advancement and knowledge is the book’s main character, Isaac Grimnebulin.  Having left the university where he was teaching on moral grounds (the school was openly performing experiments that even Goebbels and Hitler would have nightmares about), Isaac is a rebel in more ways than one.  Involved in a taboo relationship with a khepri artist named Lin, a half-human, half-insect woman, Isaac’s liberal views also allow him to take on the commission of a garuda, a bird man who has had his wings removed for committing the crime of “choice-theft” in his own community.  An interesting moral concept, one that plays itself out nicely in the novel’s denouement, it is in solving the puzzle of how to get the garuda to fly again that the plot really starts to takes shape, corrupt government, crime-ridden underworld, and the seedy side of society complementing the story nicely. 

Needing a wide variety of birds, insects, and unnamable creatures which fly to go about his research, one day Isaac receives a mysteriously colored caterpillar that refuses to eat any of the food it is given.  It is the accidental discovery of the sustenance the caterpillar desires that springs the book to life, action thereafter moving in an ever gosh-wow direction.  Fascinating visuals and jaw-dropping scenes steadily take over the pages, bringing the reader on an exciting joyride of mud and slime, unearthly creatures, and scenarios that defy description out of the book’s context.  Dogs fly, spiders sing, dance, and play with scissors, and corpses are animated by powers all too tangible.  While pace may suffer at the novel’s outset as Mieville sets the scene, Perdido Street Station picks up steam like a freight train on its way to delivering a wonderfully satisfying, exciting, and unpredictable conclusion that is the reward for those who stick it out.

Mieville’s sixth novel, The City & the City, had a high degree of polished, focused prose effortlessly moving the story forward.  Published at the inchoate stage of his publishing career, Perdido Street Station instead features a more workmanlike command of language, flashes of true understanding of the craft escaping only here and there.  Viriconium and Gormenghast acknowledged by Mieville in the intro, readers should expect a lot of adjectives and descriptive elements as Mieville goes about worldbuilding - the setting a character unto itself.  (For my money, however, I would put The Iron Dragon's Daughter as Mieville's greatest influence--right down to "puissant" and "thaumaturgy", but that's for another day.)  His imagination worth the effort, memorable images and ideas with finite color and shape will hang in the mind long after the novel is finished despite the more than occasional clumsy or pretentious passage.  It goes without saying readers who don’t mind visuals more implanted than suggested will probably enjoy the novel the most, but will have to forgive Mieville the inability to match the mood of Viriconium.

In numerous interviews Mieville has deflected the question “Is there a political agenda to your writing?”, with the response “Not really.  Genre, plot, character are of foremost importance.”  Constantly hanging around the edges, tinting the story are, however, a number of elements which can be nothing less than class struggle, commentary on economics, and cultural relativism.  One never quite sure whether these elements amount to a thematic whole, sheer storytelling and visuals are the workhorses of the novel.  As such, it may be best to sit back and take the dirty, visceral, utterly weird ride Mieville has created to Perdido Street Station.  It is wholly original genre work for the 21st century--a feat increasingly difficult to pull off.