Review
------
“World Fantasy Award-winner VanderMeer makes a triumphant return to Ambergris, the fungus-shrouded metropolis he first
chronicled in City of Saints and Madmen, in this masterful if difficult fantasy novel.... Fans of Mark Z. Danielewski,
Angela Carter and Borges will be well rewarded.” ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Certainly Nick Cave would be right at home in Ambergris, the setting of this novel.... less Hitchhiker's Guide than
Brazil, but more Requiem for a Dream than anything else.” ―Bookslut
“VanderMeer's fantasy vision is a hallucinatory incantation not just of mushrooms but also of literature.” ―Peter
Bebergal, The Believer
“With literary stylings, a complex, riveting plot, and ideas that lesser writers could not imagine, Shriek: An Afterword
further establishes Jeff Vandermeer as the finest fantasist of his generation.” ―The Austin Chronicle
“It is, in short, exactly the sort of book which ought to be in contention for major literary prizes--except that it is
set in an imaginary city beset by malevolent fungus, and non-genre award panels tend to get ed of such books. In
this case, such fears are misplaced; Shriek is a fantastic book, and a fantastical one. For lovers of the uncomfortable
and slightly uny work of a Will Self, or the fractured cityscapes of M John Harrison, Shriek is a delight.”
―Birmingham Post
“Five stars! A stunning and very different fantasy novel from an author who should be turning heads in the 'serious'
literary world. VanderMeer concerns himself with the life of a notorious historian whose investigations into a
subterranean race known as 'grey caps' may hold the key to an ancient mystery. In reality, however, the book cleverly
plays with the ways in which an author can manipulate an audience. But it's far less heavy and more entertaining than
that makes it sound.” ―BBC Focus Magazine
“In the telling, Shriek: An Afterword is an exceptional novel, a tapestry of fine writing, deep psychological in,
and acute narrative excitement.... a dark fantasy of tremendous distinction.” ―Locus
“An enthralling book which takes you into the vivid and superbly-realized world of Ambergris. It is in turn unsettling,
moving and thrilling--with passages of writing that can be dryly funny on one page . . . and beautiful on the next.”
―Clare Dudman, author of 98 Reasons for Being
“Bloody brilliant.” ―Hal Duncan, author of Vellum
“There's a madness in Jeff VanderMeer's literary eye, and I would be a liar if I didn't admit it seems ly
familiar. VanderMeer envisions an outlaw literature of shrieks and shouts and a screaming across the sky, worth a
thousand polite and respectable mutterings. I, for one, am listening.” ―Steve Erickson, author of Our Ecstatic Days and
editor of Black Clock
“Political, philosophical, many-textured, and multi-layered, the history of fantasy's most intriguing city, Ambergris,
is brought vividly to life. The perfect balance of conscientious invention and subtle, comic irony. VanderMeer
fearlessly walks a tightrope to deliver an enthralling read.” ―Jeff Ford, World Fantasy Award-winning author of The Girl
in the Glass
“Jeff VanderMeer is a realist of the surreal, a chronicler and bibliographer of the impossible city of Ambergris, which
could only have been constructed in a collaborative dream between Charles Dickens and E.T.A Hoffman. It is a city of
Dickensian and intricacy whose inhabitants are the lovers, the artists, the grotesques of German romanticism, and
I sometimes suspect that VanderMeer himself is a fragment of the same dream. Shriek is a beautiful and maddening, and
beautifully maddening, book. Go to Ambergris: lose yourself among its labyrinthine streets and the fabulous, deadly
secrets that lie beneath them.” ―Theodora Goss, author of In the Forest of Forgetting
“Jeff VanderMeer's work opens a trapdoor in the world we think we know, into a realm as unforgettable and compelling as
an opium dream, and as seductive. Shriek: An Afterword is a sinister and bew tour-de-force.” ―Elizabeth Hand,
bestselling author of Mortal Love
“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.” ―Gene
Wolfe, author of The Wizard
“Jeff VanderMeer is an extraordinary writer. His vision of Ambergris is passionate, beautiful, complex, terrifying. What
is remarkable about Shriek: An Afterword is the way it combines such surreal imagery with intensely human feeling. He
writes about real people--about the real world.” ―Tamar Yellin, author of The Genizah at the House of Shepher
“Shriek: An Afterword is the first authentic 21st Century fantastical writing. A masterpiece by any standard.” ―Zoran
Zivkovic, author of Hidden Camera
“VanderMeer explores brilliantly, penetratingly, the frail, evanescent intersection of human understanding and
historical actuality.... In the telling, Shriek: An Afterword is an exceptional novel, a tapestry of fine writing, deep
psychological in, and acute narrative excitement. Never forget the excitement: quests after cryptic clues in
antique manuscripts; forays into the alien territories below ground; heartbreak and breakdown; the War of the Houses,
with one publishing company assailing the other with murderous fungal mines and bombs; an opera performance that becomes
a literal, three-cornered battlefield; the gray caps surfacing in massacre; injuries, insults, the inexplicable and the
horrifying. And enigmas at the end. Shriek: An Afterword is a dark fantasy of tremendous distinction, and more is to
come, as the story of Ambergris is still far from concluded.” ―Nick Gevers, Locus
“Jeff VanderMeer's latest is as complicated, impressive and exasperating as anything he has written....VanderMeer makes
no compromises with his readers, but Shriek is twisted, darkly funny and ultimately rewarding.” ―Jon Courtenay Grimwood,
The Guardian
“Maybe it's because Jeff VanderMeer looks so normal when you see him at cons or talking panels that his fiction comes as
such a huge shock. Is this fetid hothouse world really the subconscious of that smartly dressed American writer?... A
typical VanderMeer novel: clever, intense, and multi-layered. Four stars.” ―SFX
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From the Back Cover
-------------------
"Shriek: An Afterword" is the first novel set in Ambergris, World Fantasy-award winning author Jeff
VanderMeer's best-loved setting.
Praise for "Shriek: An Afterword"
"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."
--Gene Wolfe
"There's a madness in Jeff VanderMeer's literary eye, and I would be a liar if I didn't admit it seems ly
familiar. VanderMeer envisions an outlaw literature of shrieks and shouts and a screaming across the sky, worth a
thousand polite and respectable mutterings. I, for one, am listening."
--Steve Erickson
"An enthralling book which takes you into the vivid and superbly-realised world of Ambergris. It is in turn unsettling,
moving and thrilling--with passages of writing that can be dryly funny on one page . . . and beautiful on the next."
--Clare Dudman
"Jeff VanderMeer is an extraordinary writer. His vision of Ambergris is passionate, beautiful, complex, terrifying. What
is remarkable about "Shriek: An Afterword" is the way it combines such surreal imagery with intensely human feeling. He
writes about real people--about the real world."
--Tamar Yellin
Praise for "City of Saints and Madmen: The Book of Ambergris"
"Somewhere at the intersection of pulp and Surrealism, drawing on the very best of both traditions, is Jeff VanderMeer's
Ambergris. Unsettling, erudite, dark, through with unexpected humour, the stories engross and challenge endlessly.
Ambergris is one of my favourite haunts in fiction."
--China Mieville on "City ofSaints and Madmen"""
"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
"Beautifully written, virtually hallucinatory work... connoisseurs of the finest in postmodern fantasy will find it
enormously rewarding."
--"Publisher's Weekly "(starred review)""
""
Praise for Jeff VanderMeer
""Secret Life," an utter dazzlement, demonstrates one of this literary era's defining truths, that in the hands of a
brilliant writer like Jeff VanderMeer, writing fantasy can be a means of serious artistic expression. In VanderMeer's
hands, it is also playful, poignant, and utterly, wildly, imaginative."
--Peter Straub
""Veniss Underground" is full of beautiful sentences, black humor and terrible wonders ... it marks VanderMeer as a
novelist to be reckoned with."
--"San Francisco"" Chronicle"
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