So you don’t read fantasy. You heart mystery and crime fiction but haven’t touched a fantasy book since that one summer when you devoured Lord of the Rings. Well, let me tell you that things have changed since then. The SF/F genre has a long history of crossing genre borders, and right here, right now, in 2009, people are starting to notice. Earlier in the year China Mieville wrote a cool police procedural fantasy (The City and The City), and Richard Kadrey wrote a hardboiled fantasy called Sandman Slim that would make even the most wild-eyed of the basement noir crazies stand up and take notice. Jeff VanderMeer closes out the year with a secondary world fantasy, filtered through noir sensibilities, that is, hands down, the best of the bunch.
In the city of Ambergris, a race of mysterious underground mushroom inhabitants known as the grey caps have taken over. They have disbanded the government and rule under martial law using addictive drugs, internment camps and acts of terror and torture. The resistance is scattered, and the grey caps are building something out in the open for all to see, but no one knows what it is. Against this backdrop John Finch must work a case, a double homicide, for his grey cap masters that will cut to the the heart of and change everything.
From the fantasy perspective Jeff VanderMeer has introduced a new language into the lexicon with a clipped, telegraphic, hardboiled, James Ellroy-esque writing style that he savagely bends to his will. The stripped-down prose is like a machine gun strafing the genre.
From the crime side of things, he has created a new noir language that retains the atmospherics of the past and weds them with the throbbing claustrophobia of the city. One of the things that comes through in Finch is VanderMeer’s appreciation for mystery/crime fiction and all that the genre entails. At times Finch takes on the characteristics of a detective story, a police story, a spy story, a thriller, a political thriller. Readers of mystery and crime fiction of any stripe would be doing themselves a favor by trying Finch; those who do will be amply rewarded.
For me, as someone who genuinely enjoys a lot of different types and genres of fiction, Finch is one of the best books that I’ve read in years. It is also the book I’ve been waiting to read for years without knowing it. Beyond that, though, when all is said and done, Finch will be among the best books of the year.
“From the fantasy perspective Jeff VanderMeer has introduced a new language into the lexicon with a clipped, telegraphic, hardboiled, James Ellroy-esque writing style that he savagely bends to his will…”
Yeah, lots of subject-free sentences. Picked it up. Reads pretty fast. Enjoyed it ok. Put it down. Doesn’t stick like Shriek. Would have liked some subjects in those sentences. Still, enjoyable.
The interesting thing for me to see play out across the reviews and discussions is that the readers that approach Finch from the fantasy side have a hard time with the writing style because it’s not one often seen in the genre but it’s not an issue at all for those readers approaching Finch from the crime side because it’s a more readily available style.
I’ve read crime fiction and fantasy, science fiction etc, and that clipped style almost got me to put the book down, it was so intrusive in the early going. He used it less or I tuned it out as the book got rolling.
While I found the Gray Caps to be an intriguing idea, on the whole I thought The City & The City to be much better written.