"Dradin, in Love," the first story from Jeff VanderMeer's masterful collection, City of Saints and Madmen, begins with the most prosaic of human pursuits: Dradin, a lapsed missionary, looks for a new job in the bizarre metropolis of Ambergris. But it ends with a shocking orgy of violence and madness that is all the more disturbing for the faint air of unreality that suffuses the final part of the novella. "Dradin, in Love," though a fine novella in its own right, is not the best story in VanderMeer's book, but it sets the tone for the rest of the collection: seeming ordinariness, with a muted undertone of savagery.

It also sets the tone for the city of Ambergris, the center of City of Saints and Madmen. As we learn in the second story, the superb "Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of Ambergris," the city has an unusual and disturbing past, filled with the same mystery and violence that still characterizes its present. The often hilarious "Hoegbotton Guide" is ostensibly a (lengthy) pamphlet given to first-time visitors to Ambergris. It is written by the irascible and sarcastic Duncan Shriek, a fictional Ambergrisian historian. The many pieces of "The Hoegbotton Guide" fit together seamlessly: Shriek, clearly annoyed at having to stoop to writing such commercial fare, peppers the text with footnotes that contain some of the book's funniest and most interesting passages (keep an eye out for "their fur is pleasant to stroke" and "inflatable animal skins?!", which appear in two of the best footnotes); the footnotes supplement the main text, which dryly recounts even the most horrific episodes of Ambergrisian history; and the text itself tells a fascinating story of bumbling explorers, mysterious histories, and the curious and possibly homicidal natives in what would eventually become Ambergris. "The Hoegbotton Guide" is hardly a traditional story (it even comes with a complete glossary that provides more details), but it nevertheless enthralls with its sly academic retelling of Ambergris's macabre past.

The last two stories in the collection--the World Fantasy Award-winning "The Transformation of Martin Lake" and "The Strange Case of X"--are less successful. "The Transformation" is a superbly written story of a mediocre Ambergrisian artist who undergoes a terrible episode that transforms him into a master. There are two problems with the story: first, while it does give us a glimpse of a major character only hinted at in the previous stories, it adds little to our overall understanding of Ambergris; and second, compared to the unexpected blast of "Dradin, in Love"'s conclusion and the major upheavals recounted in "The Hoegbotton Guide," the central episode in "The Transformation" seems less than traumatic. "The Transformation" is therefore something of a disappointment. "The Strange Case of X" is worse--a self-indulgent story of a seemingly mad author (clearly patterned after VanderMeer himself) who is being held in an insane asylum due to his belief that Ambergris is real. The story wastes a lot of time before delivering an all-too-obvious surprise ending; like "The Transformation," it adds little to our overall understanding of Ambergris, but, unlike "The Transformation," its storyline is nonexistent and uninteresting.

The strength of City of Saints and Madmen is the way in which it introduces us to a bizarre and enthralling creation, the macabre city of Ambergris. VanderMeer is an excellent world-builder and a phenomenal writer; one can only hope, despite the anonymous author's claims in "The Strange Case of X," that more Ambergris stories are forthcoming.

NOTE: I read the paperback version of City of Saints and Madmen, which I have just found out, to my immense chagrin, lacks a couple of stories that are included in the larger hardcover version--including a story that appears on the front and back covers, an author's biography, and a tale whose disturbing nature only emerges when reading its bibliography. VanderMeer truly has a talent for using unconventional narrative methods to tell an interesting story, cf. Douglas Shriek, "The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of Ambergris." I have to find a copy of the hardcover somewhere.

UPDATE (3/24/09): I've now read the 2004 third edition of City of Saints and Madmen, which is substantially larger than the 2001 first edition that I reviewed above. (See details here.) My feelings about the book are basically unchanged. The highlight of this expanded collection is still Duncan Shriek's "Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of Ambergris," which is superb. The new material, which is collected in an appendix after the four original novellas, is hit-and-miss -- not quite as bad as the last two stories in the first edition, but nowhere near as good as the "Hoegbotton Guide."

The highlight of the new material is "The Cage," a creepy story about a not-quite-empty cage that showcases the Ambergrisian obsession with fungus. Another entertaining piece, "King Squid," is a fake monograph about Ambergris's other great obsession. The rest of the new stuff isn't worth reading. (Except for a glossary, nestled within the appendix, that I think is an expanded version of the glossary that originally followed the "Hoegbotton Guide.")

I've also come across an interesting column by VanderMeer about the torturous process of writing and publishing City of Saints and Madmen. What's missing from the column is an explanation of why VanderMeer finds it impossible to write conventionally about Ambergris. Maybe his fictional city wouldn't be as nightmarishly compelling without his literary tricks? I don't know. But I wouldn't mind reading some straightforward long-form fiction set in his odd world.

Copyright © 2003 Steven Wu