Not Often

I’m going to try recommending some stories and authors that I find interesting from time to time.

I recently found out about the work of Jeff VanderMeer through one of the various blogs I follow and decided to look into his work. From the post on Boing Boing, I went and downloaded the soundtrack to his latest book “Finch,” done by the band Murder by Death (the vinyl is available and my birthday is coming up, *hint hint*) with some lovely haunting tunes that make me excited to check this book out. However, after finding out that this is the latest of his books to be set in the world of Ambergris, and being the completion-ist that I am, I needed to start at the beginning. After researching on Wikipedia, I found a collection of his stories in “City of Saints and Madmen.” The article mentioned some stories that got lost in different editions of the book and the one that I don’t have in my paperback reprinting is “The Man Who Had No Eyes,” but I found it on the internets for free.

I highly recommend that you read that story, and try to figure out the code at the bottom. If you can’t decipher it, please, PLEASE DO NOT click that link that will get you to the answer. Contact me and I will tell you how to decipher it but don’t click the link at the bottom until you are done because I clicked the link to the answer and I have regretted it. The experience would have been that much more complete if I had just figured it out. I really can’t explain it, you have to read it and solve it for yourself. I warn you ahead of time, some of the numbers in the code are wrong. I don’t know which ones the are particularly, but just keep doing your best (it’s only a few that are wrong, you should still get most of the story) and when you’re done, go look at the answer so you know what you missed. Just thinking of it now boggles my mind to think of how clever Mr. VanderMeer is.

To be honest, I haven’t gotten very far in the book “City of Saints and Madmen” because I don’t have much time to read; I spend most of my time listening to audio fiction which I will begin to review either here or on the podcast that should be starting by the end of the month. The first story was an excellently creepy love story with a bizarre ending that wasn’t so much a twist as it was just disturbing and honest. The second is what’s been taking me so long since it’s the history of the town of Ambergris going back quite a few generations and I’m getting bogged down in the names and details because I was also taking a history class in school at the time. It’s interesting, though, because it’s told by a narrator who feels he needs to leave footnotes upon footnotes to tell the reader what’s important and which parts to skip, which I find amusing. The style is good enough to carry me through the tedious parts and long descriptions, but there are also enough action sequences (battles and love affairs etc) to keep me interested as well. The narrator throughout the history section almost reminds me of Johnny Truant from “House of Leaves” which I will review at a later date.

It’s hard to define what genre these stories belong in; it’s too easy to say fantasy, but there are no dragons or anything else outright fantastical about them, and it’s not really sci-fi, but it’s not anything really recognizable. There’s also something about his writing style that keeps me turning pages. He definitely has a way with words and if you read “The Man Who Had No Eyes” and enjoy it, I highly recommend “City of Saints and Madmen,” the soundtrack to “Finch,” and everything else this guy does. If you don’t like that story, then at least listen to samples of the soundtrack. I hope to review his other books in later episodes of Tuesday’s Story (or T’s S as I like to call it) as soon as I get around to reading them.