![]() ![]() ![]() What was intriguing were the mushroom people and their mysterious history. VanderMeer has clearly had a lot of fun fleshing out backstory for the city and many of its characters, but it didn’t really grab me. I found the story dragged a bit, though the ending was strong.įor me, part of the problem with “Dradin”, and with the rest of the book, is that I just wasn’t very interested in Ambergris. ![]() ![]() The writing is good, and there are all sorts of in-jokes (I presume I missed many). It starts off well enough, with a fairly straightforward story (“Dradin in Love”) introducing the gritty and complex city. In fact, relentlessly clever, and not always in a good way. Probably the most accurate thing I can say about the book is that it’s clever. Some of the stories appear to be previously published (it’s a little hard to tell from the credits). There are glossaries, bibliographies, and all sorts of other bits, each with a story to tell. This is essentially a fully immersive, highly self-referential collection of stories about the city Ambergris, the Freshwater Squid in the river that passes by, the mushroom people that are its original inhabitants, and the humans that try to make the city their own. On two out of three, I definitely got my money’s worth. I’d never heard of Jeff VanderMeer, but the book sounded quirky, unconventional, and interesting. I ordered this book purely on the basis of reviews. ![]()
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