Shriek
An Afterword

Updated review after a re-read in November 2018. --- Jeff VanderMeer has imagination in spades, that’s obvious the minute you crack any of his books open. Every story set in the city of Ambergris has a wonderfully dark, dirty, gritty, almost oppressively gothic atmosphere – something that I absolutely......more

We book lovers can’t help speaking of authors as “the next ....” We’re always keeping our eyes open for the next Jane Austen or the next Ernest Hemingway or the next Salman Rushdie or the next Ursula K. LeGuin, and we gleefully trumpet their arrival in our reviews. Of course, what we really ought to......more

A review on the back of this book name-checks Nick Cave and "Hitchhikers Guide" -- please ignore the back of the book. I can't imagine anything less like Douglas Adams than this book. If I had to write a review of this book based primarily on name-checks, my list would include: Mervyn Peake, Edward......more

I've never seen a writer waste words like VanderMeer. This is a short novella transformed into a novel by the author's lack of respect for the reader's time. An exercise for a repeat reader(two words that could function as the title): count the number of times you hear the phrase "flesh necklace", "......more

I find myself thinking about Shriek in the same way I thought about its predecessor, City of Saints and Madmen. In other words, I'm not sure quite what to think about it. It has all the things that made City good: lots of atmosphere, a city so well constructed and populated that it feels like I was......more