In reality, however, the book cleverly plays with the ways in which an author can manipulate an audience. VanderMeer concerns himself with the life of a notorious historian whose investigations into a subterranean race known as 'grey caps' may hold the key to an ancient mystery. less Hitchhiker's Guide than Brazil, but more Requiem for a Dream than anything else., 'An enthralling book.in turn unsettling, moving and thrilling.dryly funny on one page.and beautiful on the next.' - Clare Dudman, Five stars! A stunning and very different fantasy novel from an author who should be turning heads in the 'serious' literary world. and beautiful on the next., Certainly Nick Cave would be right at home in Ambergris, the setting of this novel. It is in turn unsettling, moving and thrilling-with passages of writing that can be dryly funny on one page. Part academic treatise, part tell-all biography, after this introduction to the Family Shriek, you'll never look at history in quite the same way again.Īn enthralling book which takes you into the vivid and superbly-realized world of Ambergris. Narrated with flamboyant intensity and under increasingly urgent conditions by ex-society figure Janice Shriek, this afterword presents a vivid gallery of characters and events, emphasizing the adventures of Janice's brother Duncan, a historian obsessed with a doomed love affair and a secret that may kill or transform him a war between rival publishing houses that will change Ambergris forever and the gray caps, a marginalized people armed with advanced fungal technologies who have been waiting underground for their chance to mold the future of the city. An epic yet personal look at several decades of life, love, and death in the imaginary city of Ambergris-previously chronicled in Jeff VanderMeer's acclaimed 'City of Saints & Madmen'-'Shriek: An Afterword' relates the scandalous, heartbreaking, and horrifying secret history of two squabbling siblings and their confidantes, protectors, and enemies.

Shriek jeff vandermeer