Book Review: Finch by Jeff Vandermeer

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"Tasked with solving an impossible double murder, detective John Finch searches for the truth among the rubble of the once-mighty city of Ambergris. Under the rule of the mysterious gray caps, Ambergris is falling into anarchy. The remnants of a rebel force are demoralised and dispersed, their leader, the Lady in Blue, not seen for months. Partials - human traitors transformed by the gray caps - walk the streets brutalising the city's inhabitants. Finch's partner Wyte, stricken with a fungal disease, is literally disintegrating. And strange forces are marshaling themselves against detective Finch even as he pursues his one clue: the elusive spymaster Ethan Bliss. How much time does Finch have before time itself runs out?"

***

The first thing about Finch that will strike you - the first touch of the blackness ahead that will leave you staggered - is the heartbreakingly beautiful cover art by John Coulthart. At once spectacular and grimy, stark and yet colourful, his startling composition perfectly captures the contrasting aspects of the city of Ambergris a century after the events of Shriek: An Afterword. And Coulthart's incredible illustration is but the first thing to take your breath away; far, far from the last.

Six years before the events chronicled in Finch, the gray caps swallowed an Ambergris already decimated by decades of petty civil strife. With the city weakened and its people hopelessly divided, the mushroom monstrosities that had colonised the cave systems beneath the great hallucinatory state rose up to rule over the citizens. Now, those who survived through the unspeakable horrors of The Rising live in a state of perpetual paranoia: there is something for them to fear around every corner, some terrible consequence of the fungal invasion on every street, every building, every person.

Ambergris has become a vibrant city of red, green and gold; purplish hues and dirty spatters of all the lurid shades of an artist's palette have infiltrated its every aspect in spore form. Certainly it is a more colourful locale than one might recall from City of Saints and Madmen, but for all that the urban landscape has been enlivened as a perverse by-product of the grey cap's attack, The Rising has also leeched the life from the once bustling metropolis of Ambergris. The ruined city detectives Finch and Wyte once swore to protect no longer takes much notice of a missing person, another moldering body. There is little in the way of law left for them to uphold, and no order but that which the grey caps impose for their own ominous purpose.

Finch has as its primary narrative thrust the titular detective's investigation into two dead bodies in a seedy apartment: a man and half of a dismembered mushroom who have looked mortality in the eye and found themselves unequal to its awful answer. It's not long, however, before Finch finds out that there is a much greater mystery afoot, and his subsequent discoveries soon come to threaten everything he holds dear. His lover and his life, his friends and his family are all at stake; and of course, his city, Ambergris entire.

As per usual, World Fantasy Award-winner Jeff Vandermeer spins a terrific yarn. There's a sense of inevitability to everything Finch sees, says and does, an inexorable forward motion that sustains the narrative all the way through to its brilliant cosmic climax. Few characters beyond the protagonist and his increasingly fungal father-figure Wyte are explored to any great extent, but many of those who appear only occasionally are able nevertheless to haunt the text in an extraordinary sense. Rathven, the enigmatic photographer, Heretic and one particularly sickening partial often lurk between the lines - even in their absence.

Singularly the most memorable character of Finch, however, is Ambergris itself. While I found the city struggling to establish a clear identity in Vandermeer's previous fiction, it is much changed in Finch, and the change has rendered it a spectacular marvel of wonder and horror.

Some readers will be disoriented by Vandermeer's sparse, clipped prose, but once they're able to acclimatise to its unusual, article-less rhythm and flow, Finch becomes an unforgettable experience akin to a darkly lucid dream. As one abrupt sentence follows another you come to realise that the curious, not quite stream-of-consciousness narration represents the disconnection between detective Finch and his city, the hard line he has drawn between his past and the terrible reality of the present. Furthermore, it emphasizes the isolation of Ambergris itself from the world surrounding it.

Vandermeer's distinctive storytelling device will surely discourage many attempts to summit the great narrative heights Finch eventually scales, but this is a novel made greater by the effort you must expend to fully appreciate it. It is assuredly the best of the three tales of Ambergris Vandermeer has told to date - high praise in itself - and despite a few unfortunate call-backs to the events of Shriek: An Afterword, this twisting hallucinatory fusion of tropes and traits stands well enough on its own that readers interested in any species of great genre fiction will find much about Finch to love.

***

Finch

by Jeff Vandermeer

November 2009, Underland Press: Oregon.

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Amazon in the US]

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