Check out the San Antonio Current this week for Rick Klaw’s review of Finch, the latest novel from World Fantasy Award winner Jeff VanderMeer. Finch is the third book in The Ambergris Cycle, although Klaw points out that it certainly stands on its own and the books could be read in any order.
World Fantasy Award winner Jeff VanderMeer, in the anthology New Weird, defined the 21st century’s first major literary movement.
“New Weird is a type of urban … fiction that subverts the romanticized ideas about place found in traditional fantasy, largely by choosing … complex real-world models … that may combine elements of science fiction and fantasy. [It] has a visceral, in-the-moment quality that often uses elements of surreal or transgressive horror for its tone, style, and effects.”
As the subgenre’s standard-bearer, VanderMeer has created an intriguing vision that successfully incorporates the seemingly disparate elements of fantasy and gritty reality.
If you cannot find an analog copy of San Antonio’s alternative news weekly, you can read the article, The Fungus Among Us: VanderMeer’s Spore Noir Has Legs, online. While you’re there, take a read of Cynthia Hawkins’ interview with Jeff VanderMeer, Waiting to Inhale. VanderMeer discusses the soundtrack to the book by the band Murder by Death:
A dystopia laced with noir elements seems an unlikely match for a band whose influences span from rockabilly to Americana, but after reading Finch, the members of Murder by Death — Adam Turla, Sarah Balliet, Dagan Thogerson, and Matt Armstrong — were in.
“They spent five days in the studio,” VanderMeer said. “They picked out the parts that had the most dramatic potential and then the parts that contrasted the most totally.” The segments inspired the varied instrumental tracks the band sent back to VanderMeer, including faithful recreations of music described in the book, down to the trash-can lids the band used for drums.
Rick Klaw definitely has us wanting to delve into the noir and see what’s going on in Finch.
Rick’s review made me pull out my copy of City of Saints and Madmen and remember why I really like Jeff’s work. I’ll be getting this one, too.