Finch [Paperback]

At long last: Finch. Nearly a year since its publication in the States, the Locus nominee has come to bookstores closer to home, courtesy of stellar new Atlantic Books imprint Corvus. I don't often dwell on something so tertiary as cover art in my reviews, but the original Underland Press edition came adorned with a truly remarkable piece of work by John Coulthart at once spectacular and stark - a startling and indeed award-winning composition that perfectly captured the fungal wonders of the city of Ambergris a century after the events of Shriek: An Afterword. A new edition means a new cover, of course, and it gives me great pleasure to say the new art nearly equals the darkly fantastic charm of the old. Corvus have traded Finch's grimy noir looks for a hallucinatory fusion of colour that brings David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas to mind, with fiery organic pinks set against the faded blues of the industry the grey caps have overpowered. The gorgeous cover is but the first thing about Finch that will take your breath away; far, far from the last.

Six years ago, 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 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's 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 caps' 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" is third in a trilogy although it can be read on its own - I enjoyed it a lot even though I hadn't read either City of Saints & Madmen or Shriek: An Afterword. In form it is a hard boiled detective story. Laconic sentences. A bleak outlook. A solitary hero. However, the mean streets of Ambergris are rather - odd. The city has been occupied by alien fungoid creatures, "Gray caps" who lord it over the remaining humans, assisted by their creations the Partials, part-human, part-fungus and also by a team of detectives - Finch and his colleagues.

In the midst of a decaying, half drowned city, whose citizens are pressed into work camps to construct two enigmatic towers for the gray caps, the detectives attempt to behave as if nothing is awry, investigating calls to find missing cats or resolve domestic disputes - and murders. Which is where we come upon Finch, up to his eyes in a case with sinister political overtones, trying to do his job, satisfy his boss, the gray cap called "Heretic", avoid the gangster Stark and the rebels, and keep his friends safe. Over a single week, everything goes to pieces and we learn that Finch is keeping dangerous secrets.

This book has an audacious concept which Vandermeer carries off with amazing aplomb. The cloying, seedy atmosphere of Ambergris is conveyed perfectly and the plot twists continue to the very end. Decaying Ambergris reminded me somewhat of Viriconium and as in that cycle I think that Vandermeer has created something of a mythology - the earlier books explored different forms to describe other aspects of Ambergris and "Finch" is full of hints, loose ends and speculation: while it resolves, it isn't a neat ending and the characters - even the unspeakable alien horrors - are drawn in shades of gray. I said that Finch is a hero, but he's equally an anti hero, no saint.

I was also reminded of Fatherland, a totally different type of story, not SF at all (though alt-history) in the way that the compromised, pressured cops, albeit working for a foul, deadly regime, seek to uphold some kind of decency or at least order in a moral swamp.

Anyway, this kept me awake into the early hours, I simply couldn't put it down. Excellent.

Finch returns the reader to the much loved city of Ambergris that has appeared in earlier titles by this author (City of Saints and Madmen, Shriek.) Whilst still firmly within the remit of Sci-Fi, it's perhaps more Spy Fiction with a touch of mastery backed up with a whole host of spores and Fungi's. Whilst I did find certain parts implausible, Vandermeer's writing style gets under the readers skin and gets them to read just a few more pages. It's Dark, has interesting characters and you know that there are no other authors quite like him.

Add to the mix a huge supporting cast who add more flavour to the plot alongside an almost photogenic writing style and it's a tale that will keep you up long after you really should be asleep. Watch out for Finch, don't open the cover or the Vandermeer spore will root and hold onto you forever.