City of Saints and Madmen: The Book of Ambergris is a collection of fantasy short stories by American writer Jeff VanderMeer, set in the fictional metropolis of Ambergris. The setting was further explored in the novels Shriek: An Afterword (2006) and Finch (2009).

On to "The Transformation of Martin Lake." This is every bit as mysterious as the earlier stories, and is probably the most suspenseful part of the book. I liked the story a lot, although the ending was a bit of a whimper, and not so much of a bang. I believe that, throughout the story, the mystery works very well. However, when the mystery is still around in its entirety after the story concludes, the reader is left wanting more resolution. Perhaps, there can be no truth in a story told by or in the first person, unless it is verified by the second person. Much like the bawdy and vainglorious melodramatic operas of Voss Bender and the haunting and ethereal paintings of Martin Lake, Vandermeer’s beautiful prose shines a light into the dark recesses of our fair city, and the author proves to be the quintessential chronicler of our times. The New Weird genre as we see it in Vandermeer, started off with the works of authors such as Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. Also like Wolfe (and Banks again), there are some very cliche problems with character and point-of-view. Just like in bad Steampunk (meaning most of it), where authors completely forget the 'punk' and make all of their characters upper class and educated, VanderMeer doesn't give us any views from oppressed or minority classes. It's all about the difficulty of being a smart, middle-class white male artist (or scientist).I started out not liking this chapter. First I was annoyed, then I was angry, but then I was captivated, and I kept going until the wee hours until I finished it and loved it. I could say more, but I don’t want to for fear of revealing too much of myself.

Undaunted, Dradin sprang to his feet, his two books secure, one under each arm, and smiled to himself. WARNING: This is not really a review, but City of Saints and Madmen requires something else entirely, and there may be a spoiler or two, but considering the book's form I doubt that will matter.* Most people may know the first two authors mentioned as horror writers, and it is true that Vandermeer's stories contain a flavor of horror, though many of them are too humorous to be classed as horror. The stories also contain a whiff of the strange and absurd, and quite a bit of tongue-in cheek dark humor. Essentially, it is imaginative post-modernist fiction. The stories include a strong sense of self-referentiality. (For instance, some of them pose as history books or diaries.)

COSAM” is an assemblage or collage of disparate elements that VanderMeer works into something luminous. He also seems to have committed a crime for which he has been charged and exonerated by a jury, which believed his “story”. Now he is being interviewed to establish his sanity. The title character of Dradin, In Love is typical of such, being an obsessive creep who fantasizes about a woman he's never spoken to. Dradin is an ass of a character, but this isn’t the worst crime--many such asses in fiction offer amusing, insightful depictions, even as we roll our eyes at their foolishness or cringe at their cruelty. We laugh and even sympathize with figures like Flashman or Steerpike. Dradin’s true sin is that he’s both unpleasant and dull--I don’t mean merely unassuming, like Chekhov or Kafka’s quotidian characters, but flat. The Strange Case of Mr. X" is the last of the novellas from the original version of the book. This one is VERY funny, very weird, and also provides a much needed tonal change from "Martin Lake." It ends on a very strong note, and I was still very enthralled after finishing this novella.