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terramythos · 4 years

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TerraMythos' 2020 Reading Challenge - Book 4 of 26

Title: Finch (Ambergris #3) (2009)

Author: Jeff VanderMeer

Genre/Tags: Weird, Noir, Mystery, Cosmic Horror, Fantasy, Science Fiction (ish), Cyberpunk Dystopia (non-traditional), Mushroompunk (yeah), Third Person, Unreliable Narrator.

Rating: 9/10

Date Began: 2/02/2020

Date Finished: 2/10/2020

Years after the events of Shriek, the gray caps– strange, fungal denizens of Ambergris’ underground– stage a hostile takeover of the city. Now living under an oppressive surveillance state, the last remaining humans eke out an existence surviving at the mercy of their new overlords, enslaved in work camps, or transformed into fungus-enhanced hybrids called Partials. The last remnants of the resistance, led by the mysterious Lady in Blue, disappeared years ago.

Enter Finch, a detective tasked with investigating an impossible double murder case– one human and one gray cap. Things take a turn for the strange when factions throughout the city take an interest, and Finch soon finds himself trapped in a web of conspiracy, danger, and deceit.

The past didn’t seem like another world. The past seemed like it had never happened. Couldn’t have happened. The leap to this too hideous, too nightmarish. Better to have no past at all.

Finch was by far my favorite of this “trilogy”. VanderMeer incorporates several disparate genres to create an eerie and haunting drama. The previous two books, while good, always have a layer of disconnect from the action of the story. Not so here -- this is the first entry that feels truly direct and gritty. Ambergris as a setting is omnipresent and oppressive. As I read, it felt like I was living and breathing the city in all its disorienting and claustrophobic glory. I could practically feel each fungal growth creeping up my wall.

I found Finch to be an interesting perspective character. You learn early on that he’s not who he seems to be, with hints and allusions to his past. It all comes together brilliantly over the course of the novel. "Playing roles" is a running theme throughout the story, and it's very satisfying to see all the ways it plays out, so to speak, with Finch in particular.

Technically this book is a standalone! Until it's not. Definitely read the first two before Finch, even though Finch is the best one, because otherwise most subtleties and twists will be lost on you. This book finally answers interesting lore questions which have been hanging from the beginning. There are also references to the other books all over the damn place.

So, some basic things to talk about. As my earlier observation implies, Finch is the most traditional story of the “trilogy”. Both City of Saints and Madmen and Shriek: An Afterword are experimental and postmodern. Finch really... isn’t? It’s not exactly a NORMAL book, but it’s as standard as these books get. The most “experimental” thing about Finch is the sheer number of sentence fragments in the narrative, but that’s more of a nod to the noir genre than anything else (though it does have symbolic meaning as well).

While I tend to like experimental styles, in this case it held the series back. When Ambergris is unleashed and experienced directly, as in this novel, it finally has a chance to shine in its full glory. I didn’t know what was missing until I read Finch and felt it firsthand.

Side note -- I totally called foreshadowing in my City of Saints and Madmen review. The version of Ambergris described in “The Man Who Had No Eyes” is ABSOLUTELY the version in which Finch takes place. So Finch was in some capacity planned from the beginning, which is good to know. And it was hidden in plain sight via a story written in code. That’s the good shit.

Finch does make great use of plot twists; there’s quite a few and they feel natural. They aren’t so much surprising as “Huh. Well, that makes sense”. One, however, did totally blindside me. Halfway through the book we learn the identity of the dead man in the murder case. While I did guess his identity early on, there’s a second part to the twist that caught me totally of guard. Like... there was something off, but I totally failed to guess or even think about it that much. So I did get sucker punched there, but it was a good feeling. I love when a book or story pulls that off.

I mentioned one of the themes -- “playing roles” -- above. While that was my favorite recurring theme, there’s quite a few of them and I can’t understate the others. Doors, remembering and forgetting, falling (from a great height), playing both sides... without getting into too much spoilery detail, I thought these were incorporated very well into the story. So if you do read it, definitely keep an eye out for these. As for me, I’m willing to bet Finch is a great reread.

If I had to nitpick this book, my biggest challenge was the characters. Some of them are brilliant and well-utilized, like Bliss (who seems fairly minor at first), Wyte, Sintra, or even Rathven and The Photographer. Other characters just kind of... fall flat for me? The other detectives were hard to differentiate in a meaningful way. The Lady in Blue gets a ton of buildup, but she’s really only there for a handful of continuous (albeit memorable) scenes. Heretic and the other gray caps are creepy, but they all but disappear partway through the story, which feels wrong based on the premise. The Partials replace them as the creepy antagonistic force (in terms of this story, anyway), but really didn’t feel like they had the buildup, backstory, or execution to be as effective.

Other than that, though, I really enjoyed Finch. Definitely my favorite read of 2020 so far. As I read, I used little Post-It tabs to mark parts that felt interesting/relevant/foreshadow-y, then went back through when I finished and reread those sections. I think it really enhanced my experience with the novel, so I’m going to do that with the other books going forward.

While Finch was great, I can only recommend it if you read the other two books and are interested in an (excellent) conclusion for the series. Unfortunately, it’s hard to get even a used copy of this book for a reasonable price. It had a limited indie print run in the US and UK back in 2009 and 2011. It took a lot of digging/eBay stalking to find something under the $45 range. Since the other two books have seen reprints, I’m hoping Finch gets the same treatment, because in my opinion it’s the best in the series.

#taylor reads #9/10 #2020 reading challenge #me waking up in a cold sweat: this is the bioshock infinite of ambergris. no i will not elaborate on that

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