Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.91 AVERAGE
3.91 AVERAGE
Viriconium...how do I even explain this book?
It's not for everyone, I'll start out by saying that. It's a very *heavy* set of stories. It's far-future scifi that leans more towards fantasy most of the time. I wasn't sure when I started reading it how I was going to feel, but I found I couldn't STOP reading it, and when I'd done it haunted me. That's the only way I can really even explain it, it's just one of those books that stayed with me for weeks afterwards.
It's not for everyone, I'll start out by saying that. It's a very *heavy* set of stories. It's far-future scifi that leans more towards fantasy most of the time. I wasn't sure when I started reading it how I was going to feel, but I found I couldn't STOP reading it, and when I'd done it haunted me. That's the only way I can really even explain it, it's just one of those books that stayed with me for weeks afterwards.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This omnibus edition of M. John Harrison's Viriconium stories (three short novels and a bunch of short stories) was my first reading of something that's been on my radar for about forty years! I'd have read this stuff sooner if I'd known what it was like. Which is, roughly, Michael Moorcock meets Mervyn Peake round Jack Vance's house. I'd ordinarily hesitate to summarise a book so glibly in terms of other writers, but on this occasion it really fits for me, despite the fact (and this is an enormous caveat) that Harrison is an utterly original and brilliant writer. In the longer stories, setting and narrative progressively dismantle themselves, and Harrison's background in the New Wave is extremely apparent. The shorter pieces are more like exercises in worldbuilding, but it's always very clear that, for Harrison, a world is a tenuous and contingent thing. Taken at face value, Viriconium (the city in which these stories are set, or around which they revolve) is a wonderfully imagined setting. It exists near the end of history, like Vance's Dying Earth, and many of its characters have a dissipated, decadent disregard similar to those in Vance. It is also a tottering, heaped up accumulation of historic happenstance, groaning under the weight of its own traditions, like Peake's Gormenghast. Also like Peake, most of the characters are grotesques. In earlier stories we have a Moorcock-esque tragic hero, a fey swordsman afflicted with melancholy, who prefers writing poetry to adventuring, and there is a whole resurrected race of pale, elegant ancients, equipped with strange, fell weapons and armour, but as things go on the stories are more likely to concern struggling artists and their venal patrons than warriors or adventurers. All of this is rendered in the most wonderful, stylised prose, form and content in perfect lockstep, its Gothic aesthetics deployed in the service of a fundamentally Modernist formalism. Harrison seems to be one of those writers (like Moorcock) whose affection for pulpy genres makes it easy for literary elitists to overlook him, but this book contains some of the very best writing I've ever encountered, in any genre.
adventurous
challenging
dark
funny
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A decadent fantasy world that became tired of itself, and finally collapsed.
Odd book. The tales take a dying Earth and guide it not into utter ruin, but into increasingly mundane reality, finally ending on "our" Earth. The earliest tale reads like The Worm Ouroboros or something. Then we move to The Night Land, although it is a land twisted by dreams as well, and an almost cosmic horror. The third story, I'm not sure what it's riffing on, but it feels like something from Paradys. Finally, several short stories that have a tiny, diminishing scope, and feel dull and modern, petulant and even "artsy," a la Carver or something.
Nothing about this book is consistent, not even the names of places. The characters go from being poorly developed to almost nonexistant. The writing seems designed to be offputting, especially toward the end. I'm not sure what this book is even about, other than what feels like the author's dissatisfaction with the genre somehow.
I enjoyed the second book, A Storm of Wings, but didn't care for the rest and positively skimmed through the short stories. That probably only tells you what period of fantasy I like best, though.
Recommended if you like a broad range of fantasy; this certainly isn't a book that sits to rot at Tolkein's feet. But a pretty frustrating read.
Odd book. The tales take a dying Earth and guide it not into utter ruin, but into increasingly mundane reality, finally ending on "our" Earth. The earliest tale reads like The Worm Ouroboros or something. Then we move to The Night Land, although it is a land twisted by dreams as well, and an almost cosmic horror. The third story, I'm not sure what it's riffing on, but it feels like something from Paradys. Finally, several short stories that have a tiny, diminishing scope, and feel dull and modern, petulant and even "artsy," a la Carver or something.
Nothing about this book is consistent, not even the names of places. The characters go from being poorly developed to almost nonexistant. The writing seems designed to be offputting, especially toward the end. I'm not sure what this book is even about, other than what feels like the author's dissatisfaction with the genre somehow.
I enjoyed the second book, A Storm of Wings, but didn't care for the rest and positively skimmed through the short stories. That probably only tells you what period of fantasy I like best, though.
Recommended if you like a broad range of fantasy; this certainly isn't a book that sits to rot at Tolkein's feet. But a pretty frustrating read.
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Not really my cup of tea, and mostly I wasn't able to pay attention for such a long time. A clear case of: it's me, not you.
Non è proprio il mio genere ed inoltre non sono stata in grado di prestare attenzione per così lungo tempo. Un chiaro caso di: non sei tu, sono io.
Non è proprio il mio genere ed inoltre non sono stata in grado di prestare attenzione per così lungo tempo. Un chiaro caso di: non sei tu, sono io.
challenging
dark
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Rating five stars because of A Storm of Wings and tegeus-Cromis and the Lamia. Top notch stories both!
This is a difficult book to review without spoilers. Everything, from the plots to the prose, begs for virgin eyes and ears and minds. The less you know the more you'll receive, I think. It's not often that I would consider even a description of an author's style to be a spoiler... but it's really so unique that I hesitate at every turn. And here lies my dilemma: I want to sell it to you, but I honestly think you'll have more fun if you wander into the waste and look around for yourself. That being said, Viriconium is consistently macabre, colorful, and turbulent; lonely, beautiful, and fleeting; hopeless, magical, and transcendent. And while it is consistently all these things, it is consistent in almost nothing else. The world is always changing and unchanged, the characters are new and old every time you meet them, and the stories themselves are only rarely what they seem. I had no idea what I was getting into when I picked up this book, and my discovering was half the fun. It's easily the best book(s) I've read all year. I can't believe that it took so long for Viriconium to reach publication in the US (The Pastel City was published in '74).
I began this collection in my frequent visits to Barnes and Noble, reading a chapter or two whenever I had time in the store to do so. Perhaps it's because I'm American, but many of the words themselves were new to me... some seemed to be made up entirely, like "empurpled" or "citronized". I wasn't sure at first, that this was a book for me. In fact, I think it took about 10 chapters to really sink in. In all honesty, the writing is wonderful, but Viriconium is not an easy read; it's often confusing and intentionally disorientating. I've come to enjoy describing it as a painting done upside down - only when the painter flips the canvas can the audience truly appreciate the masterpiece. But once that battle armor came to life and Harrison launched into combat scenes, I was sold.
The first two novels are fantastic and epic! Once they were over, I found myself in a very different sort of story. Harrison turns from the epic to the personal, and a world that I'd spent decades in seemed to decay and dissolve to its spine. To this regard, Viriconium belongs somewhere in the horror spectrum, I think... but also to sci-fi and fantasy, and perhaps even poetry (at times, it is that beautiful). The wanton decay and dreamlike sicknesses that often afflict V___ are unforgettable. The meaning to be found in each page and line (and sometimes the individual word) is spectacularly facilitated. Harrison seems to realize more than most authors, that reading is often about the reader, and nothing more. These are stories for people with a strong internal dialogue, I think. It's surely a book for logophiles and bibliophiles, of which I am both. Imagine my rejoicing at the discovery of two additional stories, within Viriconium, that are to be published this month! After 15 years away from the city!
This brings me to my final point, and the final story in the book (A Young Man's Journey to Viriconium) which stands in stark contrast to the rest of the collection... I'm not so sure that Viricon, or Vriko, or Uriconium, or whatever it is, is actually just a city or even always a place - it's a non-place, as I believe I've heard Harrison describe it. I think it may be far more than a "setting", and perhaps less too. V is somewhere much closer than I'd often like to believe. It's here on earth, and yet entirely separate. It's haunting.
Go read it for yourself, if you've got the bravado.
I began this collection in my frequent visits to Barnes and Noble, reading a chapter or two whenever I had time in the store to do so. Perhaps it's because I'm American, but many of the words themselves were new to me... some seemed to be made up entirely, like "empurpled" or "citronized". I wasn't sure at first, that this was a book for me. In fact, I think it took about 10 chapters to really sink in. In all honesty, the writing is wonderful, but Viriconium is not an easy read; it's often confusing and intentionally disorientating. I've come to enjoy describing it as a painting done upside down - only when the painter flips the canvas can the audience truly appreciate the masterpiece. But once that battle armor came to life and Harrison launched into combat scenes, I was sold.
The first two novels are fantastic and epic! Once they were over, I found myself in a very different sort of story. Harrison turns from the epic to the personal, and a world that I'd spent decades in seemed to decay and dissolve to its spine. To this regard, Viriconium belongs somewhere in the horror spectrum, I think... but also to sci-fi and fantasy, and perhaps even poetry (at times, it is that beautiful). The wanton decay and dreamlike sicknesses that often afflict V___ are unforgettable. The meaning to be found in each page and line (and sometimes the individual word) is spectacularly facilitated. Harrison seems to realize more than most authors, that reading is often about the reader, and nothing more. These are stories for people with a strong internal dialogue, I think. It's surely a book for logophiles and bibliophiles, of which I am both. Imagine my rejoicing at the discovery of two additional stories, within Viriconium, that are to be published this month! After 15 years away from the city!
This brings me to my final point, and the final story in the book (A Young Man's Journey to Viriconium) which stands in stark contrast to the rest of the collection... I'm not so sure that Viricon, or Vriko, or Uriconium, or whatever it is, is actually just a city or even always a place - it's a non-place, as I believe I've heard Harrison describe it. I think it may be far more than a "setting", and perhaps less too. V is somewhere much closer than I'd often like to believe. It's here on earth, and yet entirely separate. It's haunting.
Go read it for yourself, if you've got the bravado.
Really more like a 3.5. The thing about these books is, I loved the setting, and many of the characters, but plotting was inconsistent and more often than not left me wanting. Some of the material was great, other was... just okay, or good. It was interesting how Viriconium was described throughout, and characters made somewhat repeat appearances... or did they? I'm not always sure. Either way. Recommended, if not heartily so.