We can’t promise you’ll leave untransformed. Until now.įor fans both new and old of the work of Jeff VanderMeer, Ambergris is essential reading. Ambergris is an earlier trilogy’, written around 15-20 years ago, and has recently been published in this massive, 900ish pages. Over the years they have slipped in and out of print and have never before been available as a complete trilogy. Ambergris is by Jeff VanderMeer, the writer of the Southern Reach Trilogy, which is better known by the name of the first book in the series, Annihilation, which was made into that creepy Natalie Portman movie. From the author of Borne and Annihilation comes the one-volume hardcover reissue of his cult classic Ambergris Trilogy. And yet the books themselves, as celebrated and influential as they have become, have a publishing history as arcane and elaborate as Ambergris itself.

It is a marvelous, unparalleled feat of imagination. The Ambergris trilogy is made up of three novels, each of which has become a cult classic in its own right: City of Saints and Madmen, Shriek: An Afterword, and Finch. The city is bursting at its seams, seemingly held together only by the tense, fraying tendrils of his investigation.

Ultimately, the fate of Ambergris comes to lie in the hands of John Finch, a beleaguered detective with a murder on to solve and too many loyalties for one man to bear. There are stories within stories, mystery, mayhem, and a dark history that threatens to consume the city itself as the gray caps, the mysterious and deadly mushroom people who once ruled Ambergris and have since been driven underground, now threaten to rise again. Ambergris bristles with intellectual fervor and religious rivalries it thrives on cultural upheaval, and its politics are never short on intrigue, conspiracy, and even terror. More than twenty years ago, Jeff VanderMeer first introduced the world to the fictional city of Ambergris, a beautiful and sinister sprawling metropolis populated by artists and thieves, composers and murderers, geniuses and madmen. From the author of Borne and Annihilation comes the one-volume hardcover reissue of his cult classic Ambergris Trilogy.

Ambergris by Jeff VanderMeer