Dradin in Love - 7.5 : Very strange and cool. Great characters.

The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of Ambergris by Duncan Shriek - 8.0 : Very cool format, funny as hell, mysterious, scary, original, cool.

The Transformation of Martin Lake - 8.0 : Again very cool format, complete vermisilitude, and great irony between real story and what the critics think. Scary, strange and original.

The Strange Case of X - 7.5 : Some meta-writing going on here, very cool, darkest of the 4. Confusing (on purpose). ( )

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=25989

City narratives are always great (China Miéville being the most recent specialist; I finished reading this book in Vienna, home of The Drawing of the Dark and The Third Man) but VanderMeer plays all kinds of fascinating mind games with the reader here - the fact that Ambergris boasts a bookshop called Borges is clue enough. ( )

A set of novellas set in an iconic, somewhat unreal city (weird fiction seems to have strong urban tendencies). The novellas hold together so well that it's hard to believe they were ever published separately. Has a truly outstanding fictional history stuck in the middle. There's supposedly a new edition with even more content, but I haven't the money to buy a book I already own. ( )

*note to self. Copy from A.