Synopses & Reviews
In Veniss, anything is possible.
In Veniss Underground, nothing is impossible...
Jeff VanderMeer's last book, City of Saints & Madmen, explored the limits of literary fantasy, garnering raves from critics, including a starred review in Publishers Weekly. Now, with Veniss Underground, VanderMeer explores the limits of love, memory, and obsession in a far future SF novel that combines the grotesque and the sublime in a rousing adventure-mystery.
On a far future Earth where vast deserts ecological disaster areas surround walled city-states slowly losing their grip on advanced technology, the mysterious Quin manipulates biological engineering to create sentient species as both toys and a growing source of manual labor. When Nicholas, a failed holo artist, decides to visit Quin, he, his programmer sister, Nicola, and her former lover, Shadrach, will all discover what it really means to know Quin, in the place known as Veniss Underground.
Review
"[M]asterful...a dark, phantasmagoric tale....VanderMeer's eye for just the right gruesome detail brings his nightmarish landscapes and bizarre, partially human creatures alive in astonishing profusion. Not for the faint of heart, the story packs a strong emotional wallop." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
Review
"VanderMeer...is nothing if not adventurous. The novel's three parts are in the first, second, and third persons, respectively; its milieu recalls Philip K. Dick, its passages of prose poetry Edgar Allan Poe, its wry fatalism Jim Thompson. Wow." Ray Olson, Booklist
Review
"Visual, in-your-face horrific, mixing wit and shadows like the best contemporary graphic novels....Never mind Sunday funnies, Bugs Bunny animation cells, or Night of the Living Dead; VanderMeer's in another zone....[Veniss] will show up on my next Year's Best list." Faren Miller, Locus
Review
"Veniss Underground is a short, savage novel of glittering beauty, like a crystal knife found beneath one's fingernail....The novel is presented in a three perspectives of increasing length, leading the reader by steady measures into a spasmodic hell resembling nothing so much as Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights. The language is glorious, the journey terrifying." Jay Lake, Talebones
Review
"Veniss Underground has the phantasmagoric palpability of a wrenchingly vivid dream. It pulls one along as a nightmare does, bestowing or inflicting a kaleidoscopic succession of horrific but awe-inducing images. These images, however, derive their power not solely from their imaginative detail, but also from their narrative influence on the flawed human characters who must contend with the mutating trials set before them in the multi-leveled city of Veniss. If other courageous purveyors of imaginative literature write 'like angels,' then Jeff VanderMeer writes like a pitch-perfect seraph." Michael Bishop, author of Philip K. Dick is Dead, Alas
Review
"Veniss Underground is a magnificently phantasmagoric account of an epic journey of discovery. It is rare to find such intense visual imagery combined with such a fast-paced and far-reaching narrative, and the alloy is as hectically exciting as it is luminously brilliant." Brian Stableford, author of Dark Ararat
Review
"A thriller with fish, a lightness of touch and flashes of imagery which are weird but always there for a reason, this descent into a genetic hell is like a darker DiFilippo. Vandermeer repatterns the bodies of his protagonists to match the monsters of Clive Barker. The most enjoyable biological apocalypse I've been exposed to in a long time." Steve Aylett, author of Shamanspace
Review
"Jeff VanderMeer has a talent for getting under the skins of his creations, be they themes, places, puppets or people, and under the skins of his readers. A sensitive and sophisticated mind extremely rare in any tradition of literature. Simply one of the very best writers we have. Veniss Underground is an advance on most imaginative fiction in the same way that a sleek whale, diving into unlighted depths or surfacing with explosive joy, is an advance on a dish of fat dead worms. The backbone matters. A novel of cool and hot language and ideas. A marvel." Rhys Hughes, author of Rawhead & Bloody Bones and Elusive Plato
Review
"A finely-honed fantasy written with devilish finesse, Veniss Underground is an express elevator ride to Morlock country, a languorous free-fall into suave, septic depths..." Richard Calder, author of Dead Girls Dead Boys Dead Things
Synopsis
In Veniss, anything is possible. In Veniss Underground, nothing is impossible . . . Jeff VanderMeer's last book, City of Saints
About the Author
Jeff VanderMeer's work has appeared in eight languages in 15 countries, including in such magazines and anthologies as Asimov's SF Magazine, Amazing Stories, Weird Tales, Interzone, Ikarie B (Czech Republic), The Third Alternative, Nebula Awards 30, Best New Horror 7, The Year's Best Fantastical Fiction, Infinity Plus: The Anthology, Dark Terrors, and Dark Fantasy 2000. Honors include winning the 2000 World Fantasy Award for Best Novella, the 1994 Rhysling Award, Fear Magazine's Best Short Story Award, and a $5,000 Florida Individual Artist Fellowship. VanderMeer has also been a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon Award. Books include The Book of Lost Places (Dark Regions Press), Dradin, In Love (Buzzcity Press), In Love & Other Stories (Oxy Publishing, Greece), and The Early History of Ambergris (Necropolitan Press). The Exchange, a picture book for adults, and City of Saints & Madmen: The Book of Ambergris, were released in 2001.