Finch

Paperback, 320 pages

Published by Underland Press.

ISBN:
978-0-9802260-1-0
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OCLC Number:
318422341

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3 stars (1 review)

In Finch, mysterious underground inhabitants known as the gray caps have reconquered the failed fantasy state Ambergris and put it under martial law. They have disbanded House Hoegbotton and are controlling the human inhabitants with strange addictive drugs, internment in camps, and random acts of terror. The rebel resistance is scattered, and the gray caps are using human labor to build two strange towers. Against this backdrop, John Finch, who lives alone with a cat and a lizard, must solve an impossible double murder for his gray cap masters while trying to make contact with the rebels. Nothing is as it seems as Finch and his disintegrating partner Wyte negotiate their way through a landscape of spies, rebels, and deception. Trapped by his job and the city, Finch is about to come face to face with a series of mysteries that will change him and Ambergris forever.

5 editions

Review of 'Finch' on 'Storygraph'

3 stars

It's a nice atmospheric book. It just doesn't make for any kind of consistent science. It's science fantasy based around a city. And I can't believe in it.

Ambergris is more like Viriconium or New Crobuzon than anything else, and many of the plot devices used in it are frankly incredible or impossible; it's like having Casablanca and the Maltese Falcon squeezed into the War of The Worlds.

I had the same problem with Vurt and Dead Girls as well -- this is clearly about story first, atmosphere second, and plausibility a distant third.