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Jeff VanderMeer: Finch (Paperback, Underland Press) 3 stars

In Finch, mysterious underground inhabitants known as the gray caps have reconquered the failed fantasy …

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.