Finch

finch.jpg

A new book cover design which I’m posting slightly ahead of time—it still needs a suitable blurb adding—since Jeff VanderMeer was eager to show it to his readers. You can see it bigger size here.

Finch is the third book in Jeff’s cycle of unique fantasy novels and stories about the city of Ambergris. This book shifts emphasis from the previous ones with a tone borrowed from crime/thriller fiction (but still set in the fungus- and squid-infested city) hence the gun outline and blood spatters. I keep being drawn back to Ambergris, having provided designs for the first volume, City of Saints and Madmen, and recently designed a new edition of Shriek: An Afterword.

Publisher: Underland Press, October 31, 2009, trade paper

Description: A noir thriller/visionary fantasy set in the failed state of Ambergris, 100 years after Shriek: An Afterword. The gray caps, mysterious underground inhabitants, have re-conquered Ambergris and put the city under martial law, disbanding House Hoegbotton, and 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.

The cat and the lizard watch intently. Something is about to happen. And they both want to know: who is Finch, really?

Previously on { feuilleton }
Steampunk Horror Shortcuts
A cover for Mr. VanderMeer
Pasticheur’s Addiction
Fungal observations
Shriek: The Movie
Jeff on Bldgblog
An announcement redux
City of Saints and Madmen