 Venice on the Ground is a story of three characters, Nicholas, Nicola, and Shadrach, and it is not too long a novel, about 250 pages in all, packed in this particular edition that I have, along with a novel by the name of Balzac's War, one that I have not yet read, but once I do, perhaps you will hear more about it. Venice on the Ground allows us a glimpse into themes and motifs that Jeff Vandermeer makes use of, extensive use of, no less, in his future works. One of these motifs is a grotesque, violent coming together of human and animal, in unsettling passages and ways that, frankly, are liable to turn your stomach. Much like The Dolphin in Annihilation, which, if you have not read this book ever so slightly spoilers, the main character of Annihilation at one point sees a dolphin with an eye that looks all too human. In much the same way, one of the protagonist's Venice Underground sees a dog-like creature, in whose skin is trapped the face of a woman. Really unsettling experiences such as this speak of one of Vandermeer's chief interests, which is this, again, coming together of the natural and the human worlds in ways that really make you unsettled. There is something to Venice Underground, which makes of it almost a blueprint to some of Vandermeer's latest novels, judging by Annihilation. I have not read as many of Vandermeer's novels as I want to. In fact, Venice Underground was something I picked up in my local library with the hope of, you see, catching up on this new weird author, as it were. This work will appeal not only to those of you who are fans of science fiction and fantasy, but also to readers of postmodernist works such as those of Angela Carter. This very much recalled that experience. I read Angela Carter's The Infernal Desire Machine of Dr. Hoffman. And in similar ways, I felt this disquiet at the worlds that boat writers here weave together. The world itself, as the title might have helped you realize, is that of Venus, both underground and above. Above ground, Venice is a city not so much prospering as it is surviving. In a state of disrepair, a place of boat technological wonders and human despair. But Venice Underground is where the truly unsettling and labyrinthine elements of this novel kick in. This we visit only in the third and largest part of the novel, with the protagonist Shadrach, who is himself born in the underground and has escaped from it, is afraid to face it, but nonetheless is forced to, in order to save his lover, Nicola. It is this darkness that Shadrach is forced to descend once more in order to bring Nicola back. But we will get back to that. As I said in the beginning of this review, the novel is told through three points of view. The first one, that of Nicholas, one of our twins, the other being Nicola, is written in the first person. It is soaked with self-aggrandizing, yet pitting opportunism. That's the kind of character that Nicholas is, and it will become clear to you throughout the novel. He is someone that sharing a headspace with, even just for 30 or so pages, it is uncomfortable, it makes you feel like you need to take a shower with your brain. Nicholas is one of the protagonists that I did not enjoy sharing any time with, but he is very well written, and Vandermeer from the afterward of this very novel says that all he had to do was just use the least likable qualities of himself to channel them into Nicholas. And I'd say it has worked wonderfully. The second part of the novel is told from the point of view of Nicola, and it is told in the second person, which not many people enjoy. I myself am among those who are horrifically disillusioned with it for the most part, and yet I have to admit that Vandermeer does an amazing job here in what is truly a spectacular part of the story. What is even more impressive is that, come the third part of the novel, the one told from the third person point of view of Shandrak, you get a very reasonable explanation as to why Nicola's point of view is told in the second person, and it is very diagetic. Is that the right one? I think it is. Yes, it is diagetic. Who's of tongue that I actually remember my terms from Naratology? Nicola is one of a very small number of programmers in the city of Venus, and she is a very valuable commodity because of that. You see, my friends, in a city run by broken down AIs, to be a programmer is basically to safeguard the very way of life that the citizens of Venus have been subjected to. And it is a way of life that they want to keep promulgating because Venus is a city of order amidst the sea of chaos, amidst a world in which civilization, from what I've gathered, has broken down utterly to say the least. I absolutely adored my time with Nicola. That's one thing I can tell you for sure. She is light. She is the lightest part of this novel. She is like a lighthouse that many of the other characters either want to diminish because it's too bright, or they want to safeguard. They want to allow to burn, to continue burning bright. She's also human in the best of ways. I have here a few quotes that are from her section of the novel and I'm going to read them to you. The first one is Nicola's own considerations about her relationship with her brother. Once we were close and close knit, but now we are on moored islands, each alone, each a separate planet drifting farther and farther away, content to turn ever inward. This is no idle solipsism. It has taken on the fragile brightness of truth. And a much shorter one. The first one was from page 26. The second one is from page 28. Genius doesn't strain for perfection. Genius is effortless. I also have a real appreciation about how Vandermeer codes the world view that Nicola has. And I use quotes here because I'm kind of a funny guy and she's a programmer. So a lot of the way that Nicola views the world, it has to do with like language you would associate with programming, but not in ways that are overdone. It's all very measured and very clever. I really enjoyed it. For example, habits for her are not simple routines, rather they are subroutines and sub-subroutines and those go out of sync as soon as she begins thinking about her missing brother Nicholas. It's done very, very well. Vandermeer has a way with details and a way with words that I appreciate from the bottom of my being. Now for the last and biggest element of this novel, we have got Shadrach. And I am deeply interested in Shadrach because he does one of the things I love most in literature and fiction overall. He goes on a catabasis. A catabasis is a descent into the underworld. I have spoken about it at length in one of my gaming videos. That gaming video is all about sensuous sacrifice, Hellblade, the well-known video game by Ninjatiri, was it, who did an amazing work just exploring schizophrenia through the use of once more a catabasis. In much the same way Shadrach, who is at the novel's opening, one of Quinn's men, one of his servants, one of his hired help, his agents. In much the same way, he is faced with the difficult choice of facing his fears and going after the woman he loves and retrieving her from the hell, literal and figurative, that is the underground of Venus. This descent into the underworld reminded me more than once of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, in more than one way, both at the beginning of Shadrach's quest and at the end of the novel. There is also an element to storytelling logic, especially later on, when one of the characters, uh-huh, the Goldox, that's the one, had to consult my notes on that one, that Goldox creature is one of the weirder things I've seen. It is described as a creature created by Quinn as something that appeared once in fairy tale and it was rendered into reality by Quinn and so it operates by a fairy tale logic, which pervades the last couple of dozen pages of the novel. And of course, the whole section of Quinn's book is very much a kind of struggle against this demurege, much like Philip K. Dick's malevolent demurege is someone like Paul Morel-Ridge from The Triesting Matter of Paul Morel-Ridge or like Alice from Flow My Tears, The Policeman said, yes, I'm mentioning both those books because I'm writing my teasers about them and I'm thinking about them all the time and I'm seeing comparisons and drawing comparisons to them wherever I look. But this battle between Quinn and Shadrach is powerful, it is fierce and I love, absolutely love, several of the, I actually, I have a bunch of quotes that I took pictures from, I would have underlined them if this book was mine, unfortunately it's not, so I either wrote them by hand in my journal, in my journal or I just took pictures of them with my phone. One of my favourites is upon Shadrach's descent into Venice's underground, more than once some brave local arm of the law would stop him and ask him his business among them and he would answer them with a stare that corroded their souls. I just love that, it's such a strong, you absolutely, immediately, you know the look that Vandermeer wants to create here, you have probably seen this or you have at the very least read about it, you have, you know exactly what that look is and I love it. Shadrach is almost like a mortal call overtaken by this angelic spirit of vengeance but he holds with him all his memories and the next quote I'm going to read you feels like excellent proof of that. She was not truly remorseless, not truly a machine rebuilt for revenge. He was brittle with the memories of his humanity and he had memories of this place. Something about this really gets me. If there is, if there is one point of contention I would like to bring up, it is that the coder of the novel, The Afterworld, which acts as a backstory to the violent Demiurge I described, Quinn, it weakens the character of Quinn, which is unfortunate I think. That said, it is not something that has taken away a great deal of my pleasure. I just would have preferred it if Quinn was left out as this absolute fear of mystery and otherworldly intellect that the main body of text here really manages to build him up as Venus underground is, I'm going to repeat myself, a flawed but excellent first novel and I can see so many of Vandermeer's later ideas just from having read Annihilation. Having already kind of put their tentacles around his mind, which I think is well deserved, an image for anyone who writes in the new weird kind of tradition of science fiction. Should you read it? Absolutely, yes you should, you must simply get it, read it, enjoy it and while you're at it, don't forget to subscribe to my channel, don't forget to subscribe, don't forget to smash that like button and it's gotten awfully dark, I hope I won't have to destroy this piece of footage as well because no it's fine, the light's good, it's fine. Anyway, share this video with your friends and I will see you again next time with probably more murder bots and misadventures and of course some novellas to talk about. Until then, I'm Philip Magnus and I'll see you next time. Bye!