Veniss Underground

416 pages

English language

Published 2023 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, MCD.

ISBN:: 978-0-374-61035-7

(1 review)

In the far future, on an Earth of many-leveled cities, such as Veniss, and man-made deserts, the bioengineering known as Living Art is burgeoning. If you can afford them-- and as always, few can--you can have manufactured creatures to do whatever tasks you set them. Living Artist wanna-be Nicholas wants a meerkat and is prepared to work for the prodigious Quin, greatest of Living Artists, to get one. When Nicholas disappears, his twin sister, Nicola, tries to find him; after acquiring a meerkat herself, as a gift, she is all but killed by . . . Nicholas. Her ex-lover Shadrach, who grew up in subterranean Veniss and escaped to the surface to better himself, then sets out to find her, Nicholas, and, eventually, Quin.

4 editions

Alph reviewed Veniss Underground by Jeff VanderMeer

Review of 'Veniss Underground' on 'Storygraph'

5 stars

Fascinatingly disturbing. I arrived at this book with just a vague recommendation. What I found is hard to place. Feels like sci-fi and urban fantasy dipping into grotesque body horror, and I absolutely enjoyed it.

At first I found myself lost, much like when I read the Neuromancer, until it started to unfold. It’s a futuristic setting where bioengineering experiments have found a place in society, a city, and the story of 3 characters struggling in this place and its many floors below ground. The descriptions are very graphical at times, but it’s a gripping journey into strangeness.

”Soon he would bend into a totally new shape altogether. He welcomed that. He wanted that. Maybe the new thing he would become would no longer hurt, would no longer fear, would no longer look back down into the void and wonder what was left of him“

Fascinatingly disturbing. I arrived at this book with just a vague recommendation. What I found is hard to place. Feels like sci-fi and urban fantasy dipping into grotesque body horror, and I absolutely enjoyed it.

At first I found myself lost, much like when I read the Neuromancer, until it started to unfold. It’s a futuristic setting where bioengineering experiments have found a place in society, a city, and the story of 3 characters struggling in this place and its many floors below ground. The descriptions are very graphical at times, but it’s a gripping journey into strangeness.

”Soon he would bend into a totally new shape altogether. He welcomed that. He wanted that. Maybe the new thing he would become would no longer hurt, would no longer fear, would no longer look back down into the void and wonder what was left of him“