This is probably one of the most fucked up, horrific books I've read. And I have read a decent amount of splatterpunk. Felt like a twisted mix between Cyberpunk and Dante's Inferno. We are following three people's point of view, and the book is sectioned off into three POV parts respectively, each longer than the last. Nicholas is a biongineer, or an engineer that creates biological constructs, who has fallen on hard times and is interested in finding the mysterious "Quin", a renowned biongineer who has created numerous "meerkats" and "elephantmen" who serve the near dystopian city of Veniss in many ways. Nicholas consults with his old friend Shadrach who points him in the right direction, but quickly gets in over his head. Nicola is Nichola's twin sister, a well regarded and successful programmer in the city who has lost contact with her brother after he seems to have ghosted her. She also gets in touch with her ex-boyfriend, Shadrach, to find out where to find her brother, but also gets in over her head when Quin decides that people meddling in his business should be dealt with. Finally, we follow Shadrach as he goes on the hunt into the decrepit, horrific, bloody, and disturbing Veniss Underground to rescue his now disappeared ex-girlfriend and exact revenge on the way.

It seems silly to shy away from the term body horror when describing this book, because it is so chock full of it. But the descriptions of horror of the non-human constructs really outweighs the "human" body horror in ways that I think are going to stick with me for a long time. Don't read if you are the faint of heart. Besides the gore, this is a depressing look at the dystopian endgame of wealth inequality and the hopelessness of poverty. There's a very strong narrative and it's told in a very straightforward way, which is unusual for VanderMeer if you're familiar with his works.

As I understand it, this was VanderMeer's first novel, and I think that has its pros and cons. I tend to like New Weird, and you can really see the beginnings of the genre manifest here. While this book is a bit more horror/noir than New Weird, it's interesting to see New Weird in its infancy. It was honestly really refreshing to read a book by VanderMeer where I was able to easily follow what the hell was happening, unlike some of his more recent works like Hummingbird, Salamander and Dead Astronauts. But the format of the story was very much "fetch quest" and didn't have a lot of unique aspects to it, aside from the disturbing details around it.

I enjoyed this for what it was, even if I did find it quite disturbing. I also enjoyed the Afterword and the short story that colors the world a bit more in a new, different horrific way. If you like science fiction horror, you'll like this. But steer clear if you're not a fan of gore.

I'll leave you with one of the more benign descriptions of horror, put in spoilers for content warning purposes. CW: gore, body horror, violence, blood.

"But it was only when the dogs ran by that Shadrach felt fear... Flaps of wrinkled flesh dominated their foreheads, and their hides were blacker than the perpetual night. Tiny dead violets, their eyes pierced the darkness like laser beams. They pivoted, wheeled, spared him not a glance, and fell upon a stumbling, gasping creature farther up the shore. It was composed of two stilts of flesh atop which sat a slug of a torso, a larval head. They tore into the legs, it toppled and then, as it squealed and shrieked, they ripped into it with fangs larger than fingers...

As the last one joined the line, it turned to Shadrach. He saw that beneath the violet eyes, before the muzzle ran down into the nose and mouth. another face had been embedded in the flesh: a woman's face, with dark eyes, high eyebrows, and a small nose, and, caught against the edge of her face and the dog's skin, two strands of golden blonde hair. The full mouth was raw with smeared blood and flesh. The eyes held a mixture of horror and triumph that made Shadrach's hand shake as he aimed his gun at the creature."