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3.0 

The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities

By Ann VanderMeer & Jeff VanderMeer
The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities by Ann VanderMeer & Jeff VanderMeer digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

“Some of the most interesting fantasist-fabulists writing today,” including China Miéville, Mike Mignola, Ted Chiang, Holly Black, and others (Los Angeles Times).

You’ll be astonished by what you’ll find in The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities. Editors Ann and Jeff Vandermeer have gathered together a spectacular array of exhibits, oddities, images, and stories by some of the most renowned and bestselling writers and artists in speculative and graphic fiction, including Ted Chiang, Mike Mignola (creator of Hellboy), China Miéville, and Michael Moorcock. A spectacularly illustrated anthology of Victorian steampunk devices and the stories behind them, The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities is a boldly original, enthrallingly imaginative, and endlessly entertaining entry into a hidden world of weird science and unnatural nature that will appeal equally to fantasy lovers and graphic novel aficionados.

“A book likely to become a classic at the intersection of fantasy, horror, steampunk and magical realism . . . Every fantasy lover, and all you postmodernists out there, need to take a tour of the Cabinet.” —PopMatters

“Working with an impressive stable of sf and fantasy writers, including Holly Black, Cherie Priest, Tad Williams, and Lev Grossman, and styles ranging from short, detailed write-ups to fascinating tales of objects, the duo have created a fascinating, entertaining, and intriguing tome of sf with a dose of steampunk.” —Library Journal (starred review)

“A science-fiction symphony of strangeness . . . The Cabinet of Curiosities will give you a good jolt of wonder.” —Gainesville Times

“A book that will be absolutely cherished by fantasy, science fiction, and steampunk aficionados alike.” —Paul Goat Allen

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18 Reviews

3.0
“5/6 - This book is wacky. And I mean WACKY with a capital W!! It's like a 'choose your own adventure' books crossed with a non-fiction full of footnotes. Every paragraph or so I'm flicking to the contents to find the page number for the correct section that further describes the occult item that was just mentioned in passing in the main body of the text. If you go by the page numbers I'm only up to page 23, but if you go by the number of pages I've actually read it'd be more like 33. I've had to flick to the 'further reading' on all the items catalogued in the cabinet so many times that I reckon I'll have read 100 pages by the time I hit page 50. To be continued... 9/6 - I'm not sure I'm quite the right audience for this book. Half the time I don't know what's going on, I don't know what's real and what's not, who's real and who's imaginary and I'm pretty sure I'm missing hilarious 'in' jokes because, as I said I don't know what the hell's going on. To be continued... 14/6 - This just isn't my kind of book, for all the reasons I already gave plus the fact that other books are calling me 100 times more insistently than this was. I've returned it to the library and won't be attempting it again. This is more a book to be owned and read every so often, rather than all at once. It's more like a reference book than a novel, despite it's complete fictionality - you go to it to look up a specific subject/item, you don't read it in order cover to cover. There was nothing wrong with the writing or characters, it's just not my kind of book.”
“It's a great idea, but something was lost in the execution of the book.”

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