This book is kind of trippy, which is of course the main reason I like it. In a place called the Well Built City, ruled over the the tyrannical scientist/sorcerer Drachton Below, people are judged and/or oppressed with the bogus (real world) science of physiognomy, which supposedly can determine a person's true nature and personality by careful examination of their appearance. Our protagonist, Cley, is an expert physiognomist, and also a cruel, heartless, arrogant, inconsiderate man. In the outlying mining town of Anamasobia, a mystical "fruit of paradise" has been discovered, clutched in the hands of a remarkably preserved corpse found peacefully reclining in the mine. The fruit is rumored to grant miracles, and Drachton Below, believing it will grant him immortality, wants it badly. Unfortunately, it has gone missing, and Below dispatches Cley with the mission to profile the entire town of Anamasobia and discover whose physiognomy makes them the most likely thief. The events that transpire in that town change Cley's life forever, and force him to re-examine everything he once knew about the physiognomy, about his master Below, and the very society he has served.

I loved this book for a variety of reasons, chief among them the originality of the setting. Granted, the setting isn't really that well developed, and it seems like we are only shown the parts of it that are most relevent to the story. What we do see is surreal and awe-inspiring. We have the Well Built City, a clockwork dystopia constructed of coral and glass, with every building a mnemonic device for Drachton Below's twisted genius. We have the mining town of Anamasobia, where mining the mineral fuel "blue spire" slowly transforms men into immobile blue statues. We have the endless Beyond, "the imagination of the world," a harsh wilderness teeming with strange wildlife and tantalizing visions of the future, the past, and the elusive land of Paradise.

Jeffrey Ford is ostesibly very fond of symbolism, and not only is the book crammed with meaningfull symbols and motifs, symbolism itself is a motif! Physiognomy is a pseudo-science that depends on symbolism, and Drachton Below's genius springs from his ability to hold absurdly complex symbols in his memory, which serve to fuel his imagination. The Beyond is a land where nature itself is a symbol. This is the kind of stuff that would make a literature professor salivate, and its creative fantasy and colorful imagery make it a trillion times more interesting than those musty old Steinbeck novels you were forced to read in high school. I, for one, am much too lazy to examine all of them, but I know a motif when I see one, and it grants a slendid air of hidden depth to whole affair.

Perhaps the biggest flaw of this book, I feel, is the voice in which it is written. It is told from the perspective of Cley, our callous physiognomist, and the prose is sort of clinical, detatched, and indifferent. It's like a Victorian gentlemen making small-talk about the weather, or something. It does add sort of an ethereal, dream-like feel to the prose, which I suppose fits the theme, but it's a bit cold, and prevents you from really getting emotionally invested in the story. ( )

Sometimes a book will spoil you and sometimes a book will amaze you and sometimes it will blow your mind.

This one comes close to doing all three.

Think phrenology taken to a full sociological extreme, with abuses of power included, throw it into a land that could be hell, but all it’s inhabitants are so used to the strangeness that they take everything, including architectural explosions created by headaches, in stride.

And the follow a wildly abusive character filled with outright funny insults, watch him self-destruct, bring innocents along with him, and then have him go through a transformative arc.

A lot of these aspects may seem usual in the fantasy realm, but what I’m neglecting in my description is the sheer imaginative force of this world, the people within it, and the amazing richness of every line.

I can easily recommend this for anyone tired of the same old fantasy. This is really rich fare. ( )

The Physiognomy is the first book of The Well-Built City trilogy, and all three books supposedly make up one big novel. I won’t be reading book two and three, as The Physiognomy failed to connect with me. I am not saying this is a bad book, I am just saying it wasn’t my cup of tea. As it won the World Fantasy Award – not an award with a bad track record, with winners as diverse as Clarke, Le Guin, Miéville, Kay, Priest, Powers, Wolfe – I’m sure there’s an audience for it.

I’ve devised a quick litmus test to see if you’re part of that audience. Consider these two sentences:

I stared at some of the titles on the shelves and before long found four of my twenty or more published treatises. I was sure he hadn’t read Miscreants and Morons – A Philosophical Solution, since he had not yet committed suicide.

(...)

Please continue the test on Weighing A Pig... ( )

Since this book won the World Fantasy Award, I'd wanted to read it for a while. Thanks to NetGalley and Open Road Media for giving me the opportunity.

I see why the book won the award - it gives us a strikingly original and interesting scenario: a fantasy world ruled by an oppressive dictator, who utilizes civil servants to maintain his cruel regime. One of the tools in his arsenal is the faux-'science' of physiognomy, where an 'expert' uses phrenology and other physical measurements to determine if one is (or will be) guilty of a crime.

Physiognomist Cley is one of these experts. He's also a thoroughly unsympathetic person - one of the most repulsive protagonists you're likely to encounter in fiction. He's willing to lie and be used, has no moral or ethical compass at all, and allows his drug addiction to take him to escalating acts of cruelty and depravity.

Some reviewers have described the story as a tale of Cley's redemption - but I don't see it that way at all. Yes, over the course of the story Clay's position changes - but only because his position literally changes in relation of the locus of power. He's motivated by resentment, not ethics.

Overall, I can't say the book was a 'pleasant' experience, although it was 'well-built.' In feel, it reminded me a bit of Mervyn Peake's 'Titus Groan.' It had that same sort of oppressive, hallucinatory atmosphere.

I'm glad I read the book, but can't say I'm eager to go and seek out the sequels. ( )

http://speculiction.blogspot.com/2015/05/review-of-physiognomy-by-jeffrey-ford.h... ( )