Two words: holy shit. One other word: amazing.
It’s brilliant- an imagining of a future Ambergris, with the regrets of war weighing heavily, and the whole position of grey cap/human switched. To call it a surreal noir would be undermining the amazing level of detail and world building that went into this story, this isn’t the mere meeting of an umbrella and a sewing machine on a dissecting table, this is the focused, detailed madness of Bosch implanted into a nightmarish version of Blade Runner (or a less kinky Naked Lunch).
In short, I have never read anything like it. It references itself, it references past works of Ambergris, it references all the genre sign posts for so many genres (fantasy, science fiction, surrealism, magical realism, noir) that it transcends and becomes all genre at once. It is the worm oroborus, devouring the tale.
I feel like you’re trying to make me wanna read this with the blade runner/naked lunch compare
Despite the bird name for a title and my normal terror of all things feathered i just might try and
Check out the Vandermeer fella.
Kaw kaw