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In Viriconium by M. John Harrison
In a city of shifting masks and fragile dreams, artists, rogues, and would-be heroes search for meaning as reality frays. In Viriconium is a luminous, unsettling fantasy that lingers like a half-remembered vision—beautiful, brittle, and dangerously alive.
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In In Viriconium, did you enjoy ...
... a baroque, dream-logic city whose rules shift from street to street?
City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff VanderMeer
If the way Viriconium seemed to change under Ashlyme’s feet—alleys recontextualizing themselves, rumors taking on the weight of fact as he hunted for Audsley King—was what gripped you, you’ll love the way Ambergris refuses to hold still in City of Saints and Madmen. Like the Low City’s mutable folklore and plague-murmurs, Ambergris keeps revising its own history, turning guidebooks, reports, and tales into a living maze that mirrors the disorientation you felt as Ashlyme’s rescue faltered.
... mysterious, folklore-suffused forces infiltrating a civic order without a codified ‘magic system’?
Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees
If the undefined rules behind the ‘plague’ and the High City’s rituals—things everyone feels but no one can map the mechanics of—drew you in, Lud-in-the-Mist offers that same slippery enchantment. As Mayor Nathaniel Chanticleer struggles to keep smuggled fairy fruit and whispered festivals from unraveling his town, the book sustains the kind of ambient, rule-less power that hovered over Ashlyme’s clandestine plans for Audsley King.
... a tight, street-level tale of artists, fugitives, and shady deals in a decadent city?
The Etched City by K. J. Bishop
If you liked how In Viriconium kept close to Ashlyme—his backroom trades, nighttime crossings, and the personal stakes of smuggling Audsley King—The Etched City narrows the lens in a similar way. In Ashamoil, Gwynn and Raule navigate corrupt patrons, back-alley surgeries, and artists whose work blurs into sorcery, delivering that same intimate pressure of choices made in dim rooms rather than on battlefields.
... a mind unspooling reality through art, memory, and obsession?
The Drowning Girl by Caitlín R. Kiernan
If Ashlyme’s fixation on Audsley King—and the way Viriconium’s whispers pressed on his judgment—pulled you toward the characters’ inner weather, The Drowning Girl dives deep into that territory. Imp, an artist and narrator, wrestles with visions, paintings, and a possibly impossible woman, letting you inhabit a psyche where perception and truth blur much as they did in those feverish nights crossing between the High and Low City.
... an allegorical, diseased city whose afflictions expose the rot beneath everyday life?
Lanark by Alasdair Gray
If the ‘plague of queens’ and the High City’s brittle etiquette worked on you as emblems—symbols of cultural sickness shaping Ashlyme’s doomed errand—Lanark will resonate. In Unthank, people literally sicken with social maladies, and the city’s institutions mirror the soul’s distortions, much like Viriconium’s pomp and decay refracted the fates of Ashlyme and Audsley King.
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