A review by outcolder
Viriconium by M. John Harrison

5.0

The weirder it got, the more I liked it. [b:The Pastel City|304253|The Pastel City|M. John Harrison|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1294861479s/304253.jpg|295293], from 1971, is lovely, a bit like a missing link from [a:Michael Moorcock|16939|Michael Moorcock|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1424079041p2/16939.jpg] to [a:China Miéville|33918|China Miéville|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1243988363p2/33918.jpg]. But each of the novels after that is less high fantasy and more just weird, until [b:In Viriconium|38323110|In Viriconium (Unicorn)|M. John Harrison|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1517512888s/38323110.jpg|1558008] which feels more like a lost modern novel, more Kafka or [a:Flann O'Brien|15248|Flann O'Brien|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1356027168p2/15248.jpg] than what usually gets called 'fantasy,' characters behaving more like Rimbaud than any of the thousand faces the hero supposedly normally wears. ... nine months after finishing this, I started on Camus' The Plague which also has an artist running around. I suspect that was also an influence in In Viriconium.