/lit/ - Literature

What do you guys think of Jeff Vandermeer? I don't see him mentioned at all in these threads.

I read City of Saints and Madmen and loved the stories, thought the setting was fantastic. Then I read his first ever book, Veniss Underground, and found it overall clunky and charmless, with some neat imagery scattered throughout.

I'm reading Shriek: An Afterward right now and so far it's pretty good. Vandermeer has a penchant for straining too hard to achieve 'literary' prose, but Ambergris is such a cool setting that I forgive him that.