Rating: 
Summary: "Literary" fantasy is rarely this much fun.
Review: A rich and haunting tale--by turns horrifying,heartbreaking and hilarious, but always surprising. Ford is an eloquent tour guide of inner worlds; his vivid characters, thrilling journeys and impossible landscapes engage us with the startling elusive logic of dreams. A worthy successor to the excellent THE PHYSIOGNOMY, MEMORANDA stands on its own as a beautiful meditation on memory--that most familiar and mysterious inner world. Bravo!
Rating:
Summary: A Journey in the Mind's Eye
Review: A very dark adventure within the fantastical landscape of a madman's memories. Beautifully detailed, and insightfully written.
Rating: 
Summary: Overcooked Navel-gazing
Review: I am rarely effusive, but it is difficult to praise this book too much. Everything about the writing, from its style to its visual imagery, is superb. Together with its predecessor it represents a remarkable tour de force and it leaves the reader wishing for more. This is the sort of book you pick up and four hours later you look up at the clock and realize that by golly you're going to go ahead and finish it in this one sitting.
Rating:
Summary: A Must-Have
Review: I am rarely effusive, but it is difficult to praise this book too much. Everything about the writing, from its style to its visual imagery, is superb. Together with its predecessor it represents a remarkable tour de force and it leaves the reader wishing for more. This is the sort of book you pick up and four hours later you look up at the clock and realize that by golly you're going to go ahead and finish it in this one sitting.
Rating:
Summary: Overcooked Navel-gazing
Review: I continue to be amazed at the number of people suckered by Jeffrey Thomas' Cley series. In the first book, an excellent concept was destroyed by a convenient plot in the last half of the book and Ford's deus ex machina efforts to reform Cley, a clear monster if I ever saw one. In the Memoranda, Ford creates a story where none exists--we are dreaming inside the head of Cley's former master and meeting folks who don't exist. The detail in the book is abysmal, the style horrible. My favorite authors are Wolfe, Nabokov, Kafka, and Angela Carter, among others. This book is a pale, pale shadow of those authors and should be avoided.
Rating: 
Summary: A fascinating continuation of "The Physiognomy"
Review: I found Ford's "The Physiognomy" to be dark, but utterly fascinating. This sequel continues the very strange tale of the main character Cley as he tries to make amends for his grotesque previous life and tries to understand life itself.He has established himself in the remote settlement of Wenau as a healer, and feels that he is finally on a good path when his evil master Drachton Below attempts to destroy Cley and the town by infecting it with a deadly sleeping sickness. Trying to return to Below to extract the cure from him, Cley learns that Below is himself infected with the same sickness and is slowly dying. The only way left to find the cure is to make a perilous journey directly into the mind of Below where he will hopefully discover the answer before Below dies taking Cley with him. As with "The Physiognomy", the writing is gripping and extraordinary. The concepts are totally new to me and add fascinating possibilities to the ongoing question of how reality may be truly perceived. Fascinating characters clearly wrought, and an astounding plot expertly presented in stunning language leave me, as before, with an intense desire for MORE! If you enjoyed "The Physigiognomy", this sequel is a must. I strongly recommend reading them in order as "Memoranda" relies heavily on the history of the previous tale. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: A fascinating continuation of "The Physiognomy"
Review: I found Ford's "The Physiognomy" to be dark, but utterly fascinating. This sequel continues the very strange tale of the main character Cley as he tries to make amends for his grotesque previous life and tries to understand life itself. He has established himself in the remote settlement of Wenau as a healer, and feels that he is finally on a good path when his evil master Drachton Below attempts to destroy Cley and the town by infecting it with a deadly sleeping sickness. Trying to return to Below to extract the cure from him, Cley learns that Below is himself infected with the same sickness and is slowly dying. The only way left to find the cure is to make a perilous journey directly into the mind of Below where he will hopefully discover the answer before Below dies taking Cley with him. As with "The Physiognomy", the writing is gripping and extraordinary. The concepts are totally new to me and add fascinating possibilities to the ongoing question of how reality may be truly perceived. Fascinating characters clearly wrought, and an astounding plot expertly presented in stunning language leave me, as before, with an intense desire for MORE! If you enjoyed "The Physigiognomy", this sequel is a must. I strongly recommend reading them in order as "Memoranda" relies heavily on the history of the previous tale. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: A fascinating continuation of "The Physiognomy"
Review: I found Ford's "The Physiognomy" to be dark, but utterly fascinating. This sequel continues the very strange tale of the main character Cley as he tries to make amends for his grotesque previous life and tries to understand life itself. He has established himself in the remote settlement of Wenau as a healer, and feels that he is finally on a good path when his evil master Drachton Below attempts to destroy Cley and the town by infecting it with a deadly sleeping sickness. Trying to return to Below to extract the cure from him, Cley learns that Below is himself infected with the same sickness and is slowly dying. The only way left to find the cure is to make a perilous journey directly into the mind of Below where he will hopefully discover the answer before Below dies taking Cley with him. As with "The Physiognomy", the writing is gripping and extraordinary. The concepts are totally new to me and add fascinating possibilities to the ongoing question of how reality may be truly perceived. Fascinating characters clearly wrought, and an astounding plot expertly presented in stunning language leave me, as before, with an intense desire for MORE! If you enjoyed "The Physigiognomy", this sequel is a must. I strongly recommend reading them in order as "Memoranda" relies heavily on the history of the previous tale. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Psuedo-science fiction
Review: Jeffrey Ford is a great new writer. He is writting a trilogy unlike anything in science fiction or fantasy. It's Kafkaesque, Dickian, and (Gene) Wolfean. Read it.
Rating:
Summary: Magical SurRealism
Review: Jeffrey Ford is one of the few writers in fantasy-scifi who writes about ideas instead of events. If you like the pity and catharsis of authors like Hawthorne and Melville, the decadent symbolism of Poe, or the logical precision and impassive sadness of Kafka, then I highly recommend Ford as he is their contemporary successor. Those who criticize the plot and characterizations of The Physiognomy and Memoranda do so from misapprehensions regarding the appropriate style and substance of the allegorical genre of fiction which is not to be evaluated by the same criteria as the psychological realist school. Not because it is inferior, but because it is alien and has different goals.
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