Reviews - Absolution | The StoryGraph

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Jeff here could write 10 books about AreaX/Southern reach – and I would read them all!

He‘s my entry to weird fiction, just as G.G.Marquez was my entry to magical realism.

This book is divided into three parts, and oh how easy it would be to release 3 different books, make the font a little bigger, margins a little wider, scale the illustrations. It would be so easy to make more money from the same art. In today's publishing environment, I think Jeff Vandermeer had to stand his ground a lot to release one book, and I respect that!
I’m so excited to read his other books. A new author in my all-time favorites shelf!

rhelfant's review against another edition

Last section is insufferable

xanadu_'s review against another edition

3.75

adventurous challenging dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

metacom's review against another edition

3.0

3.5 stars - Just my immediate thoughts not really a review. While I did enjoy that this book exists I don't think it overall made me enjoy the southern reach series more or less. When reading the original trilogy I remember struggling to continue, and the same happened here. I think the writing style/prose feels stunted and disappoints when it should succeed. On the same hand though the writing fits into the story thematically, a frantic forgetting of truths and misremembering of lies leads to the scattered thoughts of our individual characters. The story can be hard to follow for this reason.

For a series which deals in the macabre of humans and climate change, I find the lack of understanding from characters in the universe difficult to wrap my head around, while in real life climate change is solely human caused, where you can draw a line from the start to present on the impacts of individual actions on the planet. In the series there is no definite explanation of what is occurring (which is fine), humans not having a clue about their inevitable destruction of the world around them hits home pretty well but going further i think it loosens my interpretation of the story. For it to be a discussion of climate change I think that there should be a more overt demonstration of how humans have caused the southern reach to grow over years.

I also drew a lot of connections between "The False Daughter", my favorite story of the three, and the video game Control, they both have stories depicting the no stop flow of this bureaucratic nightmare, where characters don't feel as they have agency in their actions but the story keeps unfolding around them specifically.

I'm not really sure though, please don't judge my review too harshly it's very stream of consciousness sitting here right after finishing the book, hell I didn't even make the connection that the character "Central" was the CIA until going through this book so take my opinions with a grain of salt.

skittleforge's review against another edition

3.0

dark tense slow-paced

vexatiousbird's review against another edition

3.5

challenging dark mysterious reflective slow-paced

Hard to rate. The writing is beautiful, for 2/3 of the book, if you like prose poetry and can tolerate sentences that do not technically make sense. Complete fever dream, of course. The last third was heavy with swearing, gave me a little Ulysses and a little Beat movement, sometimes entertaining and sometimes annoying and over the top.

It took me twice as long to finish this book as I would have expected for its length. Not easy, often confusing, but I think it’s wonderfully written and thought provoking. Lots of sentences that really struck me hard. It’s a journey.