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3.73 AVERAGE
3.73 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This series is brillant, very easy to come back to and understand something new each time! Was a lot easier to read this time through - was expecting all the "fucks" of Lowry's first chapters so it didn't throw me off as much, but jeez you have to think about reading
challenging
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
First part (1/6th?) was 'hard' to get through. Just confusing because the whole series is. But then you understand stuff. Dead Town expedition, the rabbits, Old Jim, Lowry. I loved all 4 books for the cosmic horror and environment. Terroir. The parking lot puddles. If you've come this far and enjoyed the first 3 books, this is good stuff. If you dnf'ed book 2 or 3 then this 4th isnt gonna provide you any absolution. 4/5 for me. This whole 4-part trilogy should reward me a full re-reading. Someday :)
But actually, I dont understand jackshit at all and I'm gonna love reading reddit theories and watching theorie-videos. All the theories - that's book 5. The weirdness, what is real? Wtf is going on? The cosmic horror. I love it!
But actually, I dont understand jackshit at all and I'm gonna love reading reddit theories and watching theorie-videos. All the theories - that's book 5. The weirdness, what is real? Wtf is going on? The cosmic horror. I love it!
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Perhaps one of my more unusual takes about this series is how high I rate this prequel-sequel-interquel and how much I now think of it as an essential element of the Southern Reach trilogy. The series, after all, is named after the Southern Reach, a clandestine yet hollow and underfunded government agency, not after Area X, the focus of the series where things of consequence occur. Why the Southern Reach, when they're so powerless, so far down into spiraling rabbit holes- rabbits being a particularly relevant mammal- that have no hope of stopping or understanding the agentic force behind what's really happened.
Well, Absolution answers that question, at least in certain ways.Area X invades human perception, plays upon it, inverts people into something else, because it is a force that has lain dormant, ambiently affecting the world, until the interference of the S&SB- themselves forged and sharpened into an unwitting instrument by Central- made it acute. It has spread out feelers into the world, both spatially and backwards and forwards in time, precisely in response to the points where Central has interfered. Central's aim, the methods it works to refine, is to turn everything both human and natural into an instrument to be utilized, and what I'll call the Beacon, the alien intelligence that sees and exists inside everything but is particularly given forms to act through in the beach sand/the lighthouse beacon/the silvery flower/Saul the lighthouse keeper/the lighthouse itself/the watchful thistles that grow everywhere from the sand, acts by defeating this utility, by making things act solely in accordance with their true nature and immune to being instrumentalized or even forced into limitations of form. I must admit the frequent visions of some future post-catastrophic army of scientists and mystics marching either for or against the Beacon elude me in precise understanding, but I believe this is a vision of the vastly stretching space trapped within the border, the containment mechanism imposed on Area X by Saul's desire to protect Gloria. This mechanism also stretches forward to some future time, but it is where this conflict between Acceptance and Authority is waged. The agents of deeper understanding and of the imposition of purpose battle against each other and this struggle is kept away from the Beacon itself, or at least put off until this distant, desolate, hopefully never-to-pass future where both nature and human industry have been reduced to nothing.
Absolution blends the horror-and-beauty of the unknowable and the paranoid alienation of government conspiracy perhaps best of any of the series, aided in doing so by two main characters who I liked much more than I thought I would, Old Jim and Lowry.Lowry especially I was primed to find an imposition, but he proved very interesting in his psychedelic experience inside Area X, the counterexample he provides to the Biologist, who thrived by being perfectly in tune with the environment, in how he is instead able to survive by denying his use to anybody, by wholly embodying his own purposes and desires. He isn't able to close the loop like the Biologist, he survives but the Lowry we saw in the trilogy is one who spends the rest of his life trapped inside that trauma, unable to disentangle himself from survival-through-id. Old Jim isn't nearly as hard to parse as a narrator, but his own attempts to understand his role in Central's plan and in doing so being forced to move through, see how deeply he has been made into an instrument- being undone as he finally comes back to the person he really is- I found much more affecting than I expected from a character who struck me as near-irrelevant in the original trilogy.
Well, Absolution answers that question, at least in certain ways.
Absolution blends the horror-and-beauty of the unknowable and the paranoid alienation of government conspiracy perhaps best of any of the series, aided in doing so by two main characters who I liked much more than I thought I would, Old Jim and Lowry.
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
I got to the third section of the book and ended up not wanting to finish because of the excessive use of the word f*ck. Normally I’m ok with the occasional throughout a few pages, but this was what felt like every other word.
adventurous
challenging
dark
funny
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A fantastic prequel/sequel to the Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff Vandermeer. I'd honestly argue this series does Lovecraftian horror better than Lovecraft, doing an excellent job of always creating more questions for every answer given, and instilling a sense of constant mounting dread at all of the strange, arcane knowledge that always seems just barely out of reach. Some great chilling moments in this one, mixed in with some genuinely funny ones. I'd put this at my second favorite in the series behind the first.