Reviews - Absolution | The StoryGraph

1.59k reviews for:

Absolution

Jeff VanderMeer

3.73 AVERAGE

yaldiyak's review against another edition

4.0

challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

winterfinch's review against another edition

3.0

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

kannahhilmer's review against another edition

4.0

Wow wow wow wow wow! I love this seires this book was almost as satisfying as the first one. I love all of it but my favorite parts are when they are in area x bc of the crazy shit they see. This is the closest book to how the first one felt in area x. Anything outside is great just less rewarding and more slow and this book definitely has its fair share of it. Still great but there is nothing like reading about impossible things to describe. And the fact that it’s nature horror and stuff we can’t even imagine to comprehend let alone explain is so eerie. Idk how Jeff v puts it to words but the images in my head he puts there are crazy. I now wanna go back through the whole series and see links between all the books i missed. This will forever be one of my top seires.

Whitby Allen has become my favorite character (besides the og biologist) throughout the series so it was so fun too see more of him. He’s just so off putting i love it.

indistinct_static's review against another edition

3.25

dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Annihilation is likely my favorite horror novel. VanderMeer so thoroughly captured the foreboding dread of an unknowable force assimilating reality around you that it warped my own fiction writing aspirations. Since then I've gone down the rabbit hole of similar horror media and feel it's where I feel the most at home. And so it pains me to regard this entry as so middling in comparison to that ecosystem.

Absolution is broken into three stories; the recounting by Old Jim of a team conducting experiments in the location that would become Area X, the tale of Old Jim returning to that area, and finally we get Lowery and the first expedition into Area X proper. The first story is properly weird and established what I liked about the first entry. A clinical analysis of increasingly more bizarre events that whips into an incomprehensible whirlwind. Old Jim's story, while not as enjoyable in my estimation, read like a Delta Green tabletop scenario as central characters felt like people roleplaying a game. All of this was enjoyable. Still worthy of 4 stars, even. Ok, maybe a 3.75, so we're rounding up.

Lowery's story, however, began so expletive laden that it grated in my ears like chewing tinfoil. The character could certainly work with such language if it was toned down, but the constant stream of (spoilers for language) fuckity fuck fuck fuuuuck
and the like quickly gave me a headache. Were it not for the peeks at the eldritch dread that surfaced every now and then, the bits that VanderMeer is actually good at, this section could have escaped falling to a 2.

This does not affect my affection for Annihilation, nor my embarrassment for not having read the rest of the series, but it does leave me somewhat crestfallen.

hutlerh's review against another edition

2.0

slow-paced

kendallm21's review against another edition

3.5

adventurous dark funny mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

I totally thought all my questions would be answered in this book until the shit show that was the end. I really liked learning more about before area X and potentially what caused it. I also liked learning about characters present in the previous books that we didn’t know were connected until this one. Lowry’s portion was like a fever dream but it was so funny.

The amount of fucks that man spewed omg I didn’t know when it would end. I enjoyed his part even tho a lot of it was nonsense; I wish more was revealed but I am somewhat satisfied with how entertaining and messed up it was.

Probably would have rated this higher if it ended on a note that makes sense.