laurelbard 's review for:

Absolution by Jeff VanderMeer

2.0

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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I enjoyed some select parts of Absolution, but as a fan of the original trilogy, I have to ask: what does it add? I've been tossing that question around in my head for days now and I haven't come up with a single thing, so I have to conclude that this book is a failure as an addition to the Southern Reach series. Sure, we learn more about Henry and the S&SB(sort of); we learn more about the Forgotten Coast pre-Area-X (though much of the information is such that we could already intuit it); we learn more about Lowry (I guess); but crucially, we do not need to. No further questions are answered, and the elaborations are at times a huge tonal shift away from the original trilogy and feel like someone is hitting you over the head with a mallet telling you how spooky and weird and ominous it all is such that it becomes outright absurd (what's with

the guy stuffing people in barrels that dissolve them? The psychic's submarine missions? The...generator from Central that gaslights people?

).

I also think it was a huge miss that

The Rogue is revealed to be Whitby and not Control

. What was the point of Control stepping through the golden door then? That single detail could have made it so the book at least cohered with respect to the original. But no. 

Obviously the scenes with Old Jim and Cass are standouts, and I enjoyed parts of Lowry's trip (haha), but the strange wonderful painful desolation of the first three books is nowhere to be found. 2/5.