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A review by thlwright
Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff VanderMeer
3.0
Jeff Vandermeer’s Southern Reach trilogy blended sci-fi, ecology and suspense to often thrilling effect. His latest novel takes these same three events, but almost completely ditches the sci-fi aspects. Hummingbird Salamander takes place in a 5-minutes into the future USA in which there are some pointers to a looming national crisis (unspecified pandemics, increased surveillance) but the technology is only the next upgrade of what’s around us today. The protagonist, Jane Smith, is an anonymous cybersecurity consultant who happens on a message delivered in a coffee shop, and linked to a stuffed hummingbird. Cue a mounting obsession with decoding the message, which she discovers from a dead heiress linked to animal trafficking and ecoterrorism. Jane follows the breadcrumbs, an odyssey which takes her far from the drone-patrolled suburbs and into an ultimate confrontation with the natural world as humans have shaped and exploited it.
Like The Maltese Falcon the stuffed hummingbird and partner the also-extinct salamander, are mcguffins to set the characters in motion, but also symbols of their ultimate destination: an earth which appears to have run out of time. His short chapters keep the action moving along briskly, Jane is an engaging narrator, and this is an absorbing novel that perhaps only lacks the tang of weirdness that powered Annihilation so brilliantly.
Like The Maltese Falcon the stuffed hummingbird and partner the also-extinct salamander, are mcguffins to set the characters in motion, but also symbols of their ultimate destination: an earth which appears to have run out of time. His short chapters keep the action moving along briskly, Jane is an engaging narrator, and this is an absorbing novel that perhaps only lacks the tang of weirdness that powered Annihilation so brilliantly.