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peached_t 's review for:
Absolution
by Jeff VanderMeer
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Reading Absolution is like living in Area X: confusing, disgusting, beautiful, strange. It’s designed to obscure, to hypnotize. And at times that makes it a difficult read, I think somewhat purposefully. Characters have similar names, nicknames, fake names, names that are a random string of words; Paragraphs and descriptions drift and disorient you; Plot points and mysteries dangle and dissolve. It’s, fittingly, a mutant of a book.
At its worst, it’s an overindulgence in the weird— a pothole I think many of VandeerMeer’s books stick into. Where you find yourself finishing a chapter and going: “what was that? Why was that? Does this even mean anything?”
At its best, Absolution is poetry. It’s an extension of one of the best first contact stories there is. The only acceptable description of something truly alien coming to dinner. The entropy of disaster. The disaster of entropy and the meaninglessness of it all.
In the end, I find it an average of these two moments. A fitting prequel and final episode to the Southern Reach books. Some things are just too complex, too strange, to fully understand. Accepting that and enjoying that and living in that are ok. And that’s where I find myself at the end and the beginning of VanderMeer’s Southern Reach books: looking at the bloated, beautiful, psychedelic carcass of it all and wondering.