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license 's review for:
Hummingbird Salamander
by Jeff VanderMeer
I was ready to give up on this in the first half, but I'm glad I stuck through because it got a lot better. I appreciated the emotional themes it explored later. It was still somewhat awkward, like there was some baggage it couldn't shed, but that might have been the point.
Jane's normal life felt cardboard, neither here nor there. I didn't care about her husband, daughter, or coworkers much at all. I was curious what happened to her assistant, but she ended up just being a footnote.
The technological paranoia and corporate conspiracy felt like a William Gibson novel without the whiz-bang interruptions and commands through an earpiece. That didn't work for me at first, as if it wasn't focusing on the most interesting details. It started to work more in the individual interactions with the descriptions of facial expressions, tones of voice, memories.
Overall I grew to appreciate the themes of loneliness, displacement, being adrift and aimless, trying to connect to unreachable people in unreachable times and places. It finally felt like VanderMeer in the last 20% or so. The more prevalent animals, nature, and ruins became, the more cohesive and interesting the story was.
I did like the ambiguous ending, too.
I think I would have rated this a little higher if it had been trimmed down a bit.
Jane's normal life felt cardboard, neither here nor there. I didn't care about her husband, daughter, or coworkers much at all.
Spoiler
I guess she didn't, either.The technological paranoia and corporate conspiracy felt like a William Gibson novel without the whiz-bang interruptions and commands through an earpiece. That didn't work for me at first, as if it wasn't focusing on the most interesting details. It started to work more in the individual interactions with the descriptions of facial expressions, tones of voice, memories.
Overall I grew to appreciate the themes of loneliness, displacement, being adrift and aimless, trying to connect to unreachable people in unreachable times and places. It finally felt like VanderMeer in the last 20% or so. The more prevalent animals, nature, and ruins became, the more cohesive and interesting the story was.
I did like the ambiguous ending, too.
Spoiler
Jane found who and what she was looking for, under her nose all along, and dead, but with seeds for the future sprouted. It's unclear whether Unitopia was more of a suicide cult or a radical environmental recovery measure.I think I would have rated this a little higher if it had been trimmed down a bit.