Thank you Net-Galley and FSG x MCD for a chance to read "Absolution" by Jeff VanderMeer in exchange for an honest review. Jeff has managed to masterfully craft a work that was well worth the wait. It had the right amount of comedic relief alongside horrific scenes of terror. This book was everything I expected it to be and more. Filled with body horror, psychological distress, more answers that arise with (of course) more questions. It's ecological, violent, bizarre, and brilliant. I recommend reading "Annihilation" by Jeff VanderMeer first. It would give you the appreciation and eye to spot a few easter eggs that you wouldn't have been able to pick up if you started with "Absolution." King of F-Bombs and making me cringe in fear. I tell everyone to read his works! The 'Area X' series remains among my favorites and most recommended to this day.

Such a delightfully atmospheric, eerie, weird series. This one took me right back to the Southern Reach again and it felt like going home.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an advance copy of this title in exchange for honest feedback

Was excited to step back into the mysteries of Area X, but after the Old Jim part of the book, I was put off a bit. The swearing was too much, and writing became too criptic for me to make much sense of. Maybe I'd do better with a reread of it and the original trilogy, but overall kind of disappointed.

In Vandermeer's surprise 4th volume of the acclaimed Southern Reach series, the author deepens the personal, political and ecological mysteries found in Area X. Don't expect answers, but do expect some of Vandermeer's best, most expressive writing.

After reading the Southern Reach Trilogy, I was so excited to read the surprise fourth installment in this series. As someone who was very interested in the mythos surrounding Area X from the original three books, this book was a hit for me. It might be confusing at times but it was one hell of a ride.

I'm not even sure where to begin with this one- it's weird as shit but I feel like with the Southern Reach series that would be like saying "fire is hot", because of course it is, that's pretty obvious. Of all the three narratives we're given I think my favorite would be the first one, I loved seeing how strange and abstract the Forgotten Coast has always been, how it resisted analysis before the border even came down and how Central has been poking around there long before as well. The second narrative was also really interesting and definitely the most emotionally compelling, the relationship between Old Jim and "Cass" was very well written and for a character who we spend so little time to compared to the everyone else in the series, Old Jim is incredibly fleshed out and is easily my favorite right after Ghost Bird. The third narrative unfortunately, had me putting the book down every other paragraph during the first section. I was excited to see what happened during the first expedition and learn more about Lowry's past but "fuck" was used every other word and it got to the point where I had to reread a sentence several times in order to actually understand what he was thinking and it honestly felt like trying to read while using alphabet soup as a medium. I understand why this was done given Lowry's state of mind during part 1 of narrative 3 but wow I really had to force myself through it. It gets much better once Lowry and the rest of expedition 1 are actually in Area X but even then I only really found myself enjoying this section during the last half of it. This was a really interesting addition to the world of the Southern Reach series and I feel like I have to reread the original trilogy followed by this book before I can actually decide how I feel because there was some heavy lore dropped here and I think I actually caught about 50% of it.
Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an arc in exchange for an honest review.

!: Below review is of a regular reader, so mostly contains my subjective experience and feelings, no litcrit stuff, and mostly praises author :)
As all Southern Reach / Area X book - this one is brilliant also. Descriptions of secret agencies, field ops, all those interconnection, paranoid thoughts - all this is created with such a pleasant narrative, very distinctive and feels balanced. I still cannot find a substitute for Jeff's books in this regard, nor I find any substitute for spooky & weirds of Area X - feels like dials for those are set in a very specific secret ways, and author got it soooo right (feels right for me).
Narrated versions of those, are also great, was keeping on Repeat for last ≈5 years the previous 3 books, now I have some fresh addition to the story, and repeat cycle will take longer :) sooo happy!
Again, as I feel it - Jeffs series on Area X has very specific, i'd say unique configuration/settings of narrative, world description, spooky/weird stuff and action that feels so good, its solid and well balanced, and you crave more, once you try it and find out that this stuff is for you. So beware - it would be impossible to find substitute or any analog and one may end on repeat until Jeff releases more, hope he will...

Ten years ago, Jeff VanderMeer released a trilogy known collectively as the Southern Reach or Area X novels. A mysterious, mostly impermeable boundary isolated a stretch of the Gulf Coast, killing almost everyone within its confines. The region was called Area X and the Southern Reach was a government agency created to keep the nature of the region hidden from the world at large and to determine its nature. Those books detailed various exploratory missions into this topsy-turvy region without getting to the bottom of what has happening there.

Now, VanderMeer returns with a longer book that is both prequel and something of a sequel. It has three distinctly different sections, so it is in some ways a trilogy. Most of the book is told from the point of view of a former spy who goes by Old Jim, although it's not clear even to him what his real name is. Twenty years before the barrier appeared, he was asked to try to get a handle on an existential threat in the region, although his bosses at Control are stingy with information. He practically has to beg for things he believes will help him understand the situation. His handlers suspect foreign interference, but how foreign? Soviets? Aliens? Something from another dimension?

Old Jim works undercover as the owner of the only bar in a mostly abandoned town in the vicinity of a team of field biologists who tempt fate by meddling with the local ecosystem. Subsequently, these scientists make some fascinating and disturbing discoveries that indicate that the region that will become Area X was already shifting into a strange realm. They're haunted by strange music and discover swarms of carnivorous rabbits equipped with cameras. Perhaps the place has always been altering, under the influence of some chaotic force, and the appearance of the border was only its announcement to the world.

In the second section, Old Jim is assigned an assistant "named" Cass who, at times, pretends to be his estranged daughter, even though no one is fooled by the ruse. Given Area X's subsequently discovered proclivity for creating doppelgangers, the government's actions here are ironic. The biologist's experiments have caused—or, perhaps, accelerated—changes in the local ecosystem, and pseudo-Cass is there to help Old Jim, whether he likes it or not. This section leads to an explosive finale that puts an end to Old Jim's investigation.

The book's focus abruptly shifts in the final section to a foul-mouthed and drug-addled man named Lowry (previously seen in Acceptance) who is part of the first expedition into Area X four months after the border materialized, an expedition that readers of Annihilation will recall as a full-blown disaster, with only one person returning to the other side in possession of some deeply disturbing video footage. Lowry's prime directive is to find the hypothetical "off switch" that will disable the barricade. Upon his return, Lowry was seen to be a terribly unlikable character. Here, we learn that he was equally loathsome before embarking on the expedition. His stream-of-consciousness pervasive use of the word "fuck" in all of its various forms can be off-putting, making the final part of the novel difficult to process.

Of course there are no answers, but Absolution provides a new way of looking at Area X. It's not a necessary part of the Southern Reach series, but it is a welcome addition to the mythos for people who appreciated the mystifying and disturbing nature of the previous three books.

Worth the very long wait, and managed to fascinate me as originally as the first 3 - did not go into it with any great excitement as I was not a huge fan of the series to begin with, but loved the endeavour and breadth of his vision of this world.

A super polarizing book that I think will get better upon further rereads and inspections.

Absolution is a novel in the Southern Reach series that's structured in three parts:

1. A man named Old Jim reads through notes and documents about an expedition in proto-Area X that goes horribly, surreally awry.
2. Old Jim grapples with the mysteries of Area X, a mysterious Rogue, mind control, a false daughter, and the mysterious director of the Southern Reach with his own plans.
3. About a year after the barrier comes down between Area X and the outside world, a man named Jim Lowry joins the first official expedition to find Old Jim and study Area X. Chaos ensues.


Ultimately, it's human minds grappling with an unknowable, surreal, all-consuming cosmic horror, and the prose reflects that—at turns beautiful, surreal, weird, obscure, and labyrinthine. In particular, I found the last third, from Lowry's perspective, to be the most off-putting and confusing.

Fair disclosure: It's been several years since I last read the initial Southern Reach trilogy in its entirety, and I scanned some plot summaries before picking up Absolution, the latest prequel/sequel/time warp entry in the series. I think reading this novel with those three books and their details fresher in mind will yield some more rewarding connections and insights, as Vandermeer likes to tease connections without explicitly making them.

I think the best description I've read of this book is from Reddit:

If you’ve ever watched Twin Peaks, Absolution feels like the Showtime series that David Lynch did like twenty years later as a follow up to Twin Peaks. The whole time you’re waiting for Kyle MacLachlan to be Agent Cooper again, and he gets there in the end, but first you have to move through eighteen episodes of surreal, otherworldly confusion, and you’re left feeling satisfied but adrift. Whereas Annihilation is the perfect, clean-cut original eight episodes of well-controlled strangeness.


YMMV.

A surprise fourth book in the Southern Reach trilogy?? Yes please. If you are already a VanderMeer fan, then there's no reason to convince you to read this book. If you are new to this, PLEASE read the first three first. We're thrown back into Area X told in three distinct sections, wrapping up some unresolved mysteries and back story of Area X. SO GOOD

3.5

I received this eARC from NetGalley and the publisher in return for an honest review.

I’m not sure what to say about this. More questions are raised than answered? There are familiar names and places. The first two parts with Old Jim, “Dead Town” and “The False Daughter” were engrossing and challenging. The scenes with Old Jim and Cass were particularly well done.

The last part, “The First and The Last”, was not enjoyable and I skimmed it for worthwhile information. Each of the original trilogy has its own tone, and those tones are reflected in Absolution, but “The First and the Last” was too much of Lowry swearing every word, as reflected in these chapter titles: “Fuck That Chicken”, “Fuclking Pickle Jars”, “Kcuffuck”, “Not Enough Fucked-Up Stuff in Barrels”, “The Men in a Fucking Boat Thing”. Upside, it was easy to identify the blocks of text to skip.

All in all, it was clear as mud and by far the longest of the Southern Reach books. It took me more than two months to get through it. I feel like I should reread the trilogy so I can fit more of the pieces together. The conclusion I am left with is that we are small things in the universe.

What a wild read and reading experience. It was weird, it was magical, and it was captivating. Absolution is formatted as three novella-like stories that act like a prequel to the Southern Reach trilogy. Answering old questions and bringing up new ones as well, I had both a fun and challenging time with it. More than just a typical confusion from VanderMeer books, I had difficulty following what was happening. I wonder if it would have helped to reread the trilogy beforehand? Despite that I still liked it and loved returning to Area X.

Thank you to netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the advance review copy.

I’m a huge fan of the Southern Reach series so I was thrilled to hear that VanderMeer was releasing another volume in the series. While Annihilation will probably always be my favorite of the novels, Absolution was the (maybe?) finale that I believe this series truly deserved. Split into three novella-type sections, Absolution does what, in my opinion Authority and Acceptance didn’t quite capture: maintaining the unsettling weirdness, the feeling of knowing just enough to be invested but also never knowing enough to remove the mystery of Area X. The writing styles vary between novellas in such a brilliant way, making it clear to the reader you’re in for a different experience each time. Ultimately this novel did what I think it was meant to do: if it’s truly the final installment, I’ll feel satisfied with this ending, knowing I’ll never get the answers to all my questions and that’s ok. On the other hand, if there’s more stories to tell from Area X, I’ll be first in line to read them!

This prequel is a must read for fans of the Southern Reach trilogy. It establishes the origin of Area X and fills in the stories of some of the people referenced in the writings found there in the trilogy. This book (or the first 2/3 of it) follows Old Jim as he tries to piece together what happened to an earlier expedition of biologists, while the last third follows a different character in a team of scientists who follow up a year after the first part of the book. The story incorporates (probably) extraterrestrials, science, magic, psychics, mind control and spies, but to explain how would cause spoilers. I don't think this stands alone without being familiar with the Southern Reach trilogy, though. But having read SR, I enjoyed this.

Area X is a unique and captivating setting, and Absolution is a welcome return to that strange world that Jeff VanderMeer established to great effect with his Southern Reach series. In Absolution, shadowy government agencies operate in the shadows, bizarre and sinister experiments take place, flora and fauna act in incomprehensible ways, and some Grade A messed up **** occurs that will leave you wondering if you are having some kind of waking nightmare. While the otherworldly events are certainly memorable, what stayed with me the most was VanderMeer's descriptions of the people who have encountered these things or have been at the whims of Central and managed to survive. These people are shattered, distant, and off in ways that crept off the page and lingered with me long after I had finished reading.

Fans of the series will want to pick this entry up, though newcomers can also start here if they want to as this can be read as a standalone entry.

Unfortunately, this was not what I expected, which is my fault, but made the reading experience less than I had hoped.

My expectations were of a sequel to Acceptance, which this was not.
These are three novella-esque stories tied together as a series prequel.

The writing was there, the first 2 stories hooked me, but lost me in the third one. I reread the entire Area X trilogy when I received notification that I had an ARC available of this to read, which I would recommend.

However, since this is a prequel, it could be read before you foray into Area X, though I would not recommend it as a starting point. Annihilation reigns supreme in my eyes, as it probably always will for this series.

Of the 4 books out, this is my least favorite. It's still readable (at least the first 2 stories) and compelling when it needs to be.

In addition, this entry answers some of the oldest questions of Area X, but raises just as many. As is the nature of this series, I doubt that we will ever get a solid answer to every question at this point.

Overall, I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to read an ARC of this, and will inevitably read whatever else gets published in this world, because Annihilation left such a massive impression on me every time I've read it. I would recommend this to lovers of the series, with a caveat to go in with lower expectations.

Absolution had to be one of my most anticipated 2024 releases; having previously read the Southern Reach Trilogy (back when it was released) as well as some other titles from Vandermeer, I was very excited for another instalment and more backstory of Area X.

Absolution is comprised of three parts: the first, ‘Dead Town,’ takes place pre-Area X and follows biologists conducting an experiment in the Forgotten Coast, the second, ‘The False Daughter, is set later – 18 months pre-Area X – and refers back directly to the first, and the third, ‘ takes place ‘one year after the border came down’ and follows the first expedition into Area X.

This is hard to rate because I found the three sections quite uneven, and would give them different star ratings; I’m giving a 4 because I don’t want to down-rate the first two sections based on liking the third section significantly less.

I don’t think this is vital to appreciating the Southern Reach Trilogy, nor do I think it leaves all questions answered (of course it wasn’t going to), but I do think that fans of the trilogy will appreciate this book as a chance to revisit Area X in all its strangeness. I would say I liked the first part best – it’s deeply unsettling – followed by the second, which feels a bit slower paced but Old Jim is a great character and there is a lot of intrigue. The third, wherein we finally get to enter Area X as readers, I actually enjoyed least; there are some great weird scenes but the narration is disjointed and hard to follow (for reasons that are explained in the context of the story) and this, for me, made the expedition’s experiences less impactful.

I would not suggest reading this first; it doesn’t feel straightforwardly like a prequel and for that reason I’d suggest at least reading Annihilation, if not the entire trilogy, before picking up Absolution. You could read this first – particularly the first section which feels relatively self-contained – but I don’t think I’d have gotten as much out of this text had I not read the trilogy first.

Content warnings: violence, gun violence, death, animal death, injury detail, drug ab/use, blood, gore, body horror, cannibalism (graphic)

I've requested this book after reading — and loving — annihilation, the first work in the series. After being accepted for absolution, I started reading the rest of the series, but found the books way less interesting than the others. Although the fourth installment has promising features, I did like returning to the strange place that is Area x, I do find it hard to form a positive option over it, mainly because my view has been soured by the repeated disappointment of the other works.

And worst of all, I had to miss the tower, my beloved,