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,

◇Author: Jeff VanderMeer
◇Genre: Science Fiction
◇You might enjoy this if you like
-Ambiguous Sci-fi
-Mysterious settings

I don't know if this book was needed. There were parts I liked, and parts I didn't like. Absolution answered some questions about Area X, but also raised many others. Once again, my favorite parts of this book actually took place in Area X and seeing weird things happen, but the rest of the book felt a little boring. I do hope there will be another installment someday.
⭐️⭐️⭐️

Wow he likes the word fuck! This was my least favorite of the Southern Reach series. I just didn’t care about any of these people and was kind of confused most of the time.

After ten years, Area X is back, and I love it. I only read the first three Area X books last year, so for me, this book coming out this year was not a long book and a great follow up

4 stars

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.

I was ecstatic when I found out this book was being published. <i>Absolution</i> builds on the main <i>Southern Reach</i> trilogy, giving us the perspectives of new characters and telling the story of how Area X came to be. Still, Vandermeer doesn't use this as an opportunity to give the mystery away. If you're looking for answers here, no such luck I'm afraid.

That said, this was just more of that signature <i>Southern Reach</i> thrill that I love about this series. Even when I didn't know what was happening, couldn't connect all the dots, Vandermeer's prose kept me hooked. Once again a great experience and a great way to end it all.

What tripped me up about this book was the last 30%. The narrative voice took a drastic turn, and I very quickly realised I didn't like the direction. I stuck it out for the story, but I really struggled with the POV character's narration here, and I think others will feel the same.

Absolution is three novellas in one: Dead Town, The False Daughter, and The First and the Last. Each novella is its own full-on fever dream, loaded with mystery and death. Dead Town is a failed-experiment horror story. The False Daughter is a neo-noir narrative. The First and the Last is a gonzo-style perspective straight from the mind of a grade-A asshole. In all three, VanderMeer has recaptured and amplified the elements that made the original Southern Reach novels so successful. I'm talking unreliable narrators, hypnosis, cosmic terrors, increasing dread, and inexplicable transformation. I was absolutely spellbound by Absolution to the point where this 439 page book became my obsession; a true page-turner until the very end.

Even though Absolution answered many of my questions after reading the initial three books, I think I finished this installment with even more questions! Honestly, though, that's fine by me - the most enchanting aspect of this series has always been its sheer unknowability. Now I can't wait to re-read each of the four Area X books again.

Absolution by Jeff VanderMeer is a gripping return to the strange, unsettling world of Area X. VanderMeer masterfully wraps up lingering mysteries while opening new doors, keeping you hooked with his haunting prose and deep, layered storytelling. While some parts felt dense, the overall experience was worth the read.

For fans of the Southern Reach trilogy, it’s an essential, thought-provoking finish. Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

4.25 rounded down to 4

Thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an advanced copy of Absolution in exchange for an honest review.

Absolution was a fantastic installment to the Southern Reach series. While Acceptance ended the story of Control and the Biologist/Ghost Bird, Absolution focused more on the original director and a few of the earlier expeditions, prior to the events in the previous three novels. I do have to say, some of the questions I had have been answered - but as usual with this cosmic horror/science fiction series, there's always a plethora of new ones. I felt like this one was a bit darker, and gorier and scarier than the others as well, which was a wonderful surprise to me. I loved the "new" characters that were included in this segment, and with each character was a completely different way of writing, which was also a little jarring, but it really showcased Jeff's talent as a storyteller.

I honestly wanted a bit more about the aftermath of the events that took place in Authority and Acceptance (everything in the "present time" was very much vague and lacking any type of closure), so maybe we can hold out hope for another installment. Either way, I've completely enjoyed this series, and so happy I got sucked into this universe. It was somewhat outside of my usual realm/comfort zone, but surprisingly I loved every moment.

Absolution did not need to be written, but I am sure glad it was.

There is no end to the strangeness in Vandermeer’s Southern Reach wilderness, and I will be here for any future treks back into the sentient swamps of Area X.

4 Stars

ANSWERS!!! We finally get some answers! I loved it!
Any reader of the original Southern Reach Trilogy will understand how ground breaking this is. The original trilogy was intriguing and impressive, but we are left with so many questions at the end. Now in this "prequel" we get to go back to the beginning and see where it all started.

The story is presented in three parts, all with very different formats, tones, and perspectives, that weave together to propel us into the Southern reach we know and love. We get to meet certain characters and visit locations that we're familiar with, and actually watch as they evolve and integrate in to the growing landscape of Area X. I mean, we actually get to learn about Expedition 1! However, the core question still remains... why is this happening???

So why not 5 stars? I thought it was going to be just that until we got to the third section. The story continued to be rich and compelling, but reading from such an annoying perspective brought it down for me. We're in this character's drug addled brain which adds to weirdness of what he's observing, but he literally says F**K every sentence or multiple times a sentence! At first it was interesting, but it got irritating quickly. Be forewarned.

I think fans of Sci-Fi and Weird fiction would enjoy Southern Reach, but as for this being a prequel... I would still recommend reading it after the original trilogy. I understand that some people like to approach stories chronologically, but I think you'll have a better experience with publication order.

Absolution is the fourth book in Jeff VanderMeer’s SOUTHERN REACH series, which follows the attempts by the titular secret government agency to explore a part of coastal south Florida known as Area X that has been mysteriously transformed within its boundaries (which seem to be expanding) and which also transforms (and often kills) the folks the Southern Reach sends in. It’s a series that dives fully into the “creepy weird” and also poses far more questions than it answers, and Absolution is no different. While it’s book four, as noted, it’s actual a prequel, and truth be told, one could easily read this as a stand-alone, though having read the other three will make for a richer experience.

The novel is divided into three sections, the first of which (“Dead Town”) is set about two decades before the first book in the series, Annihilation, which followed an expedition into Area X that did not end well. At this point, though remote and a bit unworldly, Area X is not yet fully Area X so when a group of scientists move in to perform some experiments with alligators (it’s more complicated than that but we don’t have time here), they don’t know what they’re getting into. Not long after they set up camp, they’re overrun by carnivorous white rabbits, possibly with little cameras hanging around their necks (did I mention “creepy weird?) and soon after there’s running and screaming and blood and madness and violence and murder. We get much of our information about this via Old Jim, an agent for Central who is investigating what happened by looking through old files, a diary, transcripts of interviews, and other records in the archives (though again, it’s more complicated than that).

Section two, “The False Daughter”, jumps forward to a year and a half before Annihilation, with Old Jim now undercover at the local bar and also working with an agent posing as his estranged daughter (who exists in real life), though, and stop me if you’ve heard this before, it’s more complicated than that, with plots within plots, factions in Central, tension between Jim and his “daughter”, and another government group — the Séance and Science Brigade — also operating in the area.

The final section, “The First and the Last”, chronicles the doomed “First Expedition” into Area X about a year before Annihilation. The section is narrated by Lowry, a foul-mouthed, expletive-every-third-word, tripping-on-a-boatload-of-drugs member of the expedition who slowly goes mad as he faces the utter strangeness of Area X.

I’m not going to say much about plot partially because it would be far too involved, partially because I don’t want to spoil some points, and partially because plot often takes a back seat to atmosphere and theme in these works. There’s enough plot here to carry one through, and the book can be incredibly tense at times, but it’s the sort of book where it’s best to let plot fall over you rather than be followed by you, if that makes any sense (and if it doesn’t, welcome to Area X). The tone varies greatly. The first section is almost clinically detached with an observer reading multiple secondary sources, though the descriptions of what the biologists go through are harrowing and in some ways that detachment enhances the effect rather than mutes it. The middle part is the most character-driven and the most emotionally affecting part of the book, though it doesn’t lack for weirdness and body horror either, along with some nice use of duplicates/doppelgangers, a common thread throughout the series. And that final section, as the opening paragraph of this review might hint at, is sort of a full-bore gonzo mashup of William S. Burroughs, David Mamet, Hunter S. Thompson, and Quentin Tarantino with the f-bombs, tripping, body horror, and general weirdness. Some readers will definitely recoil at both Lowry’s language and personality, and the sheer number of f—ks can be a bit distracting, but I found this section utterly compelling and thought it contained some of the book’s best writing.

Absolution revisits many of the themes seen in earlier books: contamination, transformation, what happens when we come face to face with something truly alien, the way we layer human constructs of patterns and time over a natural world that exists outside those things, the terror and exhilaration of the unknown, identity, the concept of
“monster/monstrous”, cover ups and infighting and paranoia. But though many of the topics/themes are familiar it doesn’t feel like we’re just treading over the same ground; there’s enough different here to still feel freshly fascinating. But if you think “revisiting” means “answering” prepare to be disappointed. After all, if we’re talking themes, one of the major ones of this series is the inability to always find answers, to categorize what can’t be categorized, to know what can’t be known. To give answers, to explain, would be a betrayal of the series as a whole I’d argue, and I’m glad Vandermeer doesn’t go down that path.

Finally, while I loved both this book and the entire series for its weirdness and alienness, I also want to note that Vandermeer also is a fantastic nature writer. His descriptions of the environment and its flora and fauna are often beautifully, vividly precise, and would be just at home in a top-notch non-fiction book on the natural world. They’re worth the price of admission alone (though they’re better with the creepy weird). Highly recommended.

Wow. I somehow expected this novel to braid together all the mystery-threads of the first three X books and what I got instead was decidedly NOT that...and I loved it. Grateful for the chance to read this, and for the way VanderMeer's fiction unapologetically winds its way in ever more surprising directions where I'm somehow happy even if everything remains unresolved and mesmerizingly chaotic.

Just as weird and disorienting and wonderful as the first three in the series. It took me a little while to get into it, but after a while I really liked and sympathised with Old Jim as a character - and even though Lowry is an asshole I enjoyed reading from his perspective as well (after he dropped the constant fucks, that was very annoying to read through). Happy to have read it, and looking forward to re-reading in a few years.

Admittedly, I only read the Southern Reach Trilogy after seeing the film adaptation of Annihilation in 2018; I was not prepared for how much space the books would occupy in my mind for years to come. When Absolution was announced, I was worried that it might somehow taint the experience of the original three. I am happy to report that this was not at all the case. VanderMeer once again knocked it out of the park, creating a story that was familiar but somehow still captivating enough to render me incapable of putting it down.

I think the challenges I had with getting through this one were more of a result of me not being in the right headspace as opposed to anything in the actual writing itself. The signature unsettling vibes are certainly present in this book, and I was definitely intrigued at the prospect of seeing things before Area X was what we come to know in the other books.

Ultimately, I just never fully got invested. I really wanted to enjoy this one but it didn’t work out for me this time. Would definitely consider revisiting it in the future. 3⭐️

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the advance review copy.