A quote from my original review of This World is Full of Monsters about the categories of Vandermeerean fiction that exist in my mind:

“1. Jeff, you mad genius! 5-stars.
2. Go home Jeff, you’re drunk.
3. Jeff, you need to stop by the ER, because I’m genuinely concerned about your sanity/wellbeing”.

This deranged add-on to the original Southern Reach trilogy (note: my favourite trilogy of all time!!) is fully in the first category.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so conflicted in my anticipation of a series-continuation before. The Southern Reach is my favourite “trilogy” of all time, and I frankly wasn’t sure if I needed a fourth story within this world. I shouldn’t have worried, with this series well within the capable hands of Jeff Vandermeer. This man knows his audience and the strengths of the original series. He knows which information to give, and which to withhold to preserve the ultimate cosmic mystery of Area X in its purest form, and skillfully dances around the many pitfalls of “ruining your story retroactively by adding onto an already finished series”.
Absolution isn’t a direct sequel or prequel to the original trilogy, but more of a companion-piece. Despite that, I do highly recommend you read the books in publication order and don’t start off with this one, as it contains a bunch of references to previously mentioned characters which you’ll miss if you start here. The novel is divided into three parts, which I’ll cover separately below, each seemingly an homage to what came before.

Part 1: Dead Town
We’re taken back in time to 20 years before the boarder came down and Area X became what it is today. A Southern Reach employee Old Jim is tasked with combing through the notes of a group of field biologists researching the local ecosystem. Through their notes and Old Jims commentary on them, we learn that long before “Area X” existed, unsettling strangeness was already afoot in these parts. Uncannily smart alligators with an apparent governing body of their own, camp-ground-music being played backwards in a loop by the swamps, hordes of ghost-rabbits and much more lie in wait…
This part underlines the cosmic horrors of Area X wonderfully. It has always been there, and will always be. Regardless of human interference, indifferent, stoic and ultimately beyond control.
Dead Town was most reminiscent of Annihilation in its claustrophobia and sense of natural dread and I devoured it. Or perhaps, knowing Area X, was I the one being devoured by it…?

Quote:
"By the time Central’s rescue mission reached Dead Town, the rain had stopped, and by that time, too, the rest of the expedition had died of causes both natural and unnatural."

Part 2: False Daughter
Where part 1 was reminiscent of Annihilation, this part has strong Authority vibes. We continue to follow Old Jim, as he’s sent up to the Forgotten Coast by the higher-ups at central to investigate a person (or should we say “phenomenon”) known as The Rogue. During this mission he’s teamed up with his long-lost daughter. Except it’s clear from the start that his woman is NOT his daughter, and simply another Southern Reach employee masquerading as her...
Spy-thriller-vibes, mixed with the corporate dread that we’ve come to love in Authority. Absolute perfection.

Quote:
“What was a person, sometimes, but a wandering fire. But put the flames out, and what was left?”

Part 3: The First and the Last
Here we follow Lowry, a familiar character from Acceptance, as a member of the very first expedition into Area X, just 4 months after the boarder came down. You might be expecting to uncover the trauma’s that made Lowry into the deeply hateable and flawed man we see post-expedition. Yet in typical Vandermeerean style: he subverts that expectation. It’s clear from sentence 1 that Lowry was always the detestable man we saw in Acceptance. That’s also my main critique of this section of the book; although I loved the scenes within Area X, I found this part borderline unreadable due to Lowry’s narrative-voice. Granted; it’s very deliberate by Vandermeer, but Lowry’s internal monologue where “Fuck” is used not as a comma, but more like a spacebar is genuinely off-putting. Yes, it’s effective writing, but I wish the author had tuned it down a bit to make sure it didn’t get in the way of his storytelling.

Quote:
“There was a way in which it was so real and immediate and yet also felt impossible and drawn out. Maybe he could not contain the feverish intensity of it and also the overwhelming beauty of it, how he could be reduced down to his bones by fear and yet also feel so alive.”


I considered knocking off a star for my dislike of part 3, but overall, my love of this series and everything else within Absolution won me over… 5-stars it is, and always will be.
To answer the first question I asked in this review: no, I didn’t need this final addition to the Southern Reach, nor did the Southern Reach itself need it to be completed. Regardless, I feel completely spoiled and blessed with 3 additional stories set within one of my favourite universes and would highly recommend it to any fans of the original.

A final quote I’ll leave you with:
“[…] That Area X would never not happen. There was no off switch, there was no other time in which it faded away or was not activated. But if it colonized the past, then everything would get worse, worse, worse.”

Thank you so, so, so much Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the ARC in exchange for an honest review! All opinions (regardless of their fangirlish-nature) are my own.

I don’t know what I was expecting with this. It’s been 10 years since we got Annihilation and the original trilogy, and 10 years to marinate and come to conclusions about the series. So throwing Absolution, the surprise 4th novel of the series, into the world created some big expectations. Did it live up to them? Honestly, no. But did I still have some fun reading it? Maybe.

This is a collection of three prequel novellas. Dead Town takes place 20 years before the border comes down at Area X. A team of biologists are studying alligator behavior in the Forgotten Coast. Or are they? Strange things start happening with the alligators, the biologists, and the environment around them. False Daughter takes place 18 months before the border comes down and is a spy/espionage thriller centered around Old Jim. The First and the Last is an account of the first expedition into Area X after the border comes down and features Lowry as a member of this infamous and fateful expedition.

All I can say about Dead Town is WTF?! I could not get into this one. It felt like a mirror of Annihilation in tone and narrative structure. But the characters were flat and the plot was lost in the swamp. I almost DNF’d at this point. However after pushing through it was obvious that it was pre-requisite for the subsequent novellas.

The False Daughter finally caught up to my expectations. This was what I had been waiting years for. Old Jim was a throwaway character that I barely paid attention to (and honestly forgot on the first read) and getting his backstory blew my damn mind. I don’t think the revelations were that groundbreaking but this novella enriched what I already knew about the Forgotten Coast and the events leading up to Area X. The pacing was perfect. The character development was honestly better than anything in the original trilogy. I knew what was going to happen but I was still on the edge of my seat. This novella if it was a standalone would get 5⭐️ easily.

The First and the Last tells the story of the doomed first expedition into Area X and was honestly the novella I was most looking forward to. Sadly it missed the mark. It read like a sci-fi-horror story. Claustrophobic like Pandorum or Prometheus. The pacing was great and I found myself unable to look away, despite the novella’s flaws. But I couldn’t get past the f-bomb every other word. I understand it was Lowry’s POV but I didn’t feel like the overt obscenities were in character based on what I knew about him from Authority. The ending felt bizarre, but this is The Southern Reach so don’t expect anything less.

Bottom line: don’t fix something that isn’t broken? If you’re a Southern Reach fan and you must satisfy your curiosity, proceed with low expectations. 3/5 average score for the three.

Deepest gratitude to NetGalley and the publisher Farrar, Straus, and Giroux for the opportunity to read and review this ARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

For those that can't get enough of Area X, this book brings them right back into the Southern Reach. More prequel to the main story, with more interesting characters and weird incidents.

Thank you to MCD and NetGalley for a copy of this ARC. DNF at 82%. If you didn’t absolutely love the first three books, don’t even bother with this one. The first section was fine. I didn’t hate it but it felt very different than the other trilogy and I’d give it 2 stars. The second part felt more in line with the other books. I’d give it maybe 3stars. The third part was AWFUL. I HATED it and could not get over the use of curse words. It was unreadable to me and convinced me to finally DNF. I had soft DNF’d a few times before but this just kicked it over the edge. It’s just not for me.

Jeff Vandermeer is a master storyteller and delivers another intriguing and fascinating story, the 4th in the Southern Reach series
Well plotted, gripping.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Thank you for NetGalley for providing me a PDF of this novel.

Jeff Vandermeer announced working on another Area X book a couple years ago. I almost wondered if I was reading that correctly, as it had been several years since the Southern Reach trilogy concluded with Acceptance. We had “accepted” that was the end of it, a compelling and nebulous series that wrapped up without divulging concrete explanations for anything.

Absolution arrives in 2024, told in 3 sections, not unlike the prior trilogy. I listened to the audiobooks for Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance 9 months ago, and I would say you would be better off refreshing your memory of Area X directly before attempting Absolution, because even with such a recent revisit, there were times I had the sense I was supposed to recognize some names that weren’t quite resonating.

Part 1 is an account of “Dead Town,” 20 years before the appearance of Area X. Central agent Old Jim reads the archives about an expedition of biologists to the Forgotten Coast with supplemental diary and wiretap material from the “Village Bar.” Like Annihilation, the biologists are known by titles like Team Leader 1 and the Mudder rather than names, and suspicious characters at the Village Bar have coded names like Man Boy Slim and Drunk Boat. The biologists run strange experiments with rabbits and an alligator called the Tyrant, and although it is decades before Area X, there is a gradually building atmosphere of wrongness before a nightmare encounter with someone called the Rogue.

Part 2 puts Old Jim back in the field at the Forgotten Coast eighteen months before Area X in “The False Daughter.” Jim is in free fall from the disappearance of his daughter, Cassie. She has intentionally gone into hiding from him for reasons he can only wonder at, and as he becomes a greater security liability in his efforts to find her, he is rehabbed at HQ, obviously compromised with mind control prompts, and planted at the Forgotten Coast in the Village Bar from “Dead Town.” As part 1 suggests Annihilation, part 2 is the paranoia of Authority with Old Jim at the mercy of a potential cell within the cell of Central from friend and colleague Jack and his point of contact, Valerie, Jack’s daughter. Old Jim is partnered up with an agent named Cassie, who is supposed to act as if she is his daughter. As Old Jim and Cassie probe theories and speculations about the disastrous expedition 20 years ago, he discovers hidden motives, lost people, and lost experiments.

Part 3, “The First and the Last,” is the first expedition into Area X through the mind of Lowry, a highly anxious and drugged-up member of the 24-person team sent to find the “off switch” beyond the border. Lowry also has a secret mission from Jack regarding lost assets in Dead Town, which he has to juggle with strained interpersonal relationships and his tenuous grasp of control in an unprecedented situation.

Absolution fits right into the espionage and existential horror of the Southern Reach trilogy, although it is not as easily readable. Annihilation is a book you can knock out in 1 or 2 days, and while the others are longer, they had a good flow that was easy to stay with, not unlike the bizarre run-on messages in the Tower. Absolution seems to purposely discourage that with incomplete sentences that you sometimes have to reread to understand in the first two parts, culminating in the over-the-top vulgarity of Lowry’s hopped-up account of the first (maybe) Area X incursion. It’s a pretty wild swing where profanity is often used to indicate pauses in the burgeoning stress of the train derailment of Lowry’s inner monologue. It eventually becomes easier to navigate, but this is a book I can see appreciating better upon revisiting one after the other with the rest of the Southern Reach novels. Similarities between names like Jack & Jim and Lowry & Landry also interrupt the flow at times.

The outlandishness of Lowry’s observations is often funny, but ill-timed in what could have been one of the most potent detours into all-out horror. Those hoping for something on par with Annihilation won’t be altogether disappointed, but the potential was there for something to have boosted the cosmic terror substantially more. The account of the first encounter with the Rogue lives up to that promise, but collectively I’m not sure Absolution lives up to the eerier moments of Annihilation and Authority. It is not without them, though, and it was good to have some more of them years later. Likewise, the paranoia of Authority stands alone. The revelations of parts 2 and 3 may feel a little more satisfying than Acceptance, although don’t expect answers any more concrete. Then again, if you’re reading this directly after the first 3 books, there are undoubtedly some connections I overlooked, and I expect a revisit of Absolution to be more rewarding than my initial read.

Ultimately this one is a must for Southern Reach fans, and I think most of them will be happier than not with this return to Area X.

ABSOLUTION is the fourth volume in Jeff VanderMeer's SOUTHERN REACH series, following the trilogy published a decade ago. It is both a prequel (since the action happens before the three previous books) and a sequel (since it adds new dimensions to our experience of the previous books). The Southern Reach series is about a place called Area X, where normal processes of biological growth and decay have been suspended, so that the metamorphoses of life processes instead take on new, ungainly forms. Area X is dangerous and deadly; but it is also the source of an unbounded biological exuberance. There aren't any actual revelations, since the whole point of Area X is that it resists and escapes our ability to understand it. But understanding (or its lack) is less important than the metamorphoses and proliferations that occur in Area X. The new novel recounts three attempts by human beings to come to terms with Area X (or, in this volume, the prehistory and earlier history of Area X). The first section recounts a scientific mission gone awry in the face of such phenomena as carnivorous rabbits. The second section is about Old Jim, a CIA agent (or, in the novels terms, an agent of "Control" who deals both with the sad wreckage of his personal life and the bizarre phenomena of the region. Both of these sections take place before Area X crystallized into a specific region with a border (that is to say, a membrane, such as all living cells possess) differentiating it from the outside world. The third section recounts the first official scientific and military and intelligence foray into Area X, with the focus on a macho and deranged narrator who is continually overmedicated and who says the word "fuck" something like three times in every sentence. His derangement is a kind of objective correlative to the irreducibility of Area X to any sort of human framing or conceptualization. VanderMeer walks a fine line in the way he depicts something that is entirely menacing and dangerous, both to human understanding and to any possibility of human flourishing, yet which becomes this way not through deprivation, but through excess (or as I said before), biological exuberance.

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus, and Giroux for this Advanced Reader’s Copy of Absolution by Jeff VanderMeer.

Absolution is a complicated installment in the Area X story—in part because it does not provide any answers to questions presented in the original trilogy and in part we see the Forgotten Coast from a different timeline, different sets of perspectives, but again through the lens of encounters with the Unknowable. Much like in Lem’s Solaris, VanderMeer forces the reader to understand that the Unknowable may never encounter a reckoning. In Weird Fiction, there will always be things that we cannot understand, that remain alien, and that provoke questions we simply cannot answer: “yet how could they guard against what could enter the mind?” (VanderMeer)

VanderMeer divides Absolution into three parts. The first, 'Dead Town,' follows the diary entries of Old Jim, who follows the expedition of scientists into the forgotten coast prior to the border wall’s installation. These scientists encounter seemingly sentient alligators, uncanny rabbits, unreactive crabs—succinctly, they begin to see that nothing in the Forgotten Coast follows the rules of evolution or biology as currently understood by humans. Part one shows the reader that the creators of the Forgotten Coast, if it can be termed ‘creators,’ never had control of the coast itself, never understood the driving forces behind it.

Part Two, False Daughter, confronts the strange psychological and mental phenomena that VanderMeer introduced in the main trilogy. Old Jim sees that perhaps these mental triggers can be controlled, perhaps there are aspects of Area X that can be influenced, and this hubris enters the tale as a leading theme. To avoid spoilers, I will go no further on Part Two.

Part Three, The First and The Last, covers the aftermath of the fallen barrier and the first expedition into an unbound Area X. James Lowry, the narrator, leads us through this part of the story. We see themes of cannibalism and progressive insanity as James Lowry attempts to resolve and understand the Unknowable. Area X begins to show its true colors: that whatever force controls Area X, whether deity or organism, can not only influence nature itself but may also have a hand on time itself. In this part of the story, we see that Area X literally eats the past, aging the environment by roughly fifty years in the span of ten.

Though Absolution may not answer questions raised in the original trilogy, it does provide readers with a single thought that could perhaps explain Area X at large: there is a force in the Forgotten Coast, a controlling force with its finger on the pulse of all biology, and it is able to assert its influence to such a degree that it can break the mind of any human who enters. Interaction with the Unknowable in Area X wreaks nothing but insanity, and we readers may never know why.

Masterpiece. 10/10.

I purchase a hardcopy AND an audiobook. This little you know about this book the better so long as you are a fan of the Southern Reach series already. This is a book that shouldn't exist and yet here it is. How lucky are we? Vandermeer's dream-like prose and haunting bio-horror imagery is back and in full force and he's got something to say about the environment and how we treat it.

Thank you Net Galley for sending me an arc.

Area X is back and y’all it was wild. The pacing of this novel was really well done. I easily found myself falling back into the world of Southern Reach and Area X as if this book wasn’t being released a decade after the original trilogy. I loved the structure of this novel and getting to see the three of parts of it play out. VanderMeer is an expert of writing scenes that make my skin absolutely crawl. This book had so many scenes just like that that made me put down the book to take a break. It’s haunting and I know that I’ll be carrying a bit of Area X and Southern Reach with me forever.

Ten years after the final book in his Southern Reach Trilogy, Jeff VanderMeer has blessed us with another dive into Area X. Absolution contains three separate novellas; Dead Town, The False Daughter, and The First and the Last. "Dead Town" chronicles a pre- Area X exploration of the forgotten coast by a group of biologists that prompt the creation of the Séance and Science Brigade. "The False Daughter" tells the story of Old Jim, his experiences with Southern Reach, and his hunt for his missing daughter, Cass. "The First and the Last" covers the first expedition from Lowry's point of view. While I loved getting to revisit Area X and find out more about its creation, I found these stories really hard to follow and confusing. I feel like I have enjoyed each Southern Reach book a little bit less and Absolution was a little disappointing. I really wanted to get answers to some of my questions from the last book but I ended up with even more questions. If your favorite thing about the Southern Reach Trilogy is the uncanniness and mind-fuck aspects of the books, you will definitely enjoy this. If you, like me, want answers to all of your burning questions- prepare to be a little disappointed.

Absolution is Jeff Vandermeer's fourth novel of the Southern Reach series. I loved being back in Area X! The book narrates what happened in the first expedition and shows more about some characters from the other three books. It also talks about Area X before it was named that. Like the other books in the series, there are some time jumps and more extraordinary but disturbing flora and fauna.
If, like me, you enjoyed the first books, you'll appreciate learning even more about Area X and its characters.
Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!

If you, like me, never wanted Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach series to end, you must read this book. It is a challenging novel that rewards close reading, packed with big ideas, utterly unique prose, and lots of eldritch imagery.

The book plants haunting concepts into your head every 20 pages or so with cosmic horror koans like this: "One organism might peer out from another organism, but not live there. A piano might be played at one time but the sound might reach them at another time."

The book introduced me to a Schubert song cycle that is quite spooky when played while reading late at night. As the story progresses, you'll discover new lyrics for this classical music, taking the gloomy songs to even gloomier places.

The strangeness won't be for every reader, but for anybody dying to know more about the story that began with Annihilation, you'll be very glad to go back to Area X.

I am a fan of Jeff Vandermeer. I read and enjoyed the first three Area X novellas (though in my opinion Annihilation is far and away the best), but in my mind the true Vandermeer Magnum Opus and my favorite is and will always be the Borne book. But I was excited to return to Area X in this semi-standalone prequel.

This review is going to be a tale of two books: because this is less a novel and more like three novellas in a trenchcoat. The first two really, really worked for me. They tell the story of a scientific expedition to Area X before it was Area X, the story of how Area X was formed, and finally, the story of the first expedition into Area X.

The first two are stylistically similar to the first Area X stories--slow and languid, atmosphere that you can cut with a knife, vaguely unsettling, and with a thematic thread related to the Winter Traveler (a Schubert song cycle) how could I not love it. And I forgot that Jeff Vandermeer can write a heck of a sentence--it's been too long since I read one of his works. As I’m generally suspicious of prequels--I was ready to eat my words and say how masterfully Vandermeer had threaded the needle of not over explaining his monster, and telling the story of formation without robbing Area X of its mystery.

However, then I got to the third section. And this was the literary equivalent of heavy metal. It was loud and grating and unpleasant to read. Vandermeer was definitely doing it on purpose for artistic effect so I feel bad saying that it was unpleasant to read, but I don’t like Schoenberg either and lots of people do. So it probably will work for some folks out there. I do have to give Vandermeer credit, he is showing a lot of tonal range in this book. The third section also probably suffered from the fact that all the Area X writing is mostly just hanging with the vibes, and by the third section it was starting to overstay its welcome a bit. But if I hadn’t been suffering through the part I liked less maybe I wouldn’t have minded so much.

I will say this book can stand alone pretty well--it's probably been going on a decade since I read the original Area X, and I don’t remember much and I didn’t feel like I missed much. However, I think you’re better off starting with Annihilation. I’d recommend this book for fans of Area X, fans of the new weird, and people who don’t mind their literature a little experimental. I received an ARC in exchange for this honest review.

Definitely a must for fans of the original trilogy! I honestly was worried because I don't really remember much from the fever dream of the originals, but I quickly felt immersed again. Reading these books makes me feel a little bit insane, in the best way. I had most and least favorite sections, but all did feel necessary. Grateful for another trip into this world!!

I'm not even sure where to start with this. It has been so long since I finished the third book, yet it seems like yesterday. The Southern Reach Trilogy (or what was previously a trilogy), were books that stuck with you. If you are a fan of the books, this is a must. There is no way to NOT read this. That being said, if you haven't read any of the previous books, this is not the book to start with. Pick up book number one and start there.

This book is written into short novellas- three to be exact. These three parts are actually a prequel to when we were first introduced to Area X.

Part One takes place 20 years prior to Area X's barrier. Part Two takes place 18 months before the barrier and Part Three takes place during the first expedition and 1 year after the barrier was erected and Area X was sealed off.

At first I was bored with this book but then it picked up and everything became so unexpected in true VanderMeer fashion. If you think you know what to expect from this book because you read the previous ones, think again. Author, Jeff VanderMeer, is a brilliant mind and a master of words.

We get points of views from characters that we didn't even know we needed. We are introduced to new characters that were there at the beginning and a look at the infamous first expedition. We get answers to previously unanswered questions, but we are left with so many more.

Thanks to Netgalley and Farrar, Straus, and Giroux for allowing me an advanced copy to read and give my honest review.

It's been a long time since I've been to Area X. I had forgotten what a strange place it was. I forgot about its violence and its beauty. I forgot about how it doesn't subscribe to any of the laws of nature as we know them.

To be honest, it took me a few chapters, maybe sections, to get back into it. It is tough reading until you get its rhythm down. It was sometimes difficult to know exactly where in the Southern Reach story I was all of the time. Still, it is written in such a way that I felt like I was there. I was seeing those crazy rabbits and biologists. I could smell the bar and the water.

Take your time with this one. The connections will eventually be made.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book, releasing today!

Honestly this probably should have been a 2.5 but I rounded up...but as a big fan of the original Southern Reach Trilogy I was really disappointed that I didn't like this more! This is a prequel consisting of three interconnected novellas. The first addresses the start of weird behavior (20 years before the appearance of Area X) noticed by locals after a team of biologists arrives to perform mysterious experiments in the area (possibly on the behalf of Central)-this part was a slow read but felt the most similar in tone and content to the original trilogy. The second part follows Old Jim in a spy-esque journey when he is sent to the area by Central to track one particular mysterious anomaly from the first part (this is set 18 months before Area X)-this section was alright but in my opinion things related to Area X in the books are always more interesting and engaging than anything related to Central, which much of this section is. The third section is narrated by one of the members of the first expedition into Area X after its appearance-the section starts out almost unreadable due to the narration style (although it's toned down within about 5 pages or so) and while it's nice to be back in Area X for a bit, the narrator was pretty insufferable and the content didn't particularly grab me either-I wasn't very invested in solving any mystery left over from the first two parts.

I don't know that much of this will make any sense without having read the original trilogy, despite the fact that this is a prequel-if you have read it and feel a real pull to read this, I guess there's no reason not to, but in my opinion this book didn't really add anything to the original storyline. I honestly probably would have dropped this partway through if not for being an ARC I felt obligated to review.

The early chapters of Absolution are slow creep and weird science. As the story continues, it shifts, morphs, evolves into something else entirely.

Scientists, psychics, and soldiers all come to the Forgotten Coast with questions, but they'll leave with something all together different than the answers they're seeking.

There aren't many books that leave me feeling as though I might truly understand what it means to be insane and, more importantly, that madness is a gift being offered to me.

I was left pondering the nature of time, human relationships, and the cosmos.

"An astronaut who had never left Earth, fighting an enemy toward entropy."

A very fascinating sequel that enriches the canon of Area X to date. Vandermeer proves time isn't a factor by deftly picking up the threads of this story and giving us a novel in keeping with the style and uniqueness of each Area X novel. The last third contains a POV so repulsive I won't be surprised to hear it throw many readers for a loop, which is a testament to how well it's executed. Brilliant stuff.