Absolution
January 7, 2025 5:47 AM - Subscribe
Ten years after the publication of Annihilation, the surprise fourth volume in Jeff VanderMeer’s blockbuster Southern Reach Trilogy.
The Dread and the Wonder: Review of Jeff VanderMeer’s Absolution
The Dread and the Wonder: Review of Jeff VanderMeer’s Absolution
Readers hoping that VanderMeer has returned to answer all questions and solve all the mysteries of the Southern Reach will come away frustrated. Part of the accomplishment of Absolution is that it tells us so much more while still telling us very little....
Area X is not about answers or revelations or twists, but about a feeling in the pit of your stomach as you drag yourself through broken glass and into the gaping unknown of a swamp. Area X is about dread and wonder as much as it is about colossal alligators, carnivorous rabbits with cameras around their necks, mind-controlled spies, and visions of other dimensions. Area X is not for knowing but for feeling, something that is perhaps emphasized by Absolution even more so than the previous entries in the series. What Absolution does do, other than drop the most F-bombs of any novel I’ve read in the last three years, is take animals, places, people, and places that circled the previous three novels and press down on them until those connections deepen. It takes what might have been fleeting and forgotten and gives it weight and meaning throughout the novel’s three parts: “Dead Town”, “The False Daughter”, and “The First and The Last”.
THERE'S A FOURTH ANNIHILATION BOOK NOW??!!?!?!?!?!?
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:33 AM on January 7 [2 favorites]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:33 AM on January 7 [2 favorites]
"The Southern Reach Trilogy, Book 4" is hilarious, but I AM SO IN
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:43 AM on January 7 [1 favorite]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:43 AM on January 7 [1 favorite]
"The fourth book in the increasingly inaccurately named Southern Reach Trilogy"
posted by thecaddy at 8:59 AM on January 7 [3 favorites]
posted by thecaddy at 8:59 AM on January 7 [3 favorites]
I do need to get around to reading this. Unfortunately my local library is pretty aggressive about delisting older books—they don't even have the Culture novels anymore—and, since they no longer had the original, they didn't buy the sequel. So I'll either need to buy it myself or try to get it from a different library.
posted by thecaddy at 9:02 AM on January 7
posted by thecaddy at 9:02 AM on January 7
"The Southern Reach Trilogy, Book 4" is hilarious, but I AM SO IN
I feel like it's actually very fitting for this series in particular!
posted by Kybard at 9:05 AM on January 7 [1 favorite]
I feel like it's actually very fitting for this series in particular!
posted by Kybard at 9:05 AM on January 7 [1 favorite]
Southern Reach is one of those series that should by all rights be up my alley - weird sci-fi Southern Gothic (I even know the refuge he said inspired Area X), but I bounced so hard off of it. Read them all but I never felt a connected to the material.
Later, my wife came in to find me reading Acceptance and started laughing because she worked with VanderMeer at Florida State (I think). She couldn't believe that he actually got published.
Having said all that - I suppose I should give it another go and see if it works for me this time.
posted by drewbage1847 at 9:16 AM on January 7 [1 favorite]
Later, my wife came in to find me reading Acceptance and started laughing because she worked with VanderMeer at Florida State (I think). She couldn't believe that he actually got published.
Having said all that - I suppose I should give it another go and see if it works for me this time.
posted by drewbage1847 at 9:16 AM on January 7 [1 favorite]
Loved the first books in the trilogy (so so on the movie adaptation) and was pretty excited when I heard an interview with Vandermeer about the new book.
I liked the first part, all that bureaucratic cruelty, until the narrator of events changed and I bounced hard off that section and stopped reading before I got deep into Christmas. I plan to tackle it again but... the narrator focus change knocked the wind out of my sails a bit.
posted by Ashwagandha at 9:42 AM on January 7
I liked the first part, all that bureaucratic cruelty, until the narrator of events changed and I bounced hard off that section and stopped reading before I got deep into Christmas. I plan to tackle it again but... the narrator focus change knocked the wind out of my sails a bit.
posted by Ashwagandha at 9:42 AM on January 7
Is it good? I remember 2 and 3 being meh. First one blew me away.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 1:30 PM on January 7
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 1:30 PM on January 7
until the narrator of events changed and I bounced hard off that section and stopped reading before I got deep into Christmas
it takes a few pages before the, ah, verbal tic of that section fades away and I definitely agree it's a slog, but the payoff is some of the most intense shit of probably the whole series
Is it good? I remember 2 and 3 being meh. First one blew me away.
I loved it, but I loved 2 and 3, so your mileage will vary
posted by Kybard at 3:29 PM on January 7
it takes a few pages before the, ah, verbal tic of that section fades away and I definitely agree it's a slog, but the payoff is some of the most intense shit of probably the whole series
Is it good? I remember 2 and 3 being meh. First one blew me away.
I loved it, but I loved 2 and 3, so your mileage will vary
posted by Kybard at 3:29 PM on January 7
I really liked this, and it caused me to go back and reread the first three books again.
One thing that I really cottoned onto on this read-through is the climate-change metaphor of it all, especially in the second book. Area X is a big crazy problem that people don't really understand, but the people who should be in charge of fixing it think of it as a national security threat, and therefore their response is organized as though it were an invading nation-state, and they use tools they might use against an opposing state, such as espionage techniques, to try to solve the problem. But these techniques are completely ineffectual and wind up making everything worse, not better.
Meanwhile, out here in the real world, climate change is a big global problem which is in some ways still not clearly understood (not to suggest that it isn't happening or that we don't know its causes, but that its specific mechanisms aren't all apparent to us). The people in charge of fixing it are determined to use the tools of late capitalism (market-oriented approaches, weak regulation, sanctions and tariffs, etc) to solve the problem. But the tools are a complete mismatch for the problem, and quite often they make the problem worse.
You can take this metaphor a pretty long ways, but one other thing that stands out to me in the fourth book especially is that at the same time, the people in charge of the institutions meant to solve the problems are variously venal, corrupt, and beholden to their own agendas which are not the ones the institutions are ostensibly meant for, and this obviously doesn't help.
Is it good? I remember 2 and 3 being meh. First one blew me away.
Personally I like all three, but I know a lot of people who have this reaction to the second two books. Especially if the things you liked about the first one were the "exploring a weird Roadside Picnic zone" parts, the second book's sudden turn into bureaucratic infighting, espionage, and not much direct action can seem alienating and boring. I really like that stuff, myself, but it certainly doesn't seem to be everyone's cup of tea.
I agree with Kybard that the new book does function in a way as a brief recapitulation of the original trilogy, with some exploration, a good helping of spy stuff, and then some "let's hang out in the apocalypse" bits. I thought the Old Jim section, which is spy stuff, was the strongest part, personally, and it's at least more action-oriented than the spy stuff in Authority.
posted by whir at 3:42 PM on January 7
One thing that I really cottoned onto on this read-through is the climate-change metaphor of it all, especially in the second book. Area X is a big crazy problem that people don't really understand, but the people who should be in charge of fixing it think of it as a national security threat, and therefore their response is organized as though it were an invading nation-state, and they use tools they might use against an opposing state, such as espionage techniques, to try to solve the problem. But these techniques are completely ineffectual and wind up making everything worse, not better.
Meanwhile, out here in the real world, climate change is a big global problem which is in some ways still not clearly understood (not to suggest that it isn't happening or that we don't know its causes, but that its specific mechanisms aren't all apparent to us). The people in charge of fixing it are determined to use the tools of late capitalism (market-oriented approaches, weak regulation, sanctions and tariffs, etc) to solve the problem. But the tools are a complete mismatch for the problem, and quite often they make the problem worse.
You can take this metaphor a pretty long ways, but one other thing that stands out to me in the fourth book especially is that at the same time, the people in charge of the institutions meant to solve the problems are variously venal, corrupt, and beholden to their own agendas which are not the ones the institutions are ostensibly meant for, and this obviously doesn't help.
Is it good? I remember 2 and 3 being meh. First one blew me away.
Personally I like all three, but I know a lot of people who have this reaction to the second two books. Especially if the things you liked about the first one were the "exploring a weird Roadside Picnic zone" parts, the second book's sudden turn into bureaucratic infighting, espionage, and not much direct action can seem alienating and boring. I really like that stuff, myself, but it certainly doesn't seem to be everyone's cup of tea.
I agree with Kybard that the new book does function in a way as a brief recapitulation of the original trilogy, with some exploration, a good helping of spy stuff, and then some "let's hang out in the apocalypse" bits. I thought the Old Jim section, which is spy stuff, was the strongest part, personally, and it's at least more action-oriented than the spy stuff in Authority.
posted by whir at 3:42 PM on January 7
I was looking forward to this, pre-ordered it, and re-read the original trilogy in order to refresh my memory. But I felt pretty meh on this, sorry to say. I like JV's ideas, but think his writing itself is fairly middling, unfortunately, and this wasn't at all helped by the affectation of the third narrator (which wasn't that big a deal, just kind of eyeroll-inducing, for me).
As to how it fits/expands on the lore of the series ... it did that reasonably well, I think. That didn't feel like enough for me to recommend it, but it wasn't bad in that regard.
posted by neuromodulator at 3:56 PM on January 7
As to how it fits/expands on the lore of the series ... it did that reasonably well, I think. That didn't feel like enough for me to recommend it, but it wasn't bad in that regard.
posted by neuromodulator at 3:56 PM on January 7
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therefore it was only after reading and doing some research (mostly via the Southern Reach subreddit) just how interconnected this story is with so many of the characters and events and key moments of the trilogy. knowing those details, either as you read or after the fact as you're processing, is both incredibly valuable and also kind of irrelevant, I think? (I do wish I'd remembered the rabbits.) whether or not Absolution is a prequel, sequel, or incidental side story is still ambiguous by the end, but it certainly deepens and complicates my feelings about what the original trilogy is doing thematically and literally
I guess the main thing that I did remember, which really helps keeps things locked in place, is the understanding of Area X you get from Acceptance -- that it's trying to mimic/repair/understand its surroundings but absolutely does not understand them, a piece of alien technology/life placed in a world that to it is utterly alien. there are some really horrifying bits in Absolution that get at exactly this, particularly in the final segment, like the walkie-talkies eventually stuttering out mostly but not quite accurate recreations of the things the expedition members are saying.
(someone in the reddit also made a connection between the walkie-talkies, both what happens with them in the book and the word itself, and the story Old Jim hears of the psychic who saws off her foot because it's talking to her. that connection feels more like unsettling wordplay on VanderMeer's part but it's so fucking fitting for this series)
it is interesting trying to read the tri-part structure of Absolution in terms of being a microcosm of the original SR trilogy. this sort of works: part one is a more clinical retelling of horrors about as straightforward as Area X shenanigans can get, part two dives into Central spycraft bullshit for a long time but slams into the horrifying stuff all at once by the end, part three is sort of a melding and flowering of the two into a universe where the horror is already and has already been everywhere, not so much an infection as an impregnation. lowry as a POV character makes this a somewhat difficult comparison because he is so wildly unlike any other POV character in the books to date, but ultimately his dogged attempts at being a straight-talking hero are what give this section the sense of clarity and revelation that make it a powerful closing shot for this series (assuming it even is the final shot)
Old Jim's story is heartbreaking, such an astonishing tale of bureaucratic cruelty inflicted on an individual; the fact that Jackie includes within False Cass's backstory the accident that killed Jim's wife is such a wildly mean way to test the depths of his mental conditioning and hypnosis. he's a great narrative voice in the first section and very much like Control throughout the second, a man who increasingly learns/re-learns the extent to which he does not know himself or his world
that sense of things trying to exist or perpetuate entirely out of their proper context is what the SR books do best, I think, and this one has that going on everywhere.
posted by Kybard at 5:59 AM on January 7 [7 favorites]