Genre: Sci-fi, Horror Series: Southern Reach book 4
Published: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, October 2024 My Rating: 5/5 stars
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.
You can find this book here on Goodreads.
