Absolution: A Southern Reach Novel

This is not so much a review as a rave of the highest caliber. I’m trying to contain myself. 

I read Absolution soon after release and I’ve procrastinated writing this review. I don’t think I have enough words in my head to describe this series. Somehow Jeff Vandermeer wrote a series of books that you will never finish. 
Not actually. 
You cannot convince me with any certainty that these books stay exactly the same once you put them down and pick them up again. 
I’ve read the Area X trilogy three times in its entirety (and other bits and pieces when they became earworms that I had to revisit). 
The first time in a frenzy, loping to the end as fast as my paws could carry me. 
The second time, slowing down and highlighting constantly, like sifting through leaves and old receipts to find the answers. 
The third time, leading up to the release of Absolution. Sure that the solution to everything lies in the square of light at the end. 
And even after so much re-reading, I still found things I swear I hadn’t read before. Theories I thought were my own, I found plainly explained this readthrough. 
There is no series or even solitary book that I have spent as much time thinking about. Puzzling over and cross-referencing and discussing with the friend I persuaded to read it (there was no reward in the risk).
I opened Absolution, certain that the answers were there. 
Are they? 
I must admit, for the majority of the beginning of the novel, I didn’t know what the fuck was going on. 

Note: I think it’s only appropriate that this review contains the just amount of fucks. 
Absolution starts where I expected it to but not when. Everything I thought I had deduced at the end of Acceptance is annihilated with authority by Absolution. New mysteries outnumber the answers I thought would be there. Characters named in passing in the previous books play significant roles here. The expansion of the timeline and scope of characters playing a part toward Area X feels…aggressive. Overwhelming and a bit like a lunge from a predator. That’s why it works so fucking well. 
The answer to my own question is yes. The answers are there but there’s not an ending. 
Not actually. 
Partly because I know this changeling of a novel will shift and slide its molecules when I pick it up again. 
Partly because the terror in Absolution is that you see the inevitability of Area X and all of the parts in constant motion to make it happen. 
They couldn’t stop it and neither could we. 
Is it already happening?

Fuck fuck fuck.

500/5 fucks

Absolution: A Southern Reach Novel was released October 22, 2024. Buy it somewhere cool like Midtown Reader.