One thing I didn’t expect to happen this year was getting a new entry in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach series. But the author announced just that in April, and I was almost counting the days until the book was released. AbsolutionThe fourth novel, which previously stood as a trilogy, hit shelves this week and takes us back to the beginnings of Area X and the failed first expeditions to explore it.
For the uninitiated, the series is about a strange coastal region in the United States that has been inexplicably closed behind an invisible border and has returned to wildness. A shadowy government agency is tasked with finding out, but the people who go on these intelligence missions either never come back, or never come back. different. Included in the series Destruction (which inspired the 2018 film starring Natalie Portman), Authority and Reception.
Ten years after the first release of the series, the prequel feels like the perfect way to return to the mysteries of Area X and the Southern Reach. The trilogy concluded in a way that answered some questions, but also left more up in the air. And you probably shouldn’t wait Absolution To wrap it all up neatly, it gives us more insight into the early days of the anomaly and the perspective of key characters in that timeline, like Lowry. Absolution is huge — it’s structured in three novella-like parts and is only 500 pages long. This is great because I can’t get enough of the X area.
