ABSOLUTION BY JEFF VANDERMEER

NOTE: Contains spoilers for Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance, and minor spoilers for Absolution.

Jeff Vandermeer’s surreal Southern Reach trilogy — consisting of Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance — is one of my favorite works of fiction, across any storytelling format. I was hooked from page 1, and could scarcely breathe until I finished the complete collection, shutting my omnibus edition with an audible “What the fuck.” I felt like I understood maybe a third of what I had read, but after several rereads and spending a lot of time lurking on forums, I managed to achieve clarity — or at least, the closest thing to clarity that could be achieved in this case. After my most recent reread, when I was completely satisfied with the answers I would never get, and the ways my imagination has filled in the gaps, I discovered in shock that a fourth book had been announced - and my excitement and fear were unparalleled. You have to understand, the 2018 film adaptation Annihilation was already out by the time I first read the trilogy, over a year later in 2019, but I didn’t muster up the courage to actually watch it until January 2024. That’s how worried I was that they’d butcher the source material, and that I’d be so enraged I’d have to walk out of the room. Jeff Vandermeer at the helm of this fourth book, of course, had me feeling much more favorably towards it, but the idea that it would ruin (or at least dampen) my love of the books was still a huge concern of mine.

It turns out I didn’t have to worry; Absolution only furthered my love for the series, and is highly recommended for any fans — just don’t go in expecting any answers, because there are only more questions where we’re going.

For the uninitiated (or those who haven’t read the books in years), the original trilogy centers around ‘Area X’, a region of pristine wilderness that’s cut off from the rest of the world. The titular Southern Reach, a top-secret agency that attempts to understand it, sends expedition after expedition of scientists and military personnel into Area X in the hopes of uncovering its origin and purpose. However, not every expedition has any survivors… and the ones that do tell conflicting stories about what they saw, or are so traumatized or otherwise changed that they’re virtually unrecognizable. Annihilation follows the twelfth expedition into Area X, from the perspective of the team’s biologist, revealing a surreal landscape full of bizarre creatures, terrifying topographical anomalies, and conflicting sensations of both fear and peace. Authority picks up months later, from the perspective of the latest (and extremely underqualified) director of the Southern Reach, where we learn more about the previous expeditions, secrets kept hidden from the biologist, and the web of conspiracies that surrounds the agency itself. Lastly, Acceptance brings the trilogy to a close as we return to Area X proper to hopefully keep it under control once and for all, while also giving us flashbacks to the days leading up to the formation of it in the first place.

It seemed like the perfect way to end the series, in my opinion; while most of the answers we got were vague and few and far between, with an ambiguous ending, it felt like it did everything it set out to do, and then some. Getting proper answers would only detract from the journey, and the feelings it instills in the reader by the very nature of its ambiguity. Absolution, thankfully, has no interest in clarifying things. Broken up into three different sections, each one is set at a different point in time in Area X’s growth, but all three of them actually occur before Annihilation. “Did Control succeed in stopping Area X’s spread?” Who knows! That’s not why we’re here!

I’ll give overviews of the novel’s three acts, but you’ll have to forgive me for being very vague for the most part; spoiling them would be a travesty, and explaining the snarls and tangles in the continuity would be a gargantuan task.

The first section of the book, titled ‘Dead Town,’ describes a science expedition that occurred twenty years before the formation of Area X, before characters like Gloria and Saul ever entered the picture. You’d be forgiven for assuming that it won’t be too strange, then, but you’d be dead wrong. Presented as a series of observations and transcriptions of the experiment, acquired from camera footage, recordings, and journal entries, we follow a team of researchers studying gators that they’ve released into the wild after tampering with their behaviors. Things seem… ‘off,’ and as ‘outside forces’ enter the picture, it goes off the rails completely. There’s a scene early on that, besides being horrifying, is a reference readers should instantly recognize, and immediately changes the stakes of the game, and I can guarantee it will have you on the edge of your seat searching for answers. There are layers of deception here that are satisfying to peel away, and like in Annihilation, watching the party dissolve as the mystery deepens is gripping. It’s deliberately left confusing, so don’t be confused if it doesn’t appear clear exactly what is going on; it will be, if not explained, at least given context later on. The most fascinating of the new characters is one known simply as ‘The Rogue,’ who had me enthralled as I tried to understand his motives and origin. It’s always going to be a debate as to what the most unsettling scene in the series is, but for many people, I feel it’s safe to say that this act will contain their favorite.

The second act, called ‘The False Daughter,’ begins eighteen months before the formation of Area X, and follows Old Jim, a Central operative. After his adult daughter vanishes from his life without rhyme or reason, he drowns his grief in alcohol, until Jack (you remember him, yes?) gets him cleaned up and sent to the forgotten coast as a spy, to figure out exactly what the hell is going on there. Yes, that’s right, this is the Old Jim from Acceptance, the one who banged away on the piano during those last moments before the barrier came down, and I can promise that whatever you thought he was up to, it’s not what you think. This was my favorite act from the book; I grew very attached to Old Jim, and his quest for answers leads him to some very dark places indeed. What’s exceptional about this segment is that it is split between exploring the mysteries of Area X itself, and the convoluted mess of mind games and power plays that is Central, and does both beautifully. You’ll get to see other sides of characters from Acceptance, like the sociopathic Henry (and the Science & Seance Brigade) and a young Gloria. The operative Old Jim is forced to team up with is another standout character, and I was very invested in their relationship. If the previous works reveled in ambiguity and raising more questions than answers, this one takes it a step further; it even calls into question events from the original trilogy that were undisputedly thought to be true, by way of casually dropped lines that will make your stomach sink through the floor. I was so tense reading this act that I was always looking over my shoulder in fear at the slightest unexpected sound; despite finishing the entire book only a week and a half ago, I’m so tempted to reread this entire section in full already, as it’s everything I could have possibly wanted from this installment. You’ll almost definitely want to set the book aside for a moment and process everything up until this point before starting on act three.

Actually, act three was for many readers (myself included) the most anticipated part of the entire novel, but it ended up being the most divisive. Before I get into that, though, we need to talk about its premise. Called ‘The First and the Last,’ it covers the Southern Reach’s very first expedition into Area X, from the viewpoint of Lowry. For those who don’t remember, Lowry was the sole survivor from that expedition, and rose through the ranks to pull a lot of the strings at the agency, actively trying to wage war with Area X. In Authority, we are shown a recording that had survived with him, that was - for me personally - the most terrifying moment in the entire series. Now, we’d finally get to see what really happened. The divisiveness arises mostly from Lowry’s narration; especially at the beginning, he’s on a number of drugs, and this makes his expletive-strewn point of view purposefully harder to follow. For me, I had a bit of difficulty muddling my way through the first couple of chapters, but as he becomes more lucid it’s much smoother sailing, and I felt that it ultimately added to his chapters, not took away from them, though some may disagree. Of course, the other variable at play here is that there were very high expectations for this segment, and it would be impossible for it to ever meet the lofty goals many fans have placed on it. That said, while it didn’t quite hit the highs I had hoped for, it was a fun descent into madness, especially towards the second half, where shit really hits the fan, and threads from the previous two acts are picked back up to a very satisfying (if still deliberately ambiguous, of course) ending. The fact that we do get some answers to burning questions, but through the perspective of one of the most unreliable characters in the books (which is truly saying something) is actually one of my favorite things about the entire novel. There’s a lot I could say about what this chapter does to the continuity as a whole, but I won’t give any details away due to the twist being so shocking it’s best to go in blind. I’ll just say that even if you find his narration frustrating, stick through to the end!

The number one complaint I’ve seen about Absolution in my time trawling through forums and blog posts is that people were upset there weren’t definitive answers, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way. For anyone who is familiar with Jeff Vandemeer’s works outside of Southern Reach, this is expected, and you should temper your expectations accordingly. If you want a cohesive explanation of everything that has happened since page 1 of Annihilation, you will not find it here, and you will never find it. But if you want to have your head spin with even more theories, this is absolutely worth reading. Because, at the end of the day, the answers aren’t the point, but instead the questions being asked. I feel it’s fairly obvious that - again, like most of Vandemeer’s bibliography - the central theme is about climate change and destruction of the earth. I don’t remember the exact quote, or if it was said by someone on a forum somewhere, but they spoke about how we know, are told explicitly in all the books, that Area X had to happen. There is no way to stop it from forming. And if it could wipe out all of humanity and technology, it would do so. But there are ways to coexist with it. There are ways to slow its spread, or otherwise make it so that people can survive. And while a pristine wilderness with no respect for humans is the inverse of the damage we do to our planet, do we ultimately not have the same end goal in real life? We cannot undo climate change, but we can limit its impact, and stop it from killing us all outright.

I’m going to be thinking about all four books for a long time, and returning to them again and again as the years go by. They speak to me in a way that few others ever have or ever will. The sign of a good piece of media, in my opinion, is that it keeps you reflecting on it, and trying to understand it, well after you’ve finished it. In that regard, Absolution absolutely succeeds.

Final Rating: 9.5