One thing I didn’t expect to happen this year was a new entry in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach series. But the author announced exactly that in April, and ever since then I’ve been pretty much counting the days until this book’s release. Absolution, the fourth novel in what has previously existed as a trilogy, is released this week and takes us back to the beginnings of Area X and the ill-fated first expedition to explore it.
For the uninitiated, the series deals with a strange coastal region of the United States that has been inexplicably closed off by an invisible border and returned to a wild state. A shady government agency is tasked with studying it, but those who set out on exploration missions either never return or come back in different forms. The series includes Annihilation (which inspired the 2018 film starring Natalie Portman), Authority, and Acceptance.
Ten years after the series was first released, a prequel feels like the perfect way to revisit the mysteries of Area X and the Southern Reach. This trilogy ended with some questions answered, but it left many more. And while we probably shouldn’t expect Absolution to wrap everything up neatly, it does give us more insight into the early days of the anomaly and the perspectives of key characters in that timeline, like Laurie. Masu. Absolution is thick, divided into three novella-like parts, nearly 500 pages long in total. This is great because Area X is never boring.
