Onyx reviews: Absolution by Jeff VanderMeer

Reviewed by Bev Vincent, 12/22/2024

Ten years ago, Jeff VanderMeer released a trilogy known collectively as the Southern Reach or Area X novels. A mysterious, mostly impermeable boundary isolated a stretch of the Gulf Coast, killing almost everyone within its confines. The region was called Area X and the Southern Reach was a government agency created to keep the nature of the region hidden from the world at large and to determine its nature. Those books detailed various exploratory missions into this topsy-turvy region without getting to the bottom of what has happening there.

Now, VanderMeer returns with a longer book that is both prequel and something of a sequel. It has three distinctly different sections, so it is in some ways a trilogy. Most of the book is told from the point of view of a former spy who goes by Old Jim, although it's not clear even to him what his real name is. Twenty years before the barrier appeared, he was asked to try to get a handle on an existential threat in the region, although his bosses at Control are stingy with information. He practically has to beg for things he believes will help him understand the situation. His handlers suspect foreign interference, but how foreign? Soviets? Aliens? Something from another dimension?

Old Jim works undercover as the owner of the only bar in a mostly abandoned town in the vicinity of a team of field biologists who tempt fate by meddling with the local ecosystem. Subsequently, these scientists make some fascinating and disturbing discoveries that indicate that the region that will become Area X was already shifting into a strange realm. They're haunted by strange music and discover swarms of carnivorous rabbits equipped with cameras. Perhaps the place has always been altering, under the influence of some chaotic force, and the appearance of the border was only its announcement to the world.

In the second section, Old Jim is assigned an assistant "named" Cass who, at times, pretends to be his estranged daughter, even though no one is fooled by the ruse. Given Area X's subsequently discovered proclivity for creating doppelgangers, the government's actions here are ironic. The biologist's experiments have caused—or, perhaps, accelerated—changes in the local ecosystem, and pseudo-Cass is there to help Old Jim, whether he likes it or not. This section leads to an explosive finale that puts an end to Old Jim's investigation.

The book's focus abruptly shifts in the final section to a foul-mouthed and drug-addled man named Lowry (previously seen in Acceptance) who is part of the first expedition into Area X four months after the border materialized, an expedition that readers of Annihilation will recall as a full-blown disaster, with only one person returning to the other side in possession of some deeply disturbing video footage. Lowry's prime directive is to find the hypothetical "off switch" that will disable the barricade. Upon his return, Lowry was seen to be a terribly unlikable character. Here, we learn that he was equally loathsome before embarking on the expedition. His stream-of-consciousness pervasive use of the word "fuck" in all of its various forms can be off-putting, making the final part of the novel difficult to process.

Of course there are no answers, but Absolution provides a new way of looking at Area X. It's not a necessary part of the Southern Reach series, but it is a welcome addition to the mythos for people who appreciated the mystifying and disturbing nature of the previous three books.