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Absolution
Southern Reach (Related to this series)
- Author
- Jeff VanderMeer
- Narrator
- Bronson Pichot
- Publisher
- HarperCollins Publishers
- Publish Date
- 22 October 2024
- Run Time
- 14 hours 53 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
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What to expect
Ten years after the publication of Annihilation, the surprise fourth volume in Jeff VanderMeer’s blockbuster Southern Reach Trilogy.
TOP SECRET: A clear and present threat exists. Open-ended. Existential. Confirmation via uncanny op. Nature of same: Unknown. Initiating entity: Unknown. Priority: High.
Ten years after the publication of the bestselling Annihilation, Authority and Acceptance – the first the basis of a now-classic film – Jeff VanderMeer brings us back for a surprise fourth and final foray into Area X.
Absolution opens decades before Area X forms, with a science expedition whose mysterious end suggests terrifying consequences for the future – and marks the Forgotten Coast as a high-priority area of interest for Central, the shadowy government agency responsible for monitoring extraordinary threats.
Many years later, the Forgotten Coast files wind up in the hands of a washed-up Central operative known as Old Jim. He starts pulling a thread that reveals a long and troubling record of government agents meddling with forces they clearly cannot comprehend. Soon, Old Jim is back out in the field, grappling with personal demons and now partnered with an unproven young agent, the two of them tasked with solving what may be an unsolvable mystery. With every turn, the stakes get higher: Central agents are being liquidated by an unknown rogue entity and Old Jim’s life is on the line.
Old Jim’s investigation culminates in the first Central expedition into what has now been labelled Area X. A border has come down, and a full team – well trained but eccentric – has been assembled to find Area X’s 'off switch' somewhere in the volatile, dangerous terrain that has mysteriously defied all attempts to be explored, mapped or controlled. A landscape that, one way or another, seems to consume all who enter it.
Sweeping in scope and rich with ideas, iconic characters and unpredictable adventure, Absolution converges the past, present and future in terrifying, ecstatic and mind-bending ways. It is the final word on one of the most provocative and popular speculative fiction series of our time.
Critics Review
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Praise for the Southern Reach Trilogy:
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‘I’m loving the Southern Reach Trilogy … Creepy and fascinating’ Stephen King
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‘Hauntingly weird and brilliantly new … These are contemporary masterpieces and career-defining novels’ Adam Robert, Books of the Year, Guardian
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'Unsettling and unputdownable like a good old-fashioned adventure story, only weirder, beautifully written and not at all old-fashioned' Karen Joy Fowler, Bookpage
See more reviews See fewer reviews
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‘This trilogy is a modern mycological masterpiece … Remarkable … Tense, eerie and unsettling … Genuinely potent and dream-haunting writing. VanderMeer has arrived’ Guardian
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'An ever-creeping map of the apocalypse' Colson Whitehead
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'Revelatory, terrifying and marvellous' Helen MacDonald
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‘A teeming science fiction that draws on Conrad and Lovecraft alike’ Sunday Telegraph
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‘A lasting monument to the uncanny … You find yourself afraid to turn the page’ Guardian
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‘VanderMeer’s novel is a psycho-geographical tour de force, channelling Ballard and Lovecraft to instil the reader with a deep, delicious unease’ Financial Times
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'The payoff is absolutely worth the patience' N. K. Jemisin, The New York Times Book Review
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‘So disquietingly strange as to defy summarisation. Read it’ Daily Mail
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‘Astonishing, frightening, spectacular … I hope the trilogy will come to be seen not only as the instant sci-fi classic it is, but also as Literature’ New Statesman
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‘Immersive, insightful and often deeply bloody creepy, this is a startlingly good novel … A major work’ ***** SFX Magazine
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‘A tense and chilling psychological thriller about an unravelling expedition and the strangeness within us. A little Kubrick, a lot of Lovecraft, the novel builds with an unbearable tension and claustrophobic dread that lingers long afterwards. I loved it’ Lauren Beukes
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‘Original and beautiful, maddening and magnificent’ Warren Ellis
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Jeff VanderMeer
- Narrator
- Bronson Pichot
- Duration
- 14 hours 53 minutes
- Release Date
- 22 October 2024
- ISBN
- 9780008726010
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- HarperCollins Publishers
- Genre
- Fiction: literary and general non-genre, Science fiction: apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic, Adventure / action fiction, Thriller / suspense fiction, Dystopian and utopian fiction, Narrative theme: environmental issues / the natural world, Narrative theme: journeys and voyages
Synopsis
Ten years after the publication of Annihilation, the surprise fourth volume in Jeff VanderMeer’s blockbuster Southern Reach Trilogy. TOP SECRET: A clear and present threat exists. Open-ended. Existential. Confirmation via uncanny op. Nature of same: Unknown. Initiating entity: Unknown. Priority: High. Ten years after the publication of the bestselling Annihilation, Authority and Acceptance – the first the basis of a now-classic film – Jeff VanderMeer brings us back for a surprise fourth and final foray into Area X. Absolution opens decades before Area X forms, with a science expedition whose mysterious end suggests terrifying consequences for the future – and marks the Forgotten Coast as a high-priority area of interest for Central, the shadowy government agency responsible for monitoring extraordinary threats. Many years later, the Forgotten Coast files wind up in the hands of a washed-up Central operative known as Old Jim. He starts pulling a thread that reveals a long and troubling record of government agents meddling with forces they clearly cannot comprehend. Soon, Old Jim is back out in the field, grappling with personal demons and now partnered with an unproven young agent, the two of them tasked with solving what may be an unsolvable mystery. With every turn, the stakes get higher: Central agents are being liquidated by an unknown rogue entity and Old Jim’s life is on the line. Old Jim’s investigation culminates in the first Central expedition into what has now been labelled Area X. A border has come down, and a full team – well trained but eccentric – has been assembled to find Area X’s 'off switch' somewhere in the volatile, dangerous terrain that has mysteriously defied all attempts to be explored, mapped or controlled. A landscape that, one way or another, seems to consume all who enter it. Sweeping in scope and rich with ideas, iconic characters and unpredictable adventure, Absolution converges the past, present and future in terrifying, ecstatic and mind-bending ways. It is the final word on one of the most provocative and popular speculative fiction series of our time.
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