Absolution, Jeff VanderMeer
Absolution, Jeff VanderMeer
3 Rating(s)
List: $26.95 | Sale: $18.86
Club: $13.47

Absolution

Bestseller

Author: Jeff VanderMeer

Narrator: Bronson Pinchot

Unabridged: 14 hr 52 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/22/2024


Synopsis

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERThe surprise fourth volume in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach series―and the final word on one of the most provocative and popular speculative fiction series of our time.When the Southern Reach trilogy was first published a decade ago, it was an instant sensation, celebrated in a front-page New York Times story before publication, hailed by Stephen King and many others. Each volume climbed the bestseller list; awards were won; the books made the rare transition from paperback original to hardcover; the movie adaptation became a cult classic. All told, the trilogy has sold more than a million copies and has secured its place in the pantheon of twenty-first-century literature.And yet for all this, for Jeff VanderMeer there was never full closure to the story of Area X. There were a few mysteries that had gone unsolved, some key points of view never aired. There were stories left to tell. There remained questions about who had been complicit in creating the conditions for Area X to take hold; the story of the first mission into the Forgotten Coast―before Area X was called Area X―had never been fully told; and what if someone had foreseen the world after Acceptance? How crazy would they seem? Structured in three parts, each recounting a new expedition, Absolution is a brilliant, beautiful, and ever-terrifying plunge into unique and fertile literary territory. There are some long-awaited answers here, to be sure, but also more questions, and profound new surprises. It is the final word on one of the most provocative and popular speculative fiction series of our time.

About Jeff VanderMeer

Jeff VanderMeer is an award-winning novelist and editor. His fiction has appeared in the Library of America’s American Fantastic Tales and in multiple anthologies. His recent books have made the year’s best books lists of Publishers Weekly, San Francisco Chronicle, and Amazon.com.

About Bronson Pinchot

Bronson Pinchot, Audible’s Narrator of the Year for 2010, has won Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Awards, AudioFile Earphones Awards, Audible’s Book of the Year Award, and Audie Awards for several audiobooks, including Matterhorn, Wise Blood, Occupied City, and The Learners. A magna cum laude graduate of Yale, he is an Emmy- and People’s Choice-nominated veteran of movies, television, and Broadway and West End shows. His performance of Malvolio in Twelfth Night was named the highlight of the entire two-year Kennedy Center Shakespeare Festival by the Washington Post. He attended the acting programs at Shakespeare & Company and Circle-in-the-Square, logged in well over 200 episodes of television, starred or costarred in a bouquet of films, plays, musicals, and Shakespeare on Broadway and in London, and developed a passion for Greek revival architecture.


Reviews

Goodreads review by John on October 06, 2024

My review of Absolution is published at Grimdark Magazine. Absolution is the surprise fourth volume of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach series, which began with Annihilation and continued with Authority and Acceptance. The original trilogy was published in rapid succession ten years ago, all three vo......more

Goodreads review by BJ on September 23, 2024

This forgotten coast prequel is not strictly necessary. But if, like me, you loved the twisted wierd-fiction spycraft and inscrutible bureaucratic intrigue of Control and Authority just as much as the shock-to-the-system wierdness of Annihilation—then you’re going to want to pick this one up, too. Ab......more

Goodreads review by Trish on September 30, 2024

At first, I was almost disappointed as this 4th book in the Southern Reach series seemed way too tame, almost boring. But then it dawned on me that I was about to make the same damned mistake those scientists of the first expedition made: I was underestimating what exactly I was dealing with. So I d......more

Goodreads review by The Speculative Shelf on October 28, 2024

Crossing the border into Area X again feels like slipping back into a strange, hypnotic dream. A decade in the making, Absolution is the fourth installment in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach “trilogy.” Thankfully, this isn’t an Indiana Jones 4 situation—Southern Reach purists won’t have to hold thei......more

Goodreads review by C.F. on October 30, 2024

An absolutely disappointing collection of novellas. It starts off with “Dead Town,” which reads like a story treatment, with good-ish (at the very least original) ideas, and seems retrofitted into a novella. There are some highlights, however, such as this passage (my favorite in the book): “Staring......more


Quotes

“With a riveting pace and an enthralling voice, Bronson Pinchot takes listeners on three terrifying expeditions into the unknown…Pinchot embodies each member of each expedition and takes us through their descent into disbelief and madness…Nothing is as it seems, and Pinchot narrates on, holding our attention in a vise that continues to tighten and strangle our breath.” AudioFile

“Anxiety-inducing…unforgettable…worth the wait.” Time

“Againt all odds, Absolution is…just as good as the first three novels…it sticks to the shadows, just where the best horror belongs." Washington Post

“Absolution…reinforce the original series’ contention—that the boundary between the uncanny and the familiar is more porous than we realize—with the observation that sometimes, at the very heart of rationality, we may find madness.” The Guardian (London)

“Eerie and evocative…VanderMeer’s horrifying declaration of the impossibility of knowing the other is a knockout.” Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“As told in beautiful prose infused with bizarre and disturbing images, Area X remains as fascinating and unknowable as ever.” Booklist (starred review)

“Science fiction with a gothic horror twist, this is a creepy, transfixing tale of isolation at the end of the world.” Barnes&Noble.com

“It makes me so happy that so many people are going to read such a spectacularly strange novel.” Literary Hub

“The main theme of the trilogy was always unknowability—untrustworthy leaders, reckless wildlife, and complicated humans are his constant focus, and here he cannily balances the strangeness with the terror of confronting it.” Kirkus Reviews

“I‘m loving The Southern Reach trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer. Creepy and fascinating.” Stephen King, #1 New York Times bestselling author, praise for the series


Awards

  • Publishers Weekly Pick
  • Audible Pick
  • Apple Books
  • New York Times Pick
  • Time Magazine Pick
  • Washington Post Pick
  • New York Magazine Top 10 Books
  • Kirkus Reviews Pick
  • Literary Hub Pick
  • New York Times Bestseller
  • Indigo Pick
  • Esquire Pick
  • Los Angeles Times bestseller
  • Barnes & Noble Best Book
  • Barnes & Noble Pick
  • Discover Sci-Fi Pick