I would like to thank Rachel Quin and 4th Estate for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher – 4th estate

Published – Out Now

Price – £18.99 hardback £12.99 Kindle ebook

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.

Warning  - this story follows (ish) Annihilation, Authority and Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer

They say you can never go home again – a surprise for the family when I turn up at Christmas. But the adage is more going back to a place you’ll never have the same experience twice. In media we have seen this when George Lucas created the Star Wars Prequels but sometimes it works really well. After some time, we can get a new perspective on the old, see that something is still relevant for today and perhaps shows us some new thrills too. Over the past few weeks, the blog has explored the Southern Reach and now in the excellent Absolution by Jeff VanderMeer we have a new story of stories in dialogue with its predecessors and as with so much of Area X itself changing it all in the process.

The Southern Reach Authority was formed after a strange event transformed part of the US coast into Area X. A strange place that plays with time, biology and appears to have its own form of acceptance. Countless expeditions have tried to penetrate its mysteries, and none have been successful. A former government and spy and a biologist (who was herself a copy of another) were last seen exploring a way to stop Area X spreading.

In many ways the human expectation is that we can finally get answers to what happened at the end of Acceptance. In characteristic form we sort of do but nothing is explicitly answered and this time what we have in Absolution is effectively three linked novellas that also explore the early history of Area X before the events of the first three books, but readers of the series will spot that the future may be now having some bearing on the past both in terms of plot, characters and even the structure of the tales itself.

In some ways the first section ‘Dead Town’ brings us to mind the events of Acceptance where we saw Saul the lighthouse keeper in the final days before he and everyone around him was transformed by Area X’s arrival. This story links to the area known as the Forgotten Coast that was mentioned the story which too had a strange lighthouse and a mysterious secret organisation investigating the site. This brings a fractal like nature to the whole novel that all of this has been seen before and will repeat itself. We have a secret team of government agents investigating this for unknown reasons and the story takes the form of a Central agent known Old Jim reading the various fragments of reports to create their own impression of what happened. It is another doomed expedition that is going to be changed by what seems an earlier incarnation of Area X. VanderMeer again excels at an ominous feeling of something terrible coming without going too explicit we are watching scientists getting slowly more paranoid and pushed out of their comfort zone. The appearance of many rabbits though should make readers of the series start to see the future is affecting the past (and a big mystery finally explained) but then VanderMeer makes the rabbits very very scary indeed. This section is incredibly well delivered and ten years on Area X (in whatever incarnation it is) is still unpredictable and frightening. The story also introduces a new sinister character the Rogue that appears to be after the Central agents and is accompanied by a huge alligator nicknamed The Tyrant. The series has lost of none of its power to confuse and astound us with natural beauty with a razor blade hidden in it.

In the next section and largest we have ‘The Lost Daughter’ which now follows Old Jim as he is sent to the Southern Reach coast by Central to investigate what is going on. This story is taking place in the same events as Acceptance but also mirrors the conspiracy thriller nature of Authority as Old Jim finds Central is not being completely honest with him about what is going on. We see the return of the two ruthless spies Jack and Jackie from the earlier books but here on their rise to power and taking no cheek from anyone. Old Jim is a fascinating and sympathetic character – a determined spy, a widower who has lost his daughter through his actions and had just been cured of alcoholism is being sent partly to pasture as he knows too much and to find out what is going on. Again, Vandermeer explores the way the spy agency known as Central is full of its own factions spying on one another and how everyone appears to have an agenda. We even play again with identity but this time rather than a cloned copy of the biologist we have a spy pretending very easily to be Old Jim’s daughter which creates both trust issues and a fascinating bond between the two characters. Its full of secret locations, spycraft and at the heart the Rogue and The Tyrant again making their presence known. For me this section does very gently suggest the next stage of the story after Acceptance but in a very surprising way. We also know that Old Jim is going to be swallowed by Area X so the tale is playing with that dissonance of a determined future and now knowing things were not quite as they seemed in the earlier books. It is my favourite of the three sections as it is so rich in texture.

We finish the novel with the final and very different section ‘The First and The Last’ this brings us back to where we started in Annihilation with an expedition into Area X but this time we are with the very very first expedition and the tale of the hero who came back and eventually controlled Central – Lowry. Here tonally very different as it is centred around a young Lowry’s perspective and prepare for an immense amount o colourful f-bombs, and he is a fairly brutal and selfish character. Here we follow the adventures of the group that we know are destined to fall into disaster. Lowry gets completely flummoxed as so many do in Area X and we worry exactly what changes await him (as we know their impact will be huge later on in the series). This time though the broader tales in Absolution circle back and just possibly suggest things are going differently…but we are not told completely is that is the case. Its more a percussive ending with a horrible character to follow (who contrasts a lot to the kind and noble Old Jim) but it is very compelling to have one final trip to this strange place and watching someone have their sense of reality altered.

Absolution is a fascinating book. Not just taking us back to the weird horror of the first series but also a story that plays with and alters the three books prior (just like Area X does to any lifeform it meets). The storyline, the characters we knew and just possibly timeline itself is being changed into a new form. We are not treading water simply in a prequel but a story that gives us that new look at the agency known as Central, Area X and all those caught up in this strange battle and suggests change is coming. This could easily be the end of the tale or perhaps the start of a new one and I am fine with either, as one thing we know about the Southern Reach series is that it never does what you expect it to. I strongly recommend this for fans of the earlier books, this time we can go home again but neither it nor us will be the same afterwards.