ABSOLUTION by Jeff VanderMeer Gets Ever Closer to the Finish Line

Jeff VanderMeer’s Absolution, the surprise fourth entry in his Southern Reach series continues to progress at the printer. If you’d like your copy to be sent out in the initial shipping wave, please get your order in.

Our edition will include:

• The full text of the novel;
• A full-color dust jacket;
• Full-color endsheets (different images, front and back)
• Four full-page full color interior illustrations
• Roughly 30 small line art illustrations
• A bonus section consisting of a related short story, “The Birdwatchers,” never before published in its completed form.

Along the way, the book has drawn some major praise:

“Drawing heavily on bioresearch and scientific extrapolations, this foray into the human cost of bureaucratic paranoia and the abandonment of logic to ‘hope, prayers, and blessings’ provokes, mystifies, and challenges readers in turn. VanderMeer’s horrifying declaration of the impossibility of knowing the other is a knockout.”

—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

“No character escapes with their sanity intact, though their madness may reveal greater truths that have far-reaching implications for the series. Still, VanderMeer understands that the mystery is the point, and, as told in beautiful prose infused with bizarre and disturbing images, Area X remains as fascinating and unknowable as ever.”

—Booklist (Starred Review)

“Does VanderMeer resolve lingering questions from the previous novels? Not really. But 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