Tag Archives: Jeff Vandermeer

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: Vandermeer Appreciation Month

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In October I read almost all of Jeff Vandermeer's novels.

I read the Ambergris trilogy:

  • The City Of Saints and Madmen (re-read) - still an incredibly good evocation of place and environment. The city Vandermeer creates in these loosely connected stories is such a full on experience.  You can feel the menacing dampness and the uneasy sense that the mushrooms have more control than anyone realizes.
  • Shriek (first read) - probably my least favorite of his novels, this felt like an extended character introduction that wasn't really needed for the series. Non of the characters really had a goal other than revealing more information about the city.
  • Finch (first read) - now we get a detective story in the fungus-city. Duncan Shriek (from the second book) gets a role that makes sense here, so I guess that made the second book worth it, but this was still a much better book. Finch (the detective) actually has a goal that's not "look at this weird city!" A good finish to the series.

I read the Southern Reach trilogy (and the newly published fourth book) and enjoyed this more than I remembered, these are better books than I had previously given them credit for.

  • Annihilation (re-read)
  • Authority (re-read)
  • Acceptance (re-read)
  • Absolution (first read) - still in the middle of this.

I didn't re-read the Borne series, but I think those books are still my favorite Vandermeer.

Lastly, I read his stand alone book from 2021 that I bought but never actually read before

  • Hummingbird Salamander (first read) - more detective, less fungus. I feel like this book was missing Vandermeer's strength, which is overwhelming the reader with environment (the city in Ambergris, Area X in the Southern Reach novels, the Lab in the Borne series...) and that just wasn't here.  He still writes a good thriller with environmental themes, but this didn't get me as much as the others.

It's always fun to just plow through a bunch of novels on a theme, and I've found a particular joy in re-reading a bunch of novels and series this year.

What did you read this month?

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: Series

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This month I finished Jeff Vandermeer's Southern Reach trilogy (pictured above if I figured out the header thing correctly). He released all 3 books this year, and it was kind of nice to be able to finish one and know that the next was coming out in a month or two (eat your heart out GRRM fans!).

The series itself was interesting and at times really good. A portion of the coastline has been cordoned off and designated as "Area X" after an incident. Several expeditions have been sent in, but none have been successful in determining exactly what is going on.

Annihilation follows the twelfth expedition into Area X,
Authority follows what happens at The Southern Reach, the organization sending in the expeditions, in the aftermath of book 1.
Acceptance sends some characters back into Area X and investigates the incident that started the whole thing.

The setting in all of these books is awesomely weird. In Area X, in the Southern Reach, the feeling of isolation, paranoia, and alienation comes through in a very real way. The plot tended to lose itself occasionally. In book 1, you spend the entire book inside the head of the narrator, and she doesn't know what's going on any more than you do. As I said above, that's great for an atmosphere of paranoia and isolation, but not so great for figuring out what is going on. Books 2 and 3 deliver a bit more in the plot department, making book 1 almost the foreword to the rest of the trilogy.

I enjoyed the series. It didn't blow me away, but I liked the weirdness enough that I was glad to have read it.

On the subject of series, I was looking through my "recently read" list and I have started a bunch of different series that I just haven't got around to finishing. Maybe next year that will be a good reading goal. How about the Citizens of the WGOM? What series have you finished recently? What series have you started recently? What series has you patiently awaiting the next volume?

Put all that, or any other book stuff below.