Absolution by Jeff VanderMeer review – a thrilling coda to an otherworldly trilogy

This follow-up to the Southern Reach series again explores the mysteries of Area X Ten years ago, Jeff VanderMeer published the three volumes of the Southern Reach trilogy, which between them charted the incursion of the otherworldly into a stretch of Florida coastland. In Annihilation, scientists venture into what has been dubbed “Area X” and quickly find themselves physically and psychologically transformed. Authority follows a middle manager who, in the wake of this mission’s failure, is dispatched by the shady “Central” to evaluate the people who have made studying Area X their life’s work. Acceptance jumps between timelines: the days preceding Area X’s creation, the weeks preceding the departure of the mission in Annihilation, and the aftermath of Authority, in which Area X breaks its bounds and seems set to transform the world. VanderMeer had until this point been a respected fantasy author, a stalwart of the New Weird alongside such authors as China Miéville, KJ Bishop and Steph Swainston. The Southern Reach trilogy, despite shifting its register into science-horror, utilised many of the same techniques as his previous novels: it took the queasy sense that there is an under layer to reality from City of Saints and Madmen (2001); the Nabokovian intercutting of text and commentary from Shriek: An Afterword (2006); the transformation of a familiar, rational space into an uncanny one, in which the boundary between human, animal and plant is no longer discernible, from Veniss Underground (2003).