PositiveThe Guardian (UK)VanderMeer produces a near-seamless shading between the weirdness and danger of Area X, and the natural environment that preceded it ... Readers looking for a solution to Area X’s mysteries in Absolution will come away puzzled. The novel adds new information to our understanding of the site and its genesis, but also opens new questions, and leaves some dangling loose ends. What it does do is reinforce the original series’ contention – that the boundary between the uncanny and the familiar is more porous than we realise – with the observation that sometimes, at the very heart of rationality, we may find madness.
