RaveThe Washington Post\"The new book’s title suggests apology, repentance and putting things right. It implies that VanderMeer might have set out to provide answers instead of more uncertainties...But against all odds, Absolution is, in large part, just as good as the first three novels. It works for the same reason the others did. It manages, once again, to find that rare balance between revealing (the task of the novel) and revealing too much (the danger horror must avoid). Even when it threatens to settle down into the established pattern of its predecessors, it veers, in its final third, into something entirely more alien and alienating ... Will the whole of Absolution disappoint readers? Sure, but then again, all horror disappoints eventually. It’s VanderMeer’s achievement to show that, when it comes to long-form horror, there’s good disappointment and bad. Absolution could have dragged the series’ many monsters and mysteries into a clarifying light. Instead, it sticks to the shadows, just where the best horror belongs. And while that could vex readers looking for answers, their reward is a good scare.\
David J Chalmers
PositiveThe Washington PostChalmers...is adept at making the hypothesis clear without sacrificing its complexity. Indeed, Reality+ sometimes reads like two books in one. It stands as a welcoming work for first-time readers of philosophy, full of genial references to cultural touchstones such as The Matrix and Rick and Morty. Simultaneously, it remains substantial enough for those familiar with the field and its ongoing conversations ... Reality+ is frequently weird, wild and wonderful; it captivates the common reader by refusing to condescend ... Chalmers’s writing is perspicuous and teacherly—an approach that keeps it from collapsing into recalcitrant obscurity ... The beauty we appreciated when we looked at those simulated blooms was authentic, so why would it matter that they’re not \'real\'? Chalmers argues this thesis tirelessly and well. To my mind, though, he is less convincing when he seeks to extend it ... Chalmers too quickly waves away the obvious counter-argument: that technology, while seemingly enriching life or making existence easier, necessarily alienates, diminishes and restricts.
Mark Solms
RaveThe Washington Post... exciting ... Drawing on extensive cognitive science research — much of it his own — Solms argues that Freud’s theories anticipate some key findings in current brain research. In Solms’s reckoning, those controversial ideas weren’t just ahead of their time; he proposes that they still have something to teach neuroscience today ... [Solms] makes a convincing case for paying more attention to the \'densely knotted core of the brainstem\' ... What is perhaps most striking about Solms’s project, though, is his insistence that Freud already laid the groundwork ... Thankfully, The Hidden Spring provides a necessary reminder that rational thinking isn’t all it seems to be.
Jimena Canales
PositiveThe Washington PostThe opening chapters...deftly sprint through centuries of scientific history in the course of introducing the...demons of Descartes, Laplace and Maxwell. But the book’s pace becomes more relaxed once it arrives at the 20th century ... Canales’s impressive facility with the problems and personalities of 20th-century physics serves her story well at this point. In the hands of a lesser scholar, pandemonium would threaten to take hold in the book’s concluding chapters ... Canales remains a steady, if less leisurely, guide ... Bedeviled admirably insists on recording the plain history of science. It just so happens that the history of that most rational of human endeavors reads at times like a Gothic tale, one replete with evil geniuses, time travelers and uncanny intelligences lurking in reality’s obscure corners.
