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.

The opening sections feature some of VanderMeer’s best writing ... VanderMeer, a noted Borges fan, dwells on the mundane details of Old Jim’s everyday life, aware that the power of the uncanny...lies in its uneasy contrast with the ordinary. Because he writes best in an eloquent but narrow range, however, VanderMeer has trouble shifting between registers, with even his supposedly hardheaded scientists filling their journals with implausible flights of poetry ... As readers of H.P. Lovecraft know well, such stories teeter constantly on the verge of the ridiculous. VanderMeer is usually careful not to risk it, which makes the conclusion of Absolution truly inexplicable. Old Jim’s story is followed by 100 interminable pages from the perspective of James Lowry, the sole survivor of the first expedition into Area X. VanderMeer clearly despises him, and his attempt to write in Lowry’s profane but punishingly monotonous voice destroys any lingering reverberations from the rest of the novel. Admirers of the earlier books can safely skip all but the last three chapters of this section. And yet VanderMeer still deserves to be mentioned alongside Poe, Chesterton and Borges’s other exemplars of the unheimlich, whose confrontation with the uncanny is central to the mission of speculative fiction.

Given the commercial success of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy, its open-ended conclusion, and the sad tendency of science fiction writers to pen unnecessary sequels, fill in timelines, and solve happily unresolved enigmas, it’s easy to imagine a version of Absolution, VanderMeer’s new Southern Reach book, that retroactively diminishes his former accomplishments. Instead, VanderMeer has outdone himself ... Area X does strange things to the bodies, and perhaps more importantly to the consciousness, of deserving and undeserving alike. VanderMeer has similar ambitions; he seeks to broaden his readers’ horizons and expand their sense of the possible. Maddening, haunting, and compelling, this is essential reading for anyone interested in the boundaries of speculative fiction. Just as Lowry finds it difficult to think without his swear words, many readers will find it near impossible to discuss Absolution without superlatives.

VanderMeer is a gifted writer. He uses his beautiful prose — sometimes muscular, sometimes lyrical — in service to his brand of ecological-horror science fiction that asks probing questions of human nature ... Some readers may anticipate that Absolution will answer all the plot mysteries of the Southern Reach series. Well … 'abandon all hope, ye who enter here.' VanderMeer doesn’t write to unscramble characters’ conundrums or point the future in an implied trajectory. This is not a book I would recommend for readers who want solid ground beneath their feet. Readers willing to forgo such conventions are in for a treat.

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.

The novel, like its subjects, blends and morphs, from the imaginative writing of science-fiction to the grotesqueness of horror and the paranoia of the best spy thrillers out there. All of this is by design and masterfully done by VanderMeer ... A small part of the beauty of “Absolution” comes from its language, coarse and direct at times, poetic and haunting at others. But the greater part that impresses and makes Absolution an important read for our times, are the parallels that VanderMeer creates between a world – not too dissimilar from our own – that is changing and leaking out into what surrounds it, even as that outside world tries to fight back. Sometimes, as VanderMeer seems to be saying, there is no off switch, there is only acceptance of what will come, and how we will react to those events when they do.

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.

The charm (and frustration) of VanderMeer’s epic saga about the mysterious Area X is how much information is withheld, making the reader unsure of where they stand until the story explodes into uncanny and horrifying terrain. In that regard, the fourth entry in the series sticks to type, roughly focused on events preceding and following the earlier books ... Lowry’s sections feature some of the most vivid writing in the entire series, sinuous and delightfully weird. 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.

...an eerie and evocative coda to his Southern Reach horror-fantasy trilogy ... 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.