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Absolution: A Southern Reach Novel - Paperback
$17.49
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Absolution: A Southern Reach Novel
$17.49
Returns: if a book arrives damaged or isn't the one you ordered, email us within 7 days of delivery and we'll replace it or refund you, usually with nothing to send back. Refund policy
Is this book for you?
- Feels
- Mind-bending, Eerie, Tense
- Kind of story
- Weird fiction, Literary science fiction, Cosmic horror
- About
- Nature, Identity, Power, Madness
- Pace
- Slow burn
- How dark
- 3 of 5. Dark, with real menace
- Romance
- None to speak of
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Complete the set: The Southern Reach series by Jeff VanderMeer
Read in this order. Absolution came out ten years later and is best read last.
- Annihilation$16.49 In your cart
- Authority$16.49 In your cart
- Acceptance$16.49 In your cart
- Absolution (this book)$17.49 In your cart
All 4 together: $66.96. Check shipping details.
Prefer one book? Area X collects the first three novels in a single hardcover. See it ($32.49)
Featured in our reading guide: Where to Start with Jeff VanderMeer
by Jeff VanderMeer. Introduction by Julia Armfield
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Locus Awards Finalist
ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF THE YEAR:
The New York Times, The Washington Post, New York magazine, Time, Kirkus, Literary Hub, Goodreads
Featuring a new introduction by award-winning author Julia Armfield.
Absolution opens decades before Area X forms, with a science expedition whose mysterious end suggests terrifying consequences for the future - and marks the Forgotten Coast as a high priority for Central, the shadowy federal agency that monitors extraordinary threats.
Many years later, the Forgotten Coast files wind up in the hands of a washed-up Central operative, Old Jim. He starts pulling a thread that reveals a long, troubling record of government agents meddling with forces they clearly cannot comprehend.
Old Jim's investigation culminates in the first Central expedition into what has now been labeled Area X. A border has come down, and a full team has been assembled to find Area X's "off switch" somewhere in the volatile, dangerous terrain that has defied all attempts to be explored, mapped, or controlled.
Absolution converges the past, present, and future in unnerving, ecstatic, and mind-bending ways. It is the final word on one of the most provocative and popular speculative fiction series of our time.
Author Biography
Jeff VanderMeer is the New York Times bestselling author of Hummingbird Salamander, the Borne novels, the Southern Reach series, the Ambergris trilogy, and Veniss Underground. He writes widely about issues relating to climate change and the environment.
Details
- Author: Jeff VanderMeer
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 480
- Published: October 21, 2025
- Size: 4.9 x 7.5 x 1.1 in
- Award: Hugo Award (2025)
- ISBN: 9781250397805
Praise
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Some of VanderMeer's best writing... 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.
Alec Nevala-Lee, The New York Times Book Review
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Against all odds, Absolution is... 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).
Jess Keiser, The Washington Post
Reader reviews on Goodreads
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