Hummingbird Salamander

April 1, 2021

VanderMeer's latest is a departure from his previous work (Borne; Ambergris; the "Southern Reach" trilogy") in that it is less ostensibly science fiction. The story centers on a narrator who calls herself Jill, though this is not her real name. Jill is mysteriously contacted by old friend Silvina, who sends a note directing her to a storage space containing a taxidermied hummingbird. Jill is compelled to investigate Silvina and discovers a network of ecological initiatives and possible bioterrorism funded by her wealthy family. (Silvina means "of the forest" in Latin, so her character is aptly named.) Suddenly, Jill is plunged into a dangerous web of murder and violence perpetrated by former colleagues of Silvina's, which continues until Jill narrowly escapes death and loses everything. Revelations about Jill's family lead to a simmering conclusion. VERDICT VanderMeer brings his trademark atmospheric and heavily lyrical writing style to the arena of species extinction and climate degradation. He shows that, in a creepily curious way, taxidermy and extinction are intertwined fates for doomed animals. There is an implied connection to the present COVID-19 pandemic, with dire consequences. Recommended for fans of the author, though mainstream readers may find the story deliberately inscrutable.--Henry Bankhead, San Rafael P.L., CA

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Starred review from March 15, 2021
VanderMeer, who usually toils in the well-turned soil of dystopian fantasy (Dead Astronauts, 2019), moves to neighboring terrain this time, offering a noirish conspiracy thriller with its own dystopian shadings. A security consultant who instructs the reader to call her ""Jane Smith" (her real name is only one of the secrets she keeps well vested) receives a key to a storage locker. The locker holds the preserved remains of a hummingbird and a note directing Jane to the whereabouts of a similarly preserved salamander. Simply by removing the hummingbird from the locker, she puts her life and those of her family in dire jeopardy. What emerges is a riveting story of environmental plunder in which an Argentinian entrepreneur is raping the forests of the Pacific Northwest for profit, much to the chagrin of his ecoterrorist daughter, who hopes to use Jane to foil her father. VanderMeer is a marvelous craftsman. Every word here feels carefully chosen; every sentence has a purpose; every plot point causes ripples felt through the rest of the story, including Jane's opening remark that she intends to show us "how the world ends." The author's devoted fans will flock to this novel, and they will be richly rewarded. Switching genres with aplomb, VanderMeer knocks his conspiracy thriller out of the park.

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Starred review from January 15, 2021
The prolific VanderMeer moves from fantasy into noir territory with this version of an eco-thriller. The natural world always takes a front-row seat in a VanderMeer yarn--see, for example, Borne (2017) or Dead Astronauts (2019)--even if it's a natural world that has suffered at human hands and by human tinkering. That's true of this story as well, which opens with a tantalizing puzzle: A mysterious woman named Silvina has left behind a coded message for a security expert who suggests that we call her "Jane Smith" and who adds that she is "here to show you how the world ends." That clue involves a taxidermic hummingbird, the last of its kind, and, following a few ellipses in the accompanying note, the word salamander. No, not Salander, though Jane has a number of things in common with Stieg Larsson's heroine: She can pound most dudes into tapioca, and she's pretty handy with a gun and a computer, too. The story, as it develops by twists and turns, involves a very, very wealthy South American bad guy who's been raping the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest and doing a little exotic wildlife smuggling on the side while his daughter has become an eco-warrior who doesn't mind the detonation of a few bombs in order to save wildlife. Naturally, the bad guy isn't entirely bad, the good woman isn't entirely good, and their stories intertwine in nicely tangled ways. It wouldn't be a VanderMeer story, no matter what the genre, without a post-apocalyptic turn, and after all the assorted villains (one of them in particular very evil indeed) and oversized amphibians and mad-scientist taxidermists and exploding heads, it's sort of nice to get to a future that no one will survive--one that strongly resembles 2020, for that matter. A daring change of genres, and an entertaining whirlwind at that.

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