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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Apr 2021, 368 pages
Paperback:
Apr 2022, 384 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Daniela Schofield
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From the author of Annihilation, a brilliant speculative thriller of dark conspiracy, endangered species, and the possible end of all things.
Security consultant "Jane Smith" receives an envelope with a key to a storage unit that holds a taxidermied hummingbird and clues leading her to a taxidermied salamander. Silvina, the dead woman who left the note, is a reputed ecoterrorist and the daughter of an Argentine industrialist. By taking the hummingbird from the storage unit, Jane sets in motion a series of events that quickly spin beyond her control.
Soon, Jane and her family are in danger, with few allies to help her make sense of the true scope of the peril. Is the only way to safety to follow in Silvina's footsteps? Is it too late to stop? As she desperately seeks answers about why Silvina contacted her, time is running out―for her and possibly for the world.
Hummingbird Salamander is Jeff VanderMeer at his brilliant, cinematic best, wrapping profound questions about climate change, identity, and the world we live in into a tightly plotted thriller full of unexpected twists and elaborate conspiracy.
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Assume I'm dead by the time you read this. Assume you're being told all of this by a flicker, a wisp, a thing you can't quite get out of your head now that you've found me. And in the beginning, it's you, not me, being handed an envelope with a key inside … on a street, in a city, on a winter day so cold that breathing hurts and your lungs creak.
A barista leans out onto the sidewalk from your local coffee shop to say, "I almost forgot."
The before of those words and the after, and you stuck in the middle. "I almost forgot." Except the barista didn't forget, was instructed to make it happen that way. "Time sensitive."
You turn in surprise to receive what someone has left for you, but you don't refuse it. Bodies don't work that way—a person hands you something, you take it. A reflex. You worry about what it is later.
Or who wants you to have it. Because the barista doesn't know. No one in the coffee shop knows. From the night before. A different shift. No chain of evidence....
In Hummingbird Salamander, readers are confronted with the physicality and fragility of both the natural environment and human existence, as well as how the latter exploits the former. Jane describes herself as a large woman who dabbled in amateur bodybuilding and wrestling in her youth; she increasingly relies on her bodily strength as the plot moves her away from working in a digital world to investigating the contradictions of analog existence. Through this investigation, Jane takes the reader on a journey of environmental decline that includes climate change, animal extinction and pandemics. The story is simultaneously comparable to our present world and one step closer to environmental ruin in a plausible warping of reality that will be familiar to fans of VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy (Annihilation, Authority and Acceptance)...continued
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(Reviewed by Daniela Schofield).
Chuck Wendig, bestselling author of Wanderers
This is an astonishing book, topical and madly compelling. A timely, unsettling novel of obsession and descent?a thriller equal parts ecological and psychological, whose puzzle warns of a natural world on the edge of ruination. There's an urgency to it, but it's not preachy. VanderMeer shines in revealing our current dystopia. Emily St. John Mandel, author of The Glass Hotel
Hummingbird Salamander is harrowing, gripping, and profound. It's both a thriller and a requiem for a disappearing world. I expect this novel will haunt me for a long time. Omar El Akkad, award-winning journalist and author of American War
Hummingbird Salamander is a profound and incendiary thriller hurtling backward from the end of the world. Jeff VanderMeer's tale of ecological and personal obsession inhabits that strange, surreal space where the natural world and human ambition collide – a space almost no other writer has chronicled with as much reverence and imaginative lucidity. The result is a detective story unlike any I've read before, futuristic in bearing but deeply relevant to this present, dangerous moment. Silvia Moreno-Garcia, author of Mexican Gothic
A strange, seductive eco-thriller ripe for our era.
In Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff VanderMeer, the main character is left a taxidermied hummingbird as a clue. Early on in the book, it is revealed that this hummingbird belongs to a now-extinct species; wildlife trafficking and environmental degradation both become themes of the novel.
Although poaching and wildlife trafficking in Latin America have not always received as much attention as those phenomena in other parts of the world, and the term "endangered species" is often more commonly associated with animals in Africa or Asia, recent reports indicate that exploitation of animals in the area risks pushing its species toward extinction.
Latin America is one of the most biodiverse areas on Earth and home to approximately 60% of...
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