
Hummingbird Salamander
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Buy Now for £12.99
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Narrated by:
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Lisa Flanagan
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By:
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Jeff VanderMeer
About this listen
A speculative thriller about the end of all things, set in the Pacific Northwest. A harrowing descent into a secret world.
'Jane Smith' receives an unexplained envelope containing the key to a storage unit. And inside that storage unit is a taxidermy hummingbird and directions to a taxidermy salamander. Somehow, this bizarre treasure hunt, that Jane never expected or asked for, sets in motion a series of events that quickly put her and her family in danger.
As she desperately seeks answers, she discovers time is running out–for her and possibly for the world.
©2021 Jeff VanderMeer (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers LimitedCritic reviews
"An existential mindf--k cleverly disguised as a thriller. Though the plot never stops rocketing forward, this astonishing novel continually shifts and expands in scale, until the puzzle the narrator is tasked with solving at the outset becomes an almost Matrix-like invitation to open herself up to a new and shattering understanding of her world, and ours. Visionary, dark, beautiful, and strange, Hummingbird Salamander is that rare novel that coaxes you into imagining the unimaginable." (Kristen Roupenian, author of You Know You Want This: Cat Person and Other Stories)
"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." (Emily St. John Mandel, author of The Glass Hotel)
"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." (Omar El Akkad, award-winning journalist and author of American War)
"Frankly superb. This pummelling eco-thriller camouflages the true ‘understory’ of societal collapse, and glows in the dark with original thinking." (David Mitchell, author of Utopia Avenue)
"This is climate fiction at its most urgent and gripping." (The New York Times)
"Harrowing, gripping, and profound. It's both a thriller and a requiem for a disappearing world." (Emily St. John Mandel, author of The Glass Hotel)
Best audiobook so far this year
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Beautiful and devastating view of a future
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An intelligent and thought provoking thriller
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Challenging journey
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a great listen
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The Southern Reach Trilogy are some of my favourite books of all time and this didn't get anywhere near those for me in terms of story or tension.
If you like noir...
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narrator: please just read?
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lovely book, brilliant narrator, thanks
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- Unsympathetic main character
- Couple of interesting moments here or there
- Last 20 chapters or so pick up a bit
- Narration is decent enough
I'm amazed I finished it
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I tried to like this one. On the surface it has everything I love.
Weird fiction. Science fiction elements. Spy thriller elements.
Plus, it's message is a very pertinent one. This may well be how the world ends, as our beautiful planet dies around us and we try to keep going until we can't anymore.
But "Jane Doe" is too much of an unsympathetic, unengaging character for me to care about her or her story.
She's dismissive, aloof, nasty, biting, and at times, downright mean to those around her. She insults a taxi driver early on in the book for no reason, other than that she can, I expect.
Her internal monologue is self-obsessed. Her views on the world around utterly bleak and hopeless.
And while it is indeed a hopeless world created here, I don't see the point of continuing with a story that has no likable characters in it to root for.
I've read a lot about how this work subverts the genres it has slotted itself into. About how it's telling us if we don't get our act together, then we're all doomed like these people in this book.
But if this is humanity as it is in real life, I don't care enough to want to save it. None of these characters are good. Least of all Jane and her awful family.
The writing itself is good. Vandermeer can obviously write well.
The rest of it, however, is unengaging and dull. Even the set pieces fail to impress.
Perhaps the worst of it is that this is a novel with a message. An important message. But the awful leads, heavy handed handling of the message itself, and general lack of any sort of hope means that the ones who most need to hear this message won't.
All in all, I wasted my money on this work and I really wish I hadn't.
Unsympathetic Main Character Ruins Good Writing
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