From the mushroom spore and fungus infected world of Ambergris to the mysterious dangerous zones of the Southern Reach trilogy that spread and distort reality, the visions of Jeff Vandermeer are strange and, quite literally, in a world of their own. As the originator of a new genre that you could call eco-noir, each of those series has an detective/investigator acting as a guide for the reader as they try to to make sense of the peculiar nature of a changing world. That's much the format of the mystery of VanderMeer's latest standalone (but who can ever know) novel, Hummingbird Salamander, a near-future novel that grapples with issues of climate change, natural disasters, animal extinction and pandemic crises, all interconnected and wrapped up in an abstract noir mystery that needs to be unravelled ultimately for the greater good of all mankind.

Jane Smith is not actually a detective but is involved in security. Although she is a former body-builder, she actually works as an IT security analyst, holding a managerial position in a career that has few women. For some unknown reason she is passed a message in a more traditional way that is however just as secretive and hard to break as IT encryption. A package is handed to her containing an address and a key to a storage facility out of the city. There, she finds a room with a box on a chair; nothing else. Inside the box is a taxidermied hummingbird and a note from someone called Silvina with the code words "Hummingbird Salamander".

As she has been given a hummingbird but no salamander it's evidently like a cryptic clue, a missing element that holds the key to a mystery. It's clear that there is a need for circumspection and covert activity, one that needs to be done by conventional analogue means as far as possible, since - as an IT security expert - she knows that every action, key stroke and search on an IT system is potentially observed and recorded. But where to start and what to make of this strange riddle? What soon becomes apparent is that the mystery involves a powerful corporate conglomerate and that any probing into their below the board activities could prove very dangerous indeed.

As you expect from Jeff VanderMeer, nothing is that straightforward or clear, as Jane takes her investigation down many abstract avenues, using a work conference to exploring taxidermy and antique shops as well through what she thinks are discreet computer searches. She needs to be satisfied she understands the significance of the hummingbird before she moves on to the salamander, an abstraction that sums up everything that is delightful, surreal and at the same time simple about the complexity of the abstract connections that the author uses here.

VanderMeer builds that sense of paranoid tension well, establishing a world that is slightly off-kilter and obsessed with security and keeping things hidden. There's a need to go beyond encryption into abstraction, leaving clues that only a human being with all the data can follow without leaving behind a vast data trail on the internet. It sounds like a far-fetched paranoid view of the near-future, but of course it taps into a reality that we are living with now, where technology is becoming more important and human analysis, intuition and experience is being neglected, diminishing us as human beings.

That however is just one of many topics and issues you can look for in Hummingbird Salamander, but there are many ways you can view the way it balances the fake world we have created around corporations, shell companies, illegal trade, industrial espionage and even toxic masculinity, with the impact and harm that such activities have on the natural world. Rather than just draw on the current state of the world as a means to depict apocalyptic catastrophe and extinction events however VanderMeer sees change as a way forward. We might not change the world but it could change us.

He ties these all these meaningful themes of corporate rape of the natural world, climate change, security and paranoia in a surveillance society up in a typically dense noir web of intrigue, mystery and double dealing in a distinct way that is - without wishing to pin him down, as that would be impossible - very much Jeff VanderMeer.

What an interesting concept and a concept it may well should have stayed. An ecological thriller with grandiose ambitions that sucked me right in with the opening chapters and then...fizzled. I'm not sure what didn't click for me - was it the clipped pacing of the sentences, the fact the main character isn't likeable and the plot itself devolves into something other than I was expecting. If a fan of Jeff VanderMeer then you may get more out of this than I did!

I loved this book immeasurably.

Hummingbird Salamander veers away from Vandermeer’s usual storytelling but maintains everything about it that makes him so special. The book follows an unnamed security analyst as she desperately grasps for answers from a mysterious ecoterrorist regarding the end of the world and a hunt for a taxidermy salamander. In true Vandermeerian fashion, the story focuses on ecological depletion and exploitation in the form of wildlife trafficking.
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This was very much a story told through what it left out. The mystery itself was captivating yet cryptic, and for about 200 pages we had the same tiny amounts of info, following the story through the protagonist’s downward spiral as she became increasingly desperate for answers that eventually lead her to confront her past. Even when we got information it was sparse and required us to find answers in the consequences they created which I LOVED because Vandermeer gives us no answers and so, whereas usually in thrillers the protagonist focalises their logic and workings out, in this book we have to do all of that work ourselves. So while the story is told in hindsight, we still experience the events as though they are happening in real time which really emphasises the urgency of it which is something rather unique that I don’t recall having read much of. I still don’t think I’ve pieced it all together and will be thinking about this one for a long long time to come.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher and the author for the free copy, in exchange for an honest review.

THis is the first non-speculative Vandermeer book I have read; the rest are SFF to some degree (as far as I know.) Some parts of it I loved, and some parts I struggled with, but I overall found the book a really positive and engaging read. It's beautifully written, full of paranoia and sadness and love for the natural world, and has an intriguing main character who is difficult because she is so uncompromising.

For the areas I struggled with, I think this was largely down to expectation. The book is billed as an eco thriller, but it doesn't really meet my internal definitions of thriller, and I'm not sure it would meet industry ones either? I spent a year reading commercial thrillers to prepare for writing a thriller myself, and my understanding was that thrillers have a certain kind of structure. In HS, very few of the MC's plot goals are accomplished in the way that she hopes, put it that way, and the structure is sprawling rather than corseted.

When I let go of the idea that this was meant to be a thriller, and read it more as a deeply literary meditation on the collapse of civilisation as part of the aftermath of humanity's destruction of the natural world, then I found I enjoyed it much more. I stopped expecting certain plot point to unfold in certain ways, and could just embrace the book for what it was trying to do, and what it was trying to say.

In that sense, I approached Hummingbird much as I approached Dead Astronauts: by letting go of the proverbial wheel and trusting Vandermeer to present something artistic and unusual, a liminal book that defies its own structure.

Oh my gosh, where do I even start with this review? I haven't previously read any VanderMeer, but I have seen VanderMeer's novels all over bookstagram and have been meaning to read Annihalation and others for some time. When I saw a copy of VanderMeer's latest novel up for review, I had to click request and cross all my fingers and toes for approval. I feel super lucky and grateful to be accepted..

Hummingbird Salamander is a really unique story. The pace is fast throughout, making it incredibly difficult to put down. All characters met along the way each have their own voice, character and mystery about them, which meant I was desperate to learn more, and didn't want any distractions whilst I had my nose in the novel.

I loved the thill of the mystery, the animals and the detail. I also really loved that I had absolutely no idea what was going to happen or where the mystery might lead next, something I find really hard to find reading novels nowadays.

I've already recommended it to so many people, it is well worth a read!

Plus the cover is so beautiful!

Thanks to NetGalley, 4th Estate and Jeff VanderMeer for an eArc copy of this novel for review!

In Hummingbird Salamander we are following the traces of Jane Smith from the moment she receives an envelope with a key inside. In the bank safe box to which it belongs is a stuffed hummingbird, left to her by Silvina, a recently deceased ecoterrorist. From then on, Jane’s life changes completely. She is being chased by unknown people that try to steal her secret, a secret she doesn’t even know herself. Eventually Jane sees no other way than leaving her family behind for their own safety, and going into hiding, while in the meantime she keeps investigating — incognito — what Silvina was up to.

With books/series like Borne and Southern Reach, Jeff VanderMeer has already shown us that he excels in picturing a dystopian society that is fascinating but not necessarily easy to understand. VanderMeer’s books are works of speculative fiction that are sometimes very weird, and sometimes not so much. Hummingbird Salamander is an “easier” story because, although it contains several speculative elements, for the most part it’s set up as an action thriller.

Jane is a badass character. She’s is not the typical slender woman that, from an underdog position, appears to be stronger than we expected. On the contrary, Jane is tall, firm, strong. She is a security protocol analyst and has a somewhat obscure past of which we don’t get to know that much. She is foul-mouthed and doesn’t seem the kind of person you expect to be a housewife and mother. Yet she is that, too. Many of these aspects of Jane’s personality and past are hinted at, but not developed much. The only thing we know for sure is that Jane is the author of this book and that “Jane Smith” is not her real name. VanderMeer has done a good job in keeping this story as mysterious as possible.

“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.”

There is a prologue told in the second person form. As a reader you are addressed directly and hereby brought up to speed. After two pages, Jane takes over and starts telling from a first person’s view. She uses short sentences, both in the descriptive parts as in the dialogues. There is a lot she leaves untold and often jumps into action rather suddenly, without us really knowing why. The result of this is that readers are constantly running behind the facts. Every answer leads to more new questions. But this keeps you reading, it stimulates your curiosity, although it also tests your patience at times. The story is most of the times good enough to not let this become an issue. Only around two thirds of the story, there is a small dip during which not a lot happens, and at that moment I got a little bit impatient and wanted things to progress a little faster and some answers being given.

“Like many species that have northern-skewed ranges for breeding, S. griffin is a snowbird and migrates closer to the phylogenetic nexus of hummingbirds in South America. S. griffin winters (December–March) in the Andes (where, of course, it is actually summer). [. . .]”

The integration of the naiad hummingbird and the road newt into the story is very well done, very detailed also. There are some informative paragraphs included about the animals that seem to have been copied from an encyclopaedia, with all kinds of details on how they look, what they eat, how they migrate… These interludes are not really needed for the story but they show how much detail is put into the book, because the animals actually don’t exist and yet are developed better than Jane is. They are invented by Dr. Meghan Brown and these descriptions are helping the reader understand the effects of climate change. The animals are so convincingly explained that I didn’t immediately realise they were inventions. Until I decided to search the internet for some pictures . . . :-) The inclusion of these animals emphasise that this book is a lot about ecology and the effects of climate change.

Hummingbird Salamander doesn’t appear to be set in the future, or at least not in a very far future. Next to that, the environmental problems described are quite realistic. The atmosphere of the book is somewhat dejected, which reinforces the urgency of the problems we are facing. The idea that everything is messed up and that there is little hope for improvement, is strongly present. This makes the sense of urgency vivid. At the same time you are not bombarded with this, it’s a sentiment that is just there all the time, right beneath the surface. The eco-problems (and an approaching pandemic — hmm, I wonder where that idea came from . . .) are mentioned, but in essence the story has more of a thriller. Jane is chased, Jane is beaten up, Jane fights back. The end, in which things come together and get explained, is when the story becomes openly speculative. This ending lacks some elaboration it could use though. If we would not have been in the digital era, one could have believed the author ran out of paper or ink or something. Everything comes together too suddenly, many questions get answered in few pages, and yet, some questions don’t. I didn’t get an answer to exactly these things I really wanted to know, which are the events after when the story ends. Apart from that this was an appealing read.

(Many thanks to NetGalley and 4th Estate and William Collins for an ADRC in exchange for an honest review.)

I'm honestly not sure if I liked that or not. I think overall I did but there were definitely parts that I struggled through.

The book is narrated by an unnamed woman who just calls herself Jane Smith. She lives a fairly normal life with her husband and teenage daughter, and works for a cybersecurity consulting company. She is left a note by someone called Silvina, which leads her to a storage facility where she finds a taxidermied hummingbird. This all starts a chain reaction where her life is upended and she gets involved in things that has potential to impact the whole planet.

'Jane Smith' must be one of the most unpleasant main protagonists I have ever read. I've been trying to think why in that I have definitely read about characters that were so much worse in almost every singe way. However I think it's a mixture of the setting and apathy that really made me dislike her. She literally doesn't really care about anyone in her life except for a dead brother and a woman she has never met, both of which have the advantage of not being around.

The other thing is the setting which seems basically like 'now' in our world, there is even a pandemic that is mentioned and I am so curious as to whether the author had already included that or added it later in the process of writing. Being set in our world it just makes her seem more realistic which then makes her apathy even harder to take. I'm sure there are people like that around but luckily enough I don't know them. Also kudos to the author for creating a very believable character.

The writing is almost stream of thought and is very atmospheric. In the beginning it was quite tense as you and the protag start to realise that there is actually something big happening that will change everything for her. The middle dragged a bit and then it picked up again towards the end. Again I was ambivalent towards this style, parts I felt worked well, and as mentioned, other times it dragged. To be fair though I was very interested throughout as to where the whole thing was going.

This is not an easy read and will probably not be for everyone but it is rather different which is always a plus. I'm not even sure this is a science fiction book or just a straight forward thriller. This is an unsettling read and is very on point for what is going on around us right now and though I had issues with it, I'm glad I read it. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance copy of this.

3.5 stars rounded down.

"We must change to see the world change"

The more I read about him and his works, the more I appreciate Jeff Vandermeer. His love for nature radiates from every word he writes. I cannot but have the outmost respect for his dedication and implication in preserving wildlife and nature, in general. His #VanderWild tweets are a delight. Even from this book, "a percentage of the royalties will go to environmental organizations dedicated to fighting wildlife smuggling", as he noted in the acknowledgments.

Because wildlife trafficking is what this book is about. Disguised as a thriller/mystery novel, set "ten seconds into the future", it deals also with "bioterrorism, ecoterrorism, and climate change".

Do not get mislead that the book is about Jane/Jill Smith, the security consultant, which risks everything in a quest devised by someone she doesn't even know. She could be any of us and this is even more emphasized by the fact that she has such a generic name. Preserving wildlife, fighting climate change, taking care of the environment, are not tasks only for big organizations, but for each and every one of us. And most of the times, it involves making sacrifices.

Even the choice for the name Silvina, the woman who puts this whole quest in motion, is not random, from my point of view; it is derived from Silvana, meaning "one who lives in the forest", a very fitting name as I came to discover later.

And from these outlines, the author has drawn a story that left me shattered. I disliked Jane at first, because I did not understand her wild-goose chase. But the more I read, the more I became immersed in the story and understood its meaning. Being told from her point of view, the narrative really gets to you: the hidden traumas from her past, the apparently indifference of how others (and herself) see her, the loneliness, the struggles... It is quite rare for me to identify myself with a character, but I did it here. She's such a compelling narrator that I couldn't escape. And in the end it left me drained.

What more can I say? I loved this novel: the worldbuilding, the reality of it, Jane's quest, Silvana's plans, the dark and eerie atmosphere, the perpetual feeling that everything is doomed up until it isn't, and most of all, the mesagge it carries: that even if the whole world is against us, each of us can make a difference and have an impact on this world, but we have to make some sacrifices. The question is, how far are we willing to go?

"Impossible to tell how fast society was collapsing because history had been riddled through with disinformation, and reality was composed of half-fictions and full-on paranoid conspiracy theories."

"Those of us who survived the pandemic, and all the rest, passed through so many different worlds. Like time travelers. Some of us lived in the past. Some in the present, some in an unknowable future.[...] So we stitched our way through what remained of life not so much in bubbles but in varying levels of unreality. Even as past, present, future lived in all of us. The wounds deeper. The disconnect higher."

"Fires, floods, disease, nuclear contamination, foreign wars, civil unrest, police brutality, drought, massive electrical outages, famine. It accumulated, oozed in around the cracks in our day-to-day. Always over there. Always somewhere else."

"What is the world like after the end of the world? Is there a hummingbird, a salamander? Is there a you?"

'Hummingbird Salamander' was an incredibly hard slog for me, in large part because of the narration. I haven't read 'Annihilation', so I don't know if this is simply VanderMeer's signature style and I'm one of the few people who can't connect with it. I'm sad I didn't like it, because VanderMeer comes across as a great person on Twitter and has an undeniable passion for the natural world, and we cannot have enough books about the coming consequences of climate change and biodiversity destruction.

The main problem with the narration, for me, was how it never let me settle and ground myself as a reader. Jane is openly evasive, suggesting we don't take anything she tells us for granted. We flitter from scene to scene with the speed and blur of a hummingbird. The style of writing in this book comes across as Don DeLillo-like, albeit with less pretension. The end result was that my eyes kept skating off the words, and I found it hard to absorb details. I stuck with it because I felt compelled enough to discover the mystery of the hummingbird and something of Jane's fate (though it's plain from page 1 that nothing definitive will be shared), but it wasn't an enjoyable reading experience.

(With thanks to 4th Estate and NetGalley for this ebook in exchange for an honest review)

Hummingbird Salamander is a novel about ecoterrorism and a near future end of the world, as an IT security analyst finds herself drawn into a mystery. The narrator, who we only know probably isn't called 'Jane Smith', works for a tech security company in the Pacific Northwest, but when she is given an envelope with a key to a storage unit containing a taxidermy hummingbird, she becomes embroiled in a strange and dangerous mystery that leads to an eco-terrorist with a father in shady business. She doesn't know this woman, but now they are connected, and everything she does starts to play out a story with twists and turns that looks back into her past and towards the future.

Set in a a near future with a proliferation of drones but which is generally recognisable, this is a speculative thriller that looks at eco issues whilst unfolding a twisty plotline. The protagonist has a distinctive narrative voice that I found hard to get into at first, and which may have contributed towards the fact that I found it difficult to tell what was going on, particularly during the third part of the novel. There were a few too many mysterious characters that the protagonist referred to in quirky ways, and I found it hard to keep track. Luckily, the ending was more simplified, though I'm not sure it came together enough for me, as someone who kept getting lost with what was going on.

I liked the survivalist elements and the unlikely—and at times unlikeable—protagonist, an ex-bodybuilder IT analyst who was more interesting than if the main character had been a generic man. My problem was that I found it hard to keep up with the unfolding plot, which meant I got quite bored partway through. I've heard of Jeff VanderMeer but not read any of his books before, so maybe it's just not quite a genre for me, but Hummingbird Salamander an interesting look as one future through the eyes of a distinctive protagonist.