Unfortunately I was unable to download this book before the archive date, so I'm not able to leave a review. I look forward to reading and reviewing books by this author in the future.

"Dead Astronauts" is a well written and interesting book. It was a bit difficult to get into at first but I definitely enjoyed the read.

VanderMeer could not be any more genius. My favorite living author. Innovative, powerful, edge of your seat.

DEAD ASTRONAUTS was featured in both Gabino Iglesias' Most Anticipated Books of 2019 column [https://litreactor.com/columns/the-most-anticipated-books-of-2019-the-second-half] and his Best of 2019 list:

"Dead Astronauts" by Jeff VanderMeer

This is the wildest, most imaginative thing VanderMeer has written, and that's saying a lot. This book soars. It's engaging, dark, weird, timely, and important.

I had a somewhat harder time getting into this book than the other's I've read by Vandermeer who's style of writing about both the horror and the beauty of apocalyptic times really appeals to me, but overall I enjoyed it and would recommend it to other especially if they already like his work. His interest in the way that nature responds to the actions of man upon it is both sad and beautiful.

Love Jeff Vandermeer and his ideas--I also love poetic language, but this one went deep into confusing poetic language and lacked on the suspense that made his other books hard to put down. I couldn't widely recommend this book as an entry to his work due to its complex nature. I wish the book was longer, allowing some more straight narrative in between the dense sections.

Stunning and Hypnotic

This book is deeply cool and quietly elegant. If you're open, not distracted, and take you're time, and if you are in the right place and mood while reading it, you stand an excellent chance of having a very good time indeed.

I was hesitant because I had no familiarity with the work that preceded this, ("Borne"). I stuck with it because it was so well written and compelling that I was willing to go along for the ride even if I didn't at first understand what I was looking at out the windows. But surprisingly soon it all started to come into focus and the book and the story and the world and the characters all made sense. So don't miss this just because you fear it will be too hard to jump into. And don't be put off by complaints it's "too abstract"; just move around mentally until you get the right perspective.

This was easily one of the finest "weird" books I've read, and the characters, (especially the three rebels, and the messianic blue fox), have made a truly memorable impression. Stunning on so many levels.

(Please note that I received a free ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

I love everything that Jeff VanderMeer does. I think this was such a wonderful addition to the Bourne world. It was beautiful and heartbreaking and the imagery was absolutely beyond perfect. I absolutely can't wait for what comes next!

I sometimes enjoy VanderMeer's writing, but I haven't come across anything that I really liked as a whole and this is no different. I love weird books but this was just too weird, repetitive, and frustrating to read.

Having read the previous book in the series, Borne, I was excited when I heard about this book coming out. I was not ready for what was to come and have spent quite awhile trying to figure this book out. This is definitely a hard book to review because of the way it almost transcends linear storytelling. There is abstract art and atonal music, well this is the literary equivalent.

Ostensibly, this book is about 3 characters and their fight against the Company. But what we get is a mishmash of different narrators from different timlines from different realities using different points of view that come together or don't really come together. The only way I can put it, is that this a book that needs to be felt and one needs to become one with the words. Because if the reader even briefly zones out or steps out of it, it becomes a confusing mess.

Thank you NetGalley and Publisher for this early copy!

Did not finish - I could not connect with the plot or writing so I decided to put it down.

Jeff Vandermeer returns to his experimentally stylistic writing roots in this soft prequel to Borne. Quite a confident and ballsy move on his part, as it's sure to totally polarize readers and shock the hell out of his newer "Southern Reach" fanbase.

Personally, I'm a fan of weird fiction. Bring on the bizarre, baby. Especially if it builds onto the world of the Company and the dead astronauts, and the strange manipulated creatures that haunt the tidal pools and holding ponds and desert lands.

It also introduces the fun new layer of time traveling and parallel timelines in which our astronauts, both alive and dead, find themselves fighting back against the Company's evil regime and the ultimate annihilation of man. Plus for funsies, once the story's been told, we're thrust backwards and forward in time ourselves and given the backstory on many of its wonderous and fascinating characters.

Mind. Blown.
KaBOOM!!

Dead Astronauts was hard for me to get into, but I think that was just me. I love everything Jeff Vandermeer writes and have zoomed through the Southern Reach trilogy and other works in the Borne world. The writing was a bit Faulkner-esque, but I felt I wasn’t as intrigued as to what the astronauts were doing/experiencing, since I had already been introduced to the world of messed up biotech via Borne and the Strange Bird.

Regardless, beautiful cover art, and I do love the Borne world, but Rachael and Borne were more interesting.

This book is great for fans of Jeff Vandermeer's previous works, like Annihilation (The Southern Reach Trilogy) and Borne. This book might be a challenge for those who haven't read his works before. The content is set in the same universe as Borne, though is not required to have read before reading this one. There's no other way to put this - this book is weird! But, as always with Vandermeer, the writing is compelling and draws you into the world.

Reading Jeff VanderMeer's books for me is like living in a dream world. I can see the world so clearly when I'm reading, but when I wake up and try to describe the book to someone else, it's gone completely out of my head. I wouldn't recommend reading "Dead Astronauts" as your first VanderMeer. I would start with some of his more accessible work. This book certainly makes your work, but I found the experience to be well worth while. I will continue to read anything this man writes.

This book is strange and unexpected but I was here for it. I loved the way the words played around with story, characterization, and plot, and changed the entire thing into something so different. I really appreciated how VanderMeer is able to restructure all the rules of fiction and create something so unique and interesting.

Where to start? The colors of the cover are as good as anywhere, iridescent and garish, which sets the scene nicely for the prose style and remnants of story contained herein. I say remnants because any semblance of normal storytelling--something typically threaded through with characters, plot, or some shred of linearity--is deliberately fractured and scattered and spattered with an experimental veneer that runs deeper than you'd think.

From everything I've read, including a few snippets of interviews with Vandermeer, every detail of the book is carefully assembled so that there is some deeper mystery to be solved, a puzzle box capable of reassembly... in which case it flew way over my head, or my addled old-man brain lacks the wherewithal and motivation to do the work. If you, like me, are a reasonably capable but non-superhuman reader (or less charitably, lazy), reading this is a bit of a chore. Several times I set this down with a mild headache (only to pick it up a few days later when the mood was more appropriate.) At heart, it's an occasionally clunky mindfuck; one that's salvaged and made enjoyable by the pervasive weirdness, by the experience of plunging into something alien and inexplicable and simply observing the strange workings all around.

There's a loose thread tying the book back to Vandermeer's last novel, Borne, which I read and loved, but this is not that book, not by a long shot. Don't treat it as a sequel so much as an experiment set in a decaying corner of the same dying world. I suspect most mere mortals bumbling from Borne to Dead Astronauts will be deeply confused (and probably annoyed.) I was at first, until I came around.

Enter with eyes wide open, with expectations in check, and you might just enjoy yourself, too. There's time-shifting, recursion, biotech twisted beyond meaning, dimensional overlap and interplay, but every element of interest is layered beneath that iridescent and garish surface, where playful prose patterns of ambient alliteration skitter about, refracting and distracting from the glimmering dark that lurks at some deeper level, either submerged or sublimated (depending on you, I suppose). But what there is not is what most people come to books for. Bear that in mind and things might just work out.

ok so this is part of a trilogy- I had no idea. I guess it started off strong, the first quarter or so is pretty focused around a consistent, interesting story, but then it moves into more abstract and becomes a difficult book to read-in my opinion. It winds its way around subjects related to the earlier events, but mostly in a vague way that focuses more on the 'feel' of the writing than on anything concrete. It's the kind of writing that's really hit or miss in print, for example, sometimes latching onto a key sentence or three and repeating that for pages on end. You can appreciate what it's going for, but it never really winds up anywhere satisfying. Maybe worth a shot, but it's the kind of thing that's definitely not going to work for everyone. I will be very honest and admit that I didn't finish this book. I don't love this style or genre and I should've done better research before requesting it. My mistake.

An absolute whirlwind. As always, VanderMeers writing is beautiful and enchanting, and often times requires multiple read throughs to fully grasp the whole story but god DAMN is it not an enjoyable ride. So very happy to return to the Borne universe in this newest book.

I recently read the two books leading up to this one, and though they all are in the same universe(s), Dead Astronauts is in a world of its own. A lot of it is confusing, as per usual with VanderMeer's work, but this book is more important in my opinion. It is very clear what its meant to be about; the destruction of the Earth, and the animals that call it home. There is a prominent thread that humans are bad and ruining everything, and that no matter how hard the good ones try, they are thwarted at every turn. The blue fox is the only semblance of hope, he helps when he can and tries to free his species but is not always understood or accepted. The beginning of this book was not my favorite, and in turn was the most confusing part, but everything else was magical and haunting like I had excpected. The blue fox's part was the best in my opinion because he represented everything that had happened, was happening, and will happen, and gave us even more background on things from Borne and The Strange Bird. I really hope that this is not the end of the series, but I do feel the need to reread The Souther Reach trilogy because I have a suspicion that they are all related in one way or another.