I was given this ARC for review from Netgalley and Farrar, Straus, and Giroux (thank you so much.).

Jeff Vandermeer writes as if he is nature personified. The way he puts you in the mind of the astronauts, the fox, and everyone/thing else is disorienting. Now, this isn't a bad thing, but it can take some getting used to. It's almost as if this novel was written stream of consciousness style, but from different perspectives.

I'm still not sure how I feel about this book. I know I liked it, but I probably should have reread Bourne so I could have found the Easter eggs earlier. This book is a heartbreaking commentary on how humans have definitely taken our planet for granted. This book made me take a look at how I could either help or destroy the Earth. It also made me wonder if it's too late to save it after all of the damage we've done.

Overall, I would recommend this book for people who are fans of the Bourne world who have wondered about the three dead astronauts.

"Jeff VanderMeer's Dead Astronauts presents a City with no name of its own where, in the shadow of the all-powerful Company, lives human and otherwise converge in terrifying and miraculous ways. At stake: the fate of the future, the fate of Earth - all the Earths.

A messianic blue fox who slips through warrens of time and space on a mysterious mission. A homeless woman haunted by a demon who finds the key to all things in a strange journal. A giant leviathan of a fish, centuries old, who hides a secret, remembering a past that may not be its own. Three ragtag rebels waging an endless war for the fate of the world against an all-powerful corporation. A raving madman who wanders the desert lost in the past, haunted by his own creation: an invisible monster whose name he has forgotten and whose purpose remains hidden."

After seeing Anhilation, I can not get VanderMeer's world out of my head! And I'm not alone, look at the write up in Entertainment Weekly right now!

I’m a big VanderMeer fan—I love his writing, his ideas, his worlds—but this took me over three months to read. It’s so, so, so confusing. And I believe that reading the ebook is 100% to blame.

In order to enjoy this book, I needed the physical copy. I needed to be able to flip back to previous pages easily. You know how your brain remembers the location of a passage on the page, so when you flip back you keep your eyes trained on that spot in the pages so you can find what you’re looking for? Yeah, can’t do that on a Kindle and I needed to do that with Dead Astronauts.

Three months. As I knew he would, VanderMeer crafts a lush, terrifying world with fascinating characters, but the story is told in such a strange way (on account of like, space and time not really existing in this book) that it was hard to keep my attention because I couldn’t reference earlier parts. I knew I would enjoy the book if I could just read the physical copy! Some books are impossible for me to enjoy as an ebook, and this is one of them.

So… I cheated. At 75% done, I couldn’t take it anymore. I waited until the weekend before this was published and I scoured local bookstores to find a copy early. (I wanted to submit this review to NetGalley before the release date!) At my third try, I found a copy for purchase and rushed home to read the last 25%.

And, okay, sure, at that point the damage had been done and to really enjoy the book I’d need to start over fresh but as I was already three months into this, I didn’t feel like beginning again. I did enjoy the last 25% a lot more!

(Also, somewhat unrelated but: oh my god, the physical copy is one of the most beautiful books I own.)

In conclusion! I didn’t like Dead Astronauts a lot but I bought a copy to keep on hand because I’m confident that I will enjoy it a lot more on a future re-read. The three-star rating isn’t VanderMeer’s fault, it’s my Kindle’s.

(I read an ARC of this novel provided free by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thanks, Netgalley!)

Here's another book I couldn't wait to read. I absolutely loved Jeff VanderMeer's Area X trilogy (srsly read the books - the movie was dumb), so I keep an eye out for anything else he comes up with. For some reason I couldn't make it through Borne, but that wasn't because it's bad. ANYWAY, when I saw Dead Astronauts, I jumped. It's amazing.

It's also WEIRD - one of the most bizarre books I've ever read. I think I need to read it again to make more sense of it because I'm still confused. According to other Goodreads reviews, it's set in the post-apocalyptic world of Borne, which means I need to make it through that book immediately.

I'm not even going to try at the plot except to say that it involves three "astronauts" in a desolated city fighting a massive Company, a blue fox, a leviathan, a homeless woman, a salamander-creature-thing, and LOTS of experimental language. Some of the reviews say it's dense and hard to read - and it is, but it's entirely worth it.

So I'm saying all this and you see the five stars up there. Dead Astronauts is absolutely crazy and hard and FASCINATING, and you should read it despite my pitiful attempt at a review. Set aside a good block of time because it's not particularly short, and I'm pretty sure you'll need to read it at least five times. Jeff VanderMeer is a weirdo genius.

The contents of this book are a sort of lyrical chaos that brings to mind the works of Mark Z Danielewski but without the ridiculous structure that not only holds Danielewski's work together but allows a reader to be receptive to it.

I had absolutely no idea what was going on through about half of this book. The portion about the "astronauts" was the only part that really made sense. Everything else felt like the weird asides of peripheral characters that doesn't necessarily impact the plot. I couldn't latch on to the purpose behind anything that happened.

I looked back to check on my review of Borne (which also got two stars) and I think at least that one had a plot, a tether for the reader to hang on to as we're led through (Borne) or dropped into (Dead Astronauts) this weird and chaotic and violent world. Because of the way the book is written, I didn't get a sense of anyone's character except maybe Sarah (who might have in some alternate timeline become Moss?). And the blue fox and the dark bird had no apparent bearing on the story of the Astronauts except as points of reference?

I have absolutely no idea what this book was about. And I think that's probably explanation enough for my rating.

I enjoyed reading this, it had a strange feeling to that added to the book's atmosphere. The characters were good and I had a great time reading this.

<i>Once upon a time, I spoke to three dead astronauts.</i>

If there is such a thing as environmental horror, this is it.

But no, that's not quite right, because this isn't really horror. It's more like... despair. Is despair a genre?

But no, that's not it either, because sprinkled in these pages of a ruined, poisoned world, is hope. Just a bit, but enough.

I've been a fan of Jeff VanderMeer for a long time, ever since Annihilation made its way onto the scene. Since then I've made it my mission to absorb every single thing with the VanderMeer stamp on it, either Jeff's or Ann's, either written or edited, and I have yet to be disappointed. Dead Astronauts is no exception. Merging the strange climate horror of Area X with the disjointed narratives of Veniss Underground with the world building of Ambergris and you get something like Dead Astronauts. There are no heroes, here, and there are no villains. Everyone is good and everyone is evil and there is no such thing as either of those ideas. There only are people. And... okay, weird animal hybrids. And weird machine animal hybrids. Okay there are a lot of weird things. But none of them can be boiled down to archetypes even as they are literally boiled down.

Dead Astronauts is a sequel to Borne only in the very loosest sense; the set and setting are roughly the same, but in a story that ostensibly spans the multiverse, the idea of set and setting are too simple at best. What it really is is an amalgamation of the way places and events can crystallize within one's mind, and the way that they can stick there like a bone in your throat. What is really is is the story of the end of the world, and how even the end is a different kind of beginning. What it really is is hard to say. What it really is is painful, and beautiful, and the proof that those two things are very often the same, and that they for any two creatures, they are profoundly different.

Dead Astronauts is hard to read and important. Gut-wrenching and heart-breaking. Incoherent in a way that makes you hang on every word until suddenly it all makes sense. It's a message. It's a warning. It's a fever dream of possibilities and the shape of the world to come.

<i>But, in the end, joy cannot fend off evil. Joy can only remind you why you fight.</i>

If I had been made aware, I would have prepared for this book being set in the 'Borne' universe, but I wasn't so I couldn't. *If* one can seperate the rest from that, I'd have to say that I think I enjoyed myself. It was a cryptically poet, mildy migraine inducing ride.

I don't know if this book and I were ever going to get along. I'm a huge Jeff VanderMeer fan, but didn't initially realize this was set in the Borne universe. Borne wasn't bad, but I just didn't end up loving it. From what I read, the connections seem pretty loose -- same universe, different characters. There is just so MUCH going on here that at 27% in I had no idea what I was reading. The prose was gorgeous, but I struggled to follow the plot. This book is going to make you work, and I cautiously recommend it to those who are up for the challenge.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher/author for providing this ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.

If you're looking for a quick, easy, entertaining read, stop right here.

This book is not that.

The story forces you to slow down. Think. Reflect. Delve. Ponder. Scratch your head. Maybe wonder what the hell you've gotten yourself into.

Some of it won't make sense. Until maybe it does. Or never will.

Some of it is so beautifully written, you'll re-read the passage just to soak in the imagery and the truthfulness laid out on the page. I'm talking to you, Moss.

Some of the passages hurt your brain because it's not used to working that hard to decipher a work of fiction.

Other passages simply shred your heart.

But when was the last time you truly connected with nature and its gifts, and what are you doing to help preserve or destroy those gifts? To what are you connected? What matters most?

Maybe the prose is difficult because the answers are too honest to face.

“Do you feel the salamanders falling?”
I’ve enjoyed all the Jeff VanderMeer books, but “Dead Astronauts” blows them all away. Poetic, lyrical, lush, cryptic, strange, hopeful, despairing, critical, alliterative verse-prose, heart-breaking, passionate, horrifying: this book has all of this and more.
VanderMeer takes a more powerful than ever environmental stance in “Dead Astronauts,” showing the active decay of the earth through the eyes of a quantum blue fox. At times the various narrators speak directly to the reader (or an in-universe reader at least) and wonder whether we can even understand what they’re trying to tell us. To warn us about. What will happen if a Company takes experiments too far, and it isn’t known until it’s too late? The blue fox might have an answer.
This is not a book one can simply dip in and out of. It captures you, urges you to keep reading, to keep listening. VanderMeer’s writing is unlike anything in science fiction right now, and that’s a wonderful thing. With each book his writing twists and develops into something new, and it wouldn’t surprise me if a future VanderMeer novel is written entirely in verse. I cannot sing the praises of this book high enough. I would wrap it in my heart if I could (and if that imagery is too weird for you, you probably won’t enjoy this book).
You do not have to have read “Borne” to understand or appreciate “Dead Astronauts” but it does make the story more fascinating as pieces of the mystery of “Borne” are unraveled. Not all of them, but enough hints are given to provide a firmer grasp of the world of the Company and the City.
“Nothing thrives without being broken.”

I had no idea that this takes place in the same world as Borne, which I haven't read. I'm hoping my feeling of confusion was due to the fact that I was unfamiliar with the predecessor. I do think that people who have read Borne will have better luck than I did. We'll definitely be purchasing this book anyway since we do have a fair amount of VanderMeer readers at my library.

I loved the Area X trilogy, Borne, and Strange Bird, but this isn't working as well for me. It's set in the world of Borne, but written in a more experimental style. I found it a bit confusing and plan to go back to it for a second look. I hope I can edit or add to this review once I've done that.

The author’s Southern Reach trilogy started with an approachable novel that became more and more complicated until it was hard to follow. Seems like the Borne series follows that pattern. Borne was a hard read, but I still was able to figure out the plot and get invested in the characters. If you paid attention it was possible to know what was happening. Dead Astronauts is so abstruse as to be almost illegible. Some parts are like a poem, others reminded me of The Little Prince (I assume it’s on purpose, as one of the characters is a fox). There is some continuity with the first volume but, much as I tried to understand, it was very, very hard. Some readers may want to be challenged while I honestly only look for entertainment so this book was not for me. Some passages contain beautiful images but it was impossible for me to connect with the characters. it’s a deeply moving, wildly original novel but, in my opinion, reading shouldn’t be such hard work.
I chose to read this book and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, NetGalley/Farrar, Straus and Giroux!

I read Borne and the Strange Bird and loved them both so was very excited for another book in this world. This was horribly difficult to read. I was confused most of the time and I'm not sure if it is just because it's a digital copy. I will check this out from the library and try again with the pages in my hands to see if it makes more sense. I just wanted to love this book more than I did.

I want to like Jeff VanderMeer. He seems like a great writer. My problem with him comes from the fact he seems far more interested in ideas than character and story. He's magnificent at creating strange and unique worlds, but everything else falls flat for me. I hated the book Annihilation because it threw mystery after mystery out but didn't even bother to name the characters. The movie version is much better because time was taken to make it an actual story.. This book is my fourth attempt to get into VanderMeer's work, and I'm afraid it might be time to finally throw in the towel.

My rating should probably be seen more of a personal response than a true representation of the book itself. I may not like the presenter enough to see the nuances of what is being presented.

Unfortunately I did not realize this was a sequel to Borne, but I decided to give this a shot anyway. The writing will be wonderful for a very specific reader, and sadly that was not me. I DNF at 25%, but recommend others give it a shot for themselves.

This is the second book in the Borne series. If you've read anything by Jeff VanderMeer before, you are already familiar with his writing style. He's a very gifted writer in that he creates these exceptionally visual scenes in a very dreamy way. I loved Dead Astronauts!

Set in a dystopian future, three characters in the unnamed City caught in a battle with the Company (bioengineering organization). Time and space are gone. Everyone is dead and alive.

It's a short read, but it's complicated enough to take some time to understand. I LOVED IT!

The second novel in VanderMeer's Borne series, Dead Astronauts follows three characters living underneath the thumb of the Company - a bio-engineering organization that has taken over the City - and their struggle to survive. Filled with lyrical passages, biotech marvels, and an epic battle of good vs. evil, Dead Astronauts is not only a unique book, but also one that it's best if you go into it knowing little and allow the story to unfold!

A special thank you to Netgalley for providing me with a free advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

It’s poetic, beautiful, and dark at the same time. Jeff VanderMeer combines the literary and perceptual to take science fiction (and readers) to new places. What I loved most about this book is the unique approach VanderMeer takes to storytelling.