This is not an easy read. I'd almost say it's a complex one. But then, trying to protect the environment and prevent the extinction of species on a global basis would definitely be complex. The author makes a statement with his story of how even someone not trained nor even looking to make a difference, can indeed influence their surroundings. VanderMeer is obviously using his considerable talents to stop the progress of destruction while also trying to educate readers. This book will leave you wondering if there is more that you could do....there is.

Hummingbird Salamander is a speculative thriller that follows a security consultant called “Jane Smith” as she attempts to unravel a mystery. Jane receives an envelope with a key that leads her to a storage unit where she finds a taxidermied hummingbird and clues mentioning a taxidermied salamander. By taking the hummingbird, Jane launches herself into a world of secrets and danger. This was an odd book that had it's thriller moments, but also included ecoterrorism. I will definitely be reading more from Jeff VanderMeer!

Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

I selected this because since I enjoyed the movie Annihilation, I thought I might like a book by the author of the book (although I never read the novel the film was based on). It wasn't a bad read, but at the same time I just couldn't get into it as much as I wanted.

VanderMeer goes eco-sci-fi-noir-thriller: Our enigmatic narrator is a cybersecurity expert named (of course) "Jane Smith", who ponders a coded message left behind by potential eco-terrorist and wealthy heiress to an Argentinian fortune, Silvina. The message consists of a taxidermic hummingbird, which was the last of its kind, and the word salamander, hence the book title. As the mystery unfolds, Jane uncovers the tracks of those who thrive on the exploitation of the planet. The apocalypse is near (this is VanderMeer, guys): Homo sapiens is destroying its own habitat, it pushes its own extinction.

What makes VanderMeer so intriguing is that he writes deeply moral books about human stupidity, but he does not stop there: His imagination, his talent for intense atmospheres, and his daring plotting render his experimental writing captivating and unusual. His voice is highly recognizable, and his message comes across not despite, but because of the fact that it isn't force-fed to readers: This author internalized the principle of show, don't tell. VanderMeer writes like a man who is convinced that his readers are intelligent, and I appreciate that.

While I found this one a little too reliant on noir / spy novel tropes and I generally like VanderMeer's really strange, puzzling stuff better (see Dead Astronauts), "Hummingbird Salamander" is worthwhile. How in the world have I not yet read Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy???

A novel unto its own, quite unlike anything I've ever read. It's a tough read not only because it requires a particular kind of attention and engagement on the part of the reader (for example, the protagonist inspires no empathy whatsoever, but in a way that I personally loved), but also because it's a genuinely painful novel, one that tries to map or perhaps invent new modes of affect for a world that is coming apart at the seams.
Absolutely recommended to the audacious.

To Jane—and perhaps to VanderMeer—this hope is not a happy prospect. Hope means a hard evolution: to biology, change means death. It’s awful and awe-full, once Jane starts thinking on that sublime scale and realizes how wonder, but not joy, can persist even as our institutions implode. Governments and corporations are empty, family will fail us, and yet we will endure. Or something sufficiently like us, transformed by the consequences of our persistence.

Christina Ladd

I read this book back in 2021 but forgot to write a review - Overall, this book fell a bit short for me. It was promoted as a sci-fi read, which I very much enjoy and hyped myself for. However, after realizing and accepting that this was not a sci-fi read, I still enjoyed the plot and twists overall.

This was an interesting read, out of my usual genre reads.
Was a bit hard for me to get into, I am probably not the right audience for this novel. What first caught my attention was the cover, so beautifully done I had to see what was inside.

In true Jeff Vandermeer form, when you finished the book you say to yourself, “WTF did I just read?” I loved every minute of it. I really enjoyed the environmental aspect- nature is awesome.

I did not realize when I requested this book that it would be best to read it after having read some of the author's other titles. Until I do so, I will not be submitting a review.

A++ for cover design.

I chose this book to read mainly because my mother was a huge hummingbird lover and always had a hummingbird feeder on her front porch, so the cover plus title drew me in. I'd have to say that's where my love of this book ended.

Jane is a "normal" person with nothing in particular special about her until she gets a gift from someone that has in the package, among other things, a preserved hummingbird. Jane is super intrigued because it's the last of its kind so she's determined to discover the ecoterrorist named Silvina Vilcacampa, who had signed the note that came with the gift. She's forced into doing things she doesn't want to but that doesn't deter her from still wanting to find out about this hummingbird and Silvina. I thought the writing itself was good but I didn't find it exciting or suspenseful. The plot and characters didn't truly engage me and for that reason I gave it 3 stars. It might not have helped that sci-fi is very hit and miss with me.

I would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for giving me an e-ARC in exchange for my honest opinion which I have given.

Such a beautiful cover, and fantastic premise combining thriller and ecology, but the book itself was hard to follow. Perhaps in paper version or read in a discussion group I would have gotten more out of it.

dnf @ 11%

i was going to try to push to the quarter mark before calling it but i was SO bored. i absolutely dreaded picking this up and couldn’t connect with the MC at all. i may have to accept that jeff vandermeer’s writing isn’t for me and that the annihilation series is the exception.

JANE. JANE. WHAT ARE YOU DOING? Let's just throw our life away because we received some random clue. I honestly don't understand what this book is trying to do. It references about 100 different things, and it just feels so jumbled.

A delightful book full of adventure, action, and thrills. Fun to read, engrossing world building, and very descriptive imagery made it feel like it was cinematic. It's hard to resist the story as it drives forward. Would recommend.

This is a complex fresh story that I wasn't anticipating.

Jane is a security systems analyst. She receives an envelope left for her in her favourite bar by a mysterious customer with a key to a storage unit that holds a stuffed hummingbird that belongs to a very rare, now extinct species and the thinnest of clues about the location of a missing reputed eco-terrorist, Silvina Vilcapampa. Jane takes up the challenge set in Silvina's note but soon gets embroiled in danger in her quest to find this person.

Jane is a cryptic narrator who plays her cards close to her chest without revealing even to the reader all the secrets she's keeping.

This is a confusing, thought-provoking book with excellent writing. The author did a great job in plotting the story but you need to give it time.
This is a 3.5-star book that I have rounded up to 4.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for sending a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Not sure what to think after reading this. I’m a big fan of VanderMeer‘s Annihilation and thought the premise was interesting going into Hummingbird Salamander. However, multiple times throughout I felt this was all over the place with little to no organization to the plot. There were times scenes felt repetitive and it got to be a little tiresome trying to finish. Again, the idea was good but it just seemed the execution was lacking.

Thank you NetGalley and FSG Books for the ARC.

This is taking "unreliable narrator" a bit too far for me.

This is one of the most disjointed books I have read in a while. Jane is all over the place with past and present tenses I am not sure if she is remembering or narrating current events. I understand that there is an underlying theme of a mystery but she is also distracted by thoughts of her past activities picking up side ass at bars when she attends conferences.

I can't tell if we are in the middle of a dystopian narrative or a dissatisfied housewife diary.
You want to believe she cares about her family but she dismisses them so easily. I felt no connection to her as a character, she was a voice nothing more.
I am disappointed because there were lines contained in this volume that resonated with me but they were lost in a muddle of something resembling a story.

I read numerous reviews raving about this book.
I just could not agree with them. It almost felt like I read a different book.
I would be willing to give VanderMeer another try. Maybe it was just the story I didn't like.


Thank you NetGalley for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
Full review on GoodReads https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3746579614

What a strange little book. Perhaps not by the usual Vandermeer standards--this is no dream-state SF like <em>Borne</em>, no psychotropic meltdown like <em>Dead Astronauts</em>, nor even the light fantastique of the Southern Reach trilogy. Instead, it's a paranoid "thriller" ostensibly grounded in reality, which is a shift from past Vandermeer works and feels like a less natural fit, like he bristles at having to operate in the real world and has to find new ways to inject strangeness into these pages one way or another. In this case the Weird is less overt but still palpable in almost every aspect of the book: the way the characters behave (oddly), the nicknames they assign random objects ("Shovel Pig" is... a purse), the flow of narrative (choppy, disjointed), a range of stylistic tics inserted by the largely unsympathetic first-person narrator (she sporadically hides information about herself, alters names, but seemingly always calls attention to that fact), the somewhat off-putting characters in general making increasingly lousy / self-destructive decisions, all in service of a threadbare, paranoia-driven, pseudo-conspiracy plot.

I struggled at times to connect with the characters, the plot, and all that disjointed weirdness. Somewhere in the middle, I set it down for a few months. But a nagging part of me wanted to understand the book's central mystery: why was the main character randomly sent a taxidermied hummingbird? And why did she torch her entire life trying to find the answer? I'll admit, the book probably shouldn't work. Those questions are not really enough to drive the plot for a few hundred pages, yet Vandermeer takes this nearly blank narrative and writes the hell out of it. When I finally picked the book up again, I found the latter half of the book rewards most of the frustrations of the earlier segment, where you really have no idea why any of this matters. All is actually revealed, and... perhaps the revelations aren't mind-blowing, but there's some intricate plotwork beneath the surface. Similar to the way <em>Dead Astronauts</em> actually makes sense if you hold the impenetrable surface text up to the light, here the backstory of the main character, the driving questions, and the ultimate revelations dovetail for a surprisingly strong ending, which, for this type of book, from this type of author, I was not expecting. Without spoiling anything, we even get a few late-stage tonal shifts that should please long-time Vandermeer fans (slightly odd shifts to full-blown weird). All in all, a strange little book!