This book is a mash-up of noir detective story, paranoid conspiracy thriller, eco-terrorism/end of the world warning, generational family saga, and redemption fantasy. The narrator is probably a sociopath, and the other characters are universally dysfunctional.

VanderMeer does an excellent of maintaining his noirish tone - there is a palpable sense of claustrophobic paranoia (although I guess it's not paranoia if people are really out to get you), a feeling that someone is always watching or waiting around the corner. We never know exactly what's going on the world at large (pandemics, ecological disaster, political breakdown), but we get a glimpse that it mirrors the upheaval of the characters' lives.

The writing is taut, the book is well-plotted, and there are enough emotional hooks to make you care what happens to these broken individuals. It's well worth the read.

Vandermeer’s new novel keeps the reader in the grip of curiosity from the opening scene in which the protagonist (‘Jane’) is handed an envelope containing a storage unit key through the various traumas of tumbling down a rabbit-hole in search of answers. That said, the book is not without its narrative clunkers. The book’s great strength (maintaining a sense of mystery) is simultaneously the source of its greatest weakness (inexplicable motivation: i.e. it’s hard to imagine that a person – even the flawed and complex protagonist Vandermeer creates – would be willing to suffer death on so many levels: professional , personal / familial, and --- on a couple of occasions – near literally as this woman does, given her dearth of understanding of what is going on at various points leading up to the ending. Given the stakes, one would expect a powerful motive. [One could argue that ‘Jane’ gains a worthwhile motive post-hoc, but that can’t explain her tenacious behavior throughout the book, putting everything in her life at risk when she has only a vague sense of the other characters and their motivations.])

The storage unit key gives the protagonist, ‘Jane,’ access to a cardboard box containing a taxidermized hummingbird and a cryptic note suggesting she should find an unidentified salamander. The signature is in the name of a deceased wealthy heiress who is known for being an environmental activist who most people believe strayed over a line into a life of domestic terrorism. As ‘Jane’ tries to investigate in her (not-so-) spare time as a security expert for an IT company, she runs into many mysterious people, dead-ends, and a few gunfights. Along the way, she loses her job, becomes estranged from her husband and daughter, is shot, and is nearly murdered in a several ways.

Vandermeer builds an intriguing character with ‘Jane’ (the quotes implying that’s not her real name, but – like most all the names in the story – is altered or made-up.) Physically, she is a bulky woman, as in she was a wrestler and a bodybuilder in her youth, and so she is not just large of frame but is physically imposing and can take a beating and walk it off. With respect to her personality, she is somewhere between a dysfunctional wife and mother / workaholic and a high-functioning sociopath. At work, she is respected, though not beloved. She does not play well with others, including her loved ones and co-workers, and can be downright mean to most other people with whom she is forced to interact. However, the full extent of her dysfunction is revealed over time, both in response to the increased stress and as her backstory is shared. In the beginning, we tend to see ‘Jane’ as a professional woman who is skilled, if a bit cold, but while she neglects her family and can be a bit gruff with those with whom she works, she has her redeeming qualities.

The setting looks a lot like our world if we continue to be maladaptive and myopic over a few (or several) more years. Pandemics are referenced; they’ve seen more than one in rapid succession. There is also climate disruption related deterioration. (The two titular creatures are caught up in said ecological degradation.)

The book kept me reading, its story remaining gripping despite what I saw as a number of flaws. Besides the high-level motivation problem that I mentioned in the introductory paragraph, there are a few instances in which the main character does or says something that seems out of character. Despite her personality quirks and coldness, we empathize with ‘Jane’ because she seems like she’s interested in doing the right thing and her personality dysfunctions don’t equate to villainy. However, there was a point at which she mentions an action (to remain unnamed to avoid a spoiler) that takes her past being cold to strangers to being potentially homicidal toward them. It seems likely this was done to set up a cinematic event later in the story that may not be deus ex machina but is built on this thread of unlikely / uncharacteristic behavior – even given her paranoid state at the time.

There is also some exposition that is seems uncharacteristic, unnecessary, and / or distracting. At one point, ‘Jane’ is having an internal monologue about her arsenal of firearms and she comments that she ‘never fetishized guns.’ At this point I was lifted out of the story, trying to figure out the motive for this bizarre additional commentary. Was Vandermeer trying to take a dig at gun owners? A certain sub-class of gun-owners? Is he tribe-signaling that while he puts a lot of guns and gunfights into his story, that he opposes guns in reality -- while finding them very useful and / or cool for story purposes? [i.e. Much like the “Lethal Weapon” movie people put gun-control posters in the background of their movie in which a mentally-ill detective with the trigger-discipline of one of those kids who ate the marshmallow before the researcher left the room is the character the viewer is supposed to find sexy and admirable as he shoots a small village worth of people over the course of the movie.] Incidentally, I’m not saying the author shouldn’t express political views via writing. I think he does so successfully elsewhere in the book by showing us a sequence of events that lets the reader take in the lesson organically. All the blunt force exposition does is make the reader wonder what the author is trying to say, while we should be following the events of the story. [And this is not a story one can afford to let one’s attention drift away from, lest one risk wondering who such-and-such character is or how such-and-such event happened. Often things are mentioned brusquely once that other crucial events will hinge upon. The story is not robust to distraction that way.]

All in all, I enjoy this story and got caught up in it. Though it is not without distractions, clunky narrative activity, and implausible motivation, it does keep the reader intrigued by what’s happening. Going into the final part, I though the book might end on an unsatisfying note, but I think the author ties up things pretty thoroughly in the conclusion. Like the main character, this book has many fine and redeeming qualities, despite its rough edges.

Things aren’t always what they seem. “Jane” is on a frenetic search to find out why a dead woman left her a taxidermied hummingbird and a cryptic note. She doesn’t know this woman and the more she finds out the more questions she has. We only know what “Jane” knows or thinks she knows. As the search for answers continues and the danger increases “Jane” appears unhinged and “Jane” and the world slowly falls apart to a climatic end that I wasn’t expecting. Like VanderMeer’s other books, this was hard to put down. It can feel confusing, especially with VenderMeer’s unique writing style, but everything comes together in the end.

Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff Vandermeer is written from the point of view of a security consultant, wife and mother who calls herself “Jane Smith”. One day, Jane visits her local coffeeshop and she receives an envelope with a key to a storage unit that holds a taxidermied hummingbird. The mystery of the hummingbird makes Jane curious and she starts to investigate the species and the person who left her the envelope; Silvina. Jane soon finds out Silvina was a ecoterrorist and the daughter of a wealthy industrialist. Silvina is dead.
By taking the hummingbird from the storage unit and investigating it, Jane sets in motion a series of events that quickly spin beyond her control.

I love a good mystery and Hummingbird Salamander gives the reader all kinds of secrets, twists and turns. Jane is becoming more and more obsessed with the hummingbird and Silvina and she is getting deeper and deeper into the mysterious and dangerous world of the woman who left her the taxidermies bird. Vandermeer is an amazing writer and I couldn't put this book down. Although I didn't really care much for Jane, I had to know what would happen next. What clue would Jane find, what mystery was she about to uncover. This story is complex, cryptic, frustrating, claustrophobic and I've never read anything like it before.

I have never read any books by this author and am looking forward to reading more! This book gives you just enough to keep you intrigued...sometimes confusing and complex you must continue to the end. Lots of mystery surrounding a dead woman.and the author leaves you in the dark for as long as he possibly can. I highly recommend this book if you like thriller/mystery/detective books!!

Complex and confusing. Left me feeling angry at the world we live in. Took me by surprise. This is my first book by Jeff VanderMeer so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’m really not sure how to feel about this book didn’t really hate it but didn’t really like it either.

3.5 stars

The first two parts (there are four in total) were exciting and mysterious; weird, but in a good way. But then it either got a weird I couldn't gel with or I missed something, because the ending fell rather flatly for me. I liked the main character for most of the novel. But I finished reading and just sat there for a moment doing a curious dog head tilt back and forth, heh. However, it is very much worth noting that you can tell that the author did their research, and that I can appreciate. As well as their efforts at raising awareness of wildlife trafficking.

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. I'm not sure what I've just read, but I know it was not for me. Part thriller, part creepy and a whole lot of confusion.

The hulk-like female protagonist, "Jane Smith" narrates Hummingbird Salamander. Jane begins an obsession over a deceased ecoterrorist, Silvina, after a mysteries key is left for Jane at the local coffee shop leading to a storage unit with a taxidermied Hummingbird. Jane and her shovel pig begin a downward spiral into the world of Silvina, falling in-step in the life she led. Her purse, named shovel pig, contains everything that is worldly to Jane, and she seems to care for it more than her husband, daughter, and co-workers.

Jane is a tough character to like throughout the whole book - unpleasant, lacks empathy and is basically a bully. I couldn't understand her compulsion with this women which took nearly the whole book to land in the explanation. Honestly, I almost abandoned this novel 1/3 of the way into the story.

This book was not an easy read and will probably not be for everyone, including me.

Thank you NetGalley and MCD for the ARC for an honest review.

Fans of VanderMeer's other novels (he first hooked me with Borne) may not find the same synergy with this particular book--a contemporary, noir-like, environmental mystery with an obsessed, mostly unlikeable main character. It's a different pace, a more familiar (although still odd) world, and circumstances that are much larger than life. Ultimately, I think I'm not the best audience for this particular novel, but truly, VanderMeer is a brilliant writer. He turns many an amazing phrase in Hummingbird Salamander and I admired it a great deal for his skill at weaving a really intricate tale that dragged me to the end.

I've tried getting into this a few times and I just can't get very far with it. I would have thought that I'd really enjoy this book as I'm interested in getting more into climate-fiction (especially centered around birds) but the protagonist is a massive asshole (and I struggle with books where the protag isn't likeable) and I found the writing style really off-putting and hard to read. My personal enjoyment doesn't line up with 3* but I decided to give it that rating since my issues with it are quite subjective and not everyone will feel the same way.

Hummingbird Salamander will leave you in the dark for as long as it possibly can, before divulging it all in a shocking reveal. It’s a book where you’ll be dazzled but confused as you follow the cryptic mystery that initially begins with a taxidermied hummingbird.

In this part sci-fi part mystery novel, we follow the main character, Jane, as she is trying to discover the history of a woman named Silvina. After being led to a locker with a note from “Silvina” with a taxidermied hummingbird, Jane is advised to also uncover a salamander. Silvina is a reported eco-terrorist with her past affiliations being suspiciously ambiguous. The more Jane finds the more the stakes get higher and higher, but she continues in her pursuit of the truth. You will find yourself asking many questions about Jane and her true motives along the way, but even the protagonist is just another missing piece in the puzzle who is just as difficult to figure out. There are lots of suspicious characters and encounters, and an unease to everyone who Jane interacts with, even her own family.

If you’re looking for a unique and intelligent mystery, I think anyone can easily dig their teeth into this. VanderMeer doesn’t cut any corners in this first-person investigation with Jane. As the narrator, Jane is relentless in her pursuit of the truth which makes her an authentically satisfying character to follow. She throws her whole life aside in order to continue her investigation, and comes off as spiteful to everyone she meets. But her motivation is key to keep the pace moving as you’ll never feel frustrated by her being naïve or clueless.

The cryptic writing might not be to everyone’s taste, but I liked reading a book that almost felt urgent and secretive. Your connection to Jane and the characters is mysterious and purposely ambiguous. Rather, I found this eco-thriller to have a great and unsettling atmosphere while having a lot of strong impacts and messaging about the environment and how humanity strives to sustain and destroy it.

If you’re interested in reading something that feels fresh and exciting even if it’s a little bit outside your usual genre, I’d definitely give this book a try. Jane’s “urgent” and short-sentenced narration was easily the highlight of this book, and worked well with this colorful and early-COVID setting.

What an unexpected gem of a book. I can't wait to read more from this author! I really enjoyed this book and am so glad that I got a chance to read it through Net Galley!!

Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy has stuck with, despite all of its ambiguities and strangeness, simply for the utterly alien world VanderMeer created and the strange, off-kilter story that he spun. Since then, I’ve been curious to read more of his work, to see how his writing would work outside of the strangeness of Area X. Now, with VanderMeer’s “eco-thriller” Hummingbird Salamander, which finds a security analyst thrust into a bizarre mystery involving wildlife trafficking, taxidermy, powerful families, past sins, and the slowly decaying planet, you’d think I had an answer to that question, but the reality is, I’m just not sure.

I can’t deny that Hummingbird Salamander is well-written. Like the narrators of the Southern Reach trilogy, “Jane Smith” (the only name she ever gives herself, and one that she freely admits is fake) is wildly unreliable and perhaps unstable. She has her sins, which only gradually come to life, but by the time we meet her, she has left behind her normal life and plunged into a mystery that all begins when a barista hands her a sheet of paper – one that leads her to a storage unit and a taxidermied hummingbird that’s supposed to be extinct. From there, the story gets…well, complicated. I’ll be honest and say that I frequently lost track of the events at hand, often feeling frustrated at the fact that the “clues” Jane finds along the way are vague, that the events unfolding don’t seem as significant as she makes them, that the “path” she’s following is cryptic at best and nonexistent at worst.

And yet, with Jane’s confessional, anxious writing, I was constantly pulled along into this, feeling her certainty at each new discovery, even if they felt like jumps to me. Jane’s path towards a woman named Silviana and her ultimate secret feels more tied to Jane’s own bizarre psyche than a breadcrumb trail of clues, but VanderMeer keeps the momentum going, even as I occasionally lost the thread and sometimes was a bit at sea as to who was where.

For all of that, though, I often found myself emotionally uninvolved in Hummingbird Salamander, struggling to care about it all. VanderMeer is dealing with some interesting issues – ecological collapse, the surveillance state – but Jane, for all of her narration, is hard to care about all that much, not least of which because she’s somewhat cold and aloof even near the beginning. Add to that what often feels like overreactions to the discoveries she finds, and I found myself more irritated with her than involved in her journey or worried about her. By the time one character reenters the story near the end and puts her on blast, I was pretty firmly on their side and on the side of their criticisms.

Of course, noir – and Hummingbird Salamander undeniably feels like it’s operating within the loosest boundaries of the genre – is filled with unlikable heroes. But there’s a difference between unlikable and uninvolving; I may never have liked Walter White, but his descent was compelling and fascinating. Jane is less so, and the discoveries she makes here aren’t engaging enough to really make you feel like VanderMeer’s wordiness and wheel-spinning are entirely worth the time.

As I peruse other reactions to the book, it’s clear I’m in the minority here, and that’s okay. I can see the appeal – VanderMeer’s strong narration, the intriguing themes, that strong final section of the book. But in the end, I found Hummingbird Salamander more of an intellectual achievment than an emotional or engaging one. Is it well-written and crafted? I guess. But it’s also wordy, more than a bit pretentious, and told in a way that makes it feel like VanderMeer thinks he’s doing something more engaging than he is. I’ll give him another shot – I still have Borne waiting on my Kindle – but I’ll admit that my initial reaction here is that the Reach (and especially Annihilation, the clear standout of that trilogy) may be more of a fluke than a trend.

I have up on this book at the halfway mark. This was not a story that held my interest at all. I had a hard time staying focused because it was so slow.

A thrilling hunt for answers... and more questions!

This was somewhat of a perplexing hunt for answers to unknown questions, where I believe the protagonist was sometimes just as confused as I was. Mysterious findings lead to clues and hints of possible large secret plots that may or may not be happening. Things and characters were not always clear, which I think was the idea. From what I knew about the author, I was expecting to get somewhat puzzled while reading this, and it did not disappoint in that aspect.

I was at first very intrigued in the mysterious events happening in the story, but admittedly, I did progressively lose interest. A few sections pulled me back in, but then lost me again a little later. While I was entertained by the overall themes tackled throughout the story, the pacing was a little off for my personal appreciation.

As much as this specific novel was not my cup of tea, it will not keep me from reading other novels by Jeff VanderMeer in the future. I’ve heard only good things about his work; I did enjoy his writing style and the themes touched upon in this novel.

Special thanks go to the netgalley team and the publishers for providing this ARC. I appreciate the opportunity to read it in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed this book for the mystery of discovering why a hummingbird was found in a locker! The back and forth chapters gave insight to the search through the different characters who might have discovered the truth that could portend the end of the earth through climate change. Just the symbol of hummingbirds is something I cherish. Therefore I did read the whole book. However it did become difficult at times to get through what I thought were non essential details to learn the meaning the author intended.

Review for Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff VanderMeer

A huge thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the early copy!

I should begin by saying how much I have previously enjoyed works by VanderMeer. If you've read his books before, you will know exactly the writing style you are heading into.

If you're new to his works, he threads current day issues, along with seemingly wacky nature, environmentalism and a twist of science fiction that borders on future reality in order to weave you a tale that will leave you thinking. His latest is no different.

In this book, we follow Jane, as she is given a taxidermied hummingbird, and the adventure it takes her on as she follows the breadcrumbs of information she can find. Somehow, the author of the chain of events seems to know a lot about Jane, so Jane is determined to get to the bottom of it.
It is set in a world not so different from our own, seemingly ravaged with natural disasters that occur often (everyone needs to know more about climate change!!). Having read this in the middle of a pandemic, in a winter storm where I was without power or water for about a week, it was all very on the nose for me personally.

Not only is this a mystery thriller, it's a book that will make you think about the future, and environmentalism, which has always been a strong theme with VanderMeer. We follow zero likeable characters, the world is fleshed out through the plot almost completely alone, and when you finish reading this, you'll be stuck thinking on it over and over.

As with all of his books, if you've read and enjoyed his works before, you should check this one out as soon as it's published. I really enjoyed this one, and it's made me even more excited to get back to reading his backlist titles that I own, and anxiously awaiting whatever he decides to write next!

A huge thank you to NetGalley, and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for sending me a copy I really appreciate it!


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I must admit at the start that I did not finish this book. Since there is no "DNF" rating option here, I selected 1 star. I simply could not connect with the characters in this story, nor could I follow the plot. The writing is very unusual and, for me, difficult to understand. This is my second novel by this author, which I think is enough for me to admit that he is not my type of writer and I am not his target audience. Thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing an ARC.

A near future science-fiction thriller, Hummingbird Salamander places readers in a not-so-unrealistic corporate world that has seen more natural disasters and extinct species. When the main character discovers a taxidermy hummingbird, a long-extinct species, a trail of clues and increasingly larger stakes come into play as the mystery unravels. Overall this is a solid sci fi with all the enjoyably weird hallmarks of VanderMeer's writing. The characters could use a little more depth, but the setting and the world make up for that. Not my favorite of his works, but definitely up there. Thank you Netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!