Another cryptic, environmental mystery box from Jeff VanderMeer -- this one starting out with a slow burn that leaves you in the dark for a LONG time with nothing but mysterious pieces of a larger puzzle. It all starts with the protagonist Jane finding a taxidermied hummingbird and a note from a reportedly dead ecoterrorist in a gym locker. You're along for the bizarre ride with Jane's first-person narration (possibly unreliable at times), as she follows the clues and pieces "Silvina" left her. Before you know it, Jane (and you) are down a rabbit hole of environmental terrorism and wildlife trafficking. VanderMeer continues his trope of a loner woman being dragged into a mystery of nature, alienating many of the characters around her by not giving them personal names and delivering the story in a stream of consciousness prose that can be offputting to some readers. But overall, Hummingbird Salamander is an imaginative enigma that reads like a juicy, nature-themed escape room.

Thank you FSG & Netgalley for the arc.

You simply need a different kind of patience and understanding to completely gulp VanderMeer’s writing. He writes the most bizarre plot and they are quite suspenseful among other things.

Hummingbird Salamander is a speculative novel that has a character driven plot that takes a little time to get into, but once you are in, it is definitely an interesting read. I just wish I had someone to discuss this book after reading!

3.5/5

Twists, turns and unexpected happenings fill this story. Ecological and psychological mysteries have you asking questions and thinking about our world.

I really loved the plot and pacing of this book. I didn’t love it overall as much as I hoped, but I don’t usually prefer stories that start at the end and then give perpetual backstory. Jane and Shovel Pig were great characters with a ton of personality.
I was intrigued to find out what Silvina was up to in the end, and the climax of the story was perfect.

This will be a difficult review to write. I am a fan of Jeff VanderMeer and I think Annihilation is brilliant.
I was very excited to get this ARC but it did not work for me. Hummingbird Salamander has moments of brilliance that shone through at times, but were quickly obscured by a nonsensical plot, an unlikeable narrator, and far too many threads that are not fully developed.

I see no sense in restating the plot in this review, but suffice to say the book does not deliver on its promises. There are a lot of interesting elements - ecoterrorism, endangered species, climate change - all at the heart of a mysterious search for a missing person. There are moments where the author does a great job of creating a dark mood that really resonates. However, it suffers from a serious lack of good editing. The jumps in narrative are confusing, with pointless obscurity. The narrator - a person with absolutely no apparent brains despite being very smart - is constantly leaping to conclusions based on no evidence at all, which then kept leading me to go back a few pages - did I miss something? Nope. The plot is just full of holes.

She's also a horrible person and her motivations are completely baffling. There is so much here in the book that is worth saying; the overall storyline is different than other books I have read and could have been fascinating, but the plot and narrator both have significant problems. I am sad to say this just seemed like it was still a work in progress.

Man, it’s been about two weeks since I finished this book and I’m still struggling with what to write in my review. This wasn’t an easy read for me because I felt like I needed to be completely present for each sentence. So much was being presented in each paragraph. Super dense but oh so good. It had me hooked from the beginning all the way to the end. I loved the mystery, the writing style was great and the message was important! This was my first adventure with Jeff VanderMeeer but it won’t be my last!

Thank you to Jeff VanderMeer, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, and #NetGallery for a eARC of #HummingbirdSalamander in return for an honest review. Review will be posted on NetGallery, Goodreads, Instagram, and Facebook.

Thank you to NetGalley for her ARC.

It’s rather unfortunate and I seldom do this but I’m going to need to give this 1 stars. This book was nothing like I anticipated. Frankly, I’m not really sure what was the point of the plot. At times I didn’t know what was going on.

I liked the first Southern Reach book but this book was nothing like it. I almost feel like I read a very rough first draft.

I cannot with the idea that a woman who is as tall and weighs as much as the average man can't find clothes and "lurches" out of a car. Wow. Absolutely will not continue past the first couple pages. Do Lane Bryant and Torrid and other everyday plus-sized retailers not exist in this world? Are there no tailors? Does VanderMeer think 230 on a woman is that big when you're tall? Hell, I almost weigh that much and I'm short and don't always need plus-sized clothing. How do six-foot-tall men get out of cars? Lurchingly?

Just so upsetting.

"“We have built so many toxic constructs, we cannot see through the latticework. We have built so many mirrors, there are no windows to shatter.”

Compelling. Unique. Suspenseful !! What a ride. I can't decide if this is Jeff Vandermeer's best book to date or not. It is wildly different from other books I've read by him but it still contains the recurring elements that are found in all of his books. There is no other author out there like him !!

Hummingbird Salamander is a character driven conspiracy-laden puzzle box of an eco - thriller with nuanced world building and an extremely unreliable and at times unlikeable narrator.

Our unnamed MC who refers to herself as Jane/Jill is a security consultant who is led on what seems like a wild goose chase by a known eco-terrorist after she is given a mysterious envelope at a coffee shop that leads her to a storage container that contains a Hummingbird. There is a dark and eerie atmosphere from beginning to end and a feeling of upending doom that settles in your bones as Jeff Vandermeer begins to peel back the layers and layers behind the goose chase, conspiracies and larger catastrophic world events.

Things to keep in mind
- character driven narrative
- slow burn novel
- challenging but thought provoking plot

At this point in time I feel like you either like his works or you don't.

My first exposure to Jeff Vandermeer was my purchase of City of Saints and Madmen in May of 2006. I was in my mid-20s and exploring more surreal literature; strange fantasies and bizarro being the two genres I was most greedily diving into. Upon reading that peculiar assortment of strange tales and explorations of the fantastic city of Ambergris, I could hardly wait to read more of his work.
I've been a fan since that time 15 years ago, and Vandermeer has not disappointed me since.
Hummingbird Salamander is a bit different from his other works, taking place neither in a feverish land of nebulous division between dreams and waking life nor in a future version of our world, transformed by otherworldly forces. Instead, this novel takes place in the here and now, though perhaps not quite the way you or I would recognize it in subtle ways.
We are first introduced to a mildly paranoid digital security consultant who serves as our unreliable guide through the events that unfold as she begins her journey to unravel a mystery that remains at least somewhat unclear as you reach the final page. It should be said, that if you go into one of this author's books expecting clarity and a tidy resolution, you're probably in the wrong place.
Elements of mystery and layered narratives are far from uncommon within Vandermeer's work, but this particular story showcases the excellence of the suspense form when lovingly crafted by his mind and hands.
Familiar themes from his work are on vivid display within this narrative, ecological concerns, curious uncertainties relating to identity and the self, and suggestions that what is real might not be quite so clear as we commonly understand it to be.

Ecoterrorists and taxidermied animals.... Okay, I'm in!

I am in awe of the bizarre things that come out of VanderMeer's brain. I was first drawn to his work when I picked up the first book in the Area X trilogy. I was so upset when I finished it and immediately drove to the bookstore to get the second and third. I was equally mad when I started reading them. They had nothing to do with each other. Then I bought Wonderbook without making the connection; next I read a digital ARC for A Peculiar Peril; and now I have finished this, his latest work and I am in once again stunned by his writing.

This is a very different book than the ones I had read before, but then again all of the books I have read are different from his previous works. I was drawn to the mystery and the subtle clues and before I knew it, I was done and had a book hangover that left me immobile in my hammock, basking in the special afterglow that only a great book can give.

The writing style here turned me off immediately, before I'd even made it through the first chapter. Without even looking at the author's name, it was very clear that this was a male writer writing from a female POV - and it was not done well. It felt so male and masculine the whole time, I wondered why he didn't just go with a male protagonist. The writing of the setting also felt like it was trying to hard to be cool or edgy.

Utopian or Dystopian that is the question that circles your mind as you plow through this novel. I was hard put to understand if we had a hero or a goat in the lead character. A daughters loss , a rebel force on the move. The fight for power these are the driving elements at play. And the Salamander in the title takes up a large piece of the novels running focus. A hard novel to grasp.

This started off with an interesting concept and mystery that initially captured my interest, but from there the book stalled for me. The revelations came too slowly and too far apart, so by the time the next piece was revealed, I had a difficult time caring. Although I've related to anonymous narrators before, this one felt too distant and detached for me to form a real connection. The writing itself is faultless and the content can't be compared to anything else I've read. While this one wasn't for me, I can see how it would be appealing, especially to those who love diving deep into conspiracy theories.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a complimentary copy. This did not impact my review.

While I appreciate that the writing itself is good, I don't think I understood the story that was presented in this book. I could never grasp what the motivation was for anybody, let alone the main character. It's supposed to be a commentary on ecocide, but I didn't pick that up at all.

This book reminds of of Jonathan Lethem's detective work mixed with Sara Gran's Claire DeWitt. A winning combination by the author of the hallmarks of weird fiction.

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🐦Today I’m reviewing #hummingbirdsalamander by @jeff_vandermeer123 . This was granted to me by @netgalley and @mcdbooks in exchange for an honest review!🦎
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I have been anxiously anticipating checking out Vandermeer, as a lot of his novels focus on environmental advocacy through ecothrillers- how fun and right up my alley! I am a huge environmental conservationist as well as a vegan for the environment, so I was excited to check a book of his out! However, this book was actually a little difficult to stay on top of- it’s got a murder mystery vibe to it that was complicated to get the premise of. I appreciated it surrounding environmental issues, but I’m not sure it helped shed some light regarding how we contribute to species extinction other than doing shitty things results in shitty stuff?😅 Maybe I thought his books would focus on environmental change as the takeaway, but this seemed to focus more on the detective work surrounding the murder aspect. I’m still really excited to start my other book by him, Annihilation, and this gave me a great idea of how intelligent Vandermeer is regarding the environmental issues we pose by how we conduct ourselves! Mystery/thriller fans will be sure to enjoy 🤷🏻‍♀️
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Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️/5
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I didn't know what to expect from this novel since this was my first Jeff VanderMeer novel. Wow! An unsuspecting woman named Jane Smith, or so she says, is drawn into a web of lies and mystery crafted by a long-dead environmental activist named Silvina. When Jane finds a rare hummingbird stuffed, mounted and filled with secrets, nothing is what it was before. Written from Jane's perspective with a back-and-forth narrative, VanderMeer immerses readers into the dangerous world of wildlife trafficking, online security, killers and victims. Tied into all the mystery are Jane's recollections of her brother's death, a hunt for salamanders, and desire to see the Pacific Northwest landscape as it was before climate change, poachers and greed overpowered it. If the plot sounds complex, it's because it's drawing light to a complex, controversial issue of man's impact on the land. VanderMeer's dialogue for Silvina's journal makes you stop and think, so the reading can be slow at times though the action is fast-paced. When the last page is turned, the reader won't soon forget the mental images of violence surrounding eco-terrorism, capitalism and the future.

I always go into a Jeff VanderMeer book fairly sure I'm not going to have a clue what's going on, but that I'll enjoy the ride all the same. That was exactly what happened here! We follow a woman who we are told to call Jane as she investigates the mysterious woman known as Silvina - a possible eco-terrorist and daughter of a wealthy industrialist. What follows is a wild journey involving taxidermy while all around her, the world descends into climate disaster. I really enjoyed the noir vibes of this book and thought that 'Jane' was a really interesting character. I didn't understand a lot of the plot, but I thought that there was some great commentary on the state of the planet and where we are heading. Ultimately, I probably won't remember this book in a few months, but I certainly enjoyed the experience while I was in it.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

There is no other writer quite like Jeff VanderMeer and Hummingbird Salamander is another book in his arsenel that highlights just how unique he is.

In an Earth filled with problems so familiar to us (seemingly slow collapse of society, pandemic, climate change), security consultant "Jane Smith" receives an envelope to a mystery that she attempts to unravel, unraveling herself throughout the book. When she finds a taxidermied hummingbird (of a species that no longer exists), she finds herself in danger very quickly, all the while searching for a very specific taxidermied salamander. While the beginning was a bit slow, by the end each page flew by.

One thing I love about VanderMeer is that he takes you down these roads and gets you lost in the human mind, to a place that from the outside seems delusional, yet within seems to make perfect sense. VanderMeer does this so perfectly with Jane and you very quickly find yourself questioning everything.