Reviews with content warning for Violence - Dead Astronauts

Reviews tagging 'Violence'

Dead Astronauts by Jeff VanderMeer

6 reviews

mementomoriiv's review

challenging dark mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This book hurts.

It is beautiful and twisted, twisting. It moves across Earths, through glass globes, into animals and boys who yesrn to stay dead but awaken with new ways of being each day. It examines the damage left by humans who think only of their own uses.

It is helpful to look back and re-read as you move forward. There is no timeline.

This is a beautifully written, richly imagined, devastatingly human book.

Content Warnings

sunn_bleach's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This is a hugely acerbic, mobius strip-esque novel that weaves in parallel realities and explores the concept of archetypes in a post-apocalyptic wasteland following an ecological disaster. Saying that means nothing; Dead Astronauts is, like so much of VanderMeer's work, a book where the prose and format are immensely important to imparting the surreality of death and destruction. In this sense, it's like ecological ergodic literature - you travel throughout different perspectives of machines, mutants, creatures, and survivalists in which the organization of words on-page tells you more about their lens and experiences than the actual words on-page. Some reviews of this book lamented the difficulty in following the plot, but that's kind of the point - if you're interested in a speculative fiction take on early 20th century modernism and mid-20th century environmentalism (though that's putting it too reductively), then this is absolutely for you. Given VanderMeer's residency in Tallahassee, FL, it's hard for me to imagine he isn't a little bit inspired by fellow USA southerner William Faulkner.

Content Warnings