Reviews with content warning for Animal death - Dead Astronauts

Reviews tagging 'Animal death'

Dead Astronauts by Jeff VanderMeer

12 reviews

paloverdepages's review against another edition

challenging reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

Reading this book makes me want to read the whole series again. I have academic articles pulled up to read after finishing this. Good god.
I saw a review somewhere describe this as a

~270 page poem

, and I think that's accurate. I think it needs to be read once for the experience, and many more times for understanding.
Definitely requires your complete and undivided focus. I want many quotes from this book on my wall.
EDIT: Forgot to mention, in looking for a way to read this online, I found an academic article about it! Caracciolo, Marco & Ulstein, Gry. (2022). The Weird and the Meta in Jeff VanderMeer's Dead Astronauts. Configurations. 30. 1-23. 10.1353/con.2022.0000.
The article classifies the book in the genre of "weird fiction" and mentions a few similar books. It also explains a bit of the plot, so it's a good place to look if you want some clarification on things.

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.

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scytheria's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

4.0

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aileend's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious sad medium-paced

3.5

First 120 pages - 5 stars
Second half - 2.5 stars

Make sure you've read Borne before you read this! Dead Astronauts is abstract, vague, evasive -so although they both stand alone, Borne will give you an understanding of the world Dead Astronauts is set in and allow you to follow the unconventional style of this one with a little more ease.

The narrative voice and characters shift half way through this book - something I should have been prepared for, having read some of VanderMeer's weirdly structured novels before (like City of Saints and Madmen, which becomes an educational text about squid partway through). But I was so wrapped up in the characters of the astronauts that I was sad to see the POV shift and didn't get on so much with the rest of the book, which reads like a collection of connected short stories set within the same world. But then that's usually what I love about his books, that they always challenge and surprise me.

Be warned; it's dark and unrestrained, angry and grotesque, but stunningly (if confusingly) written, poetic, and holds moments of real beauty among the horrors.

Content Warnings