Hummingbird Salamander

by Jeff VanderMeer

Paperback, 2022

Status

Available

Call number

813.54

Collection

Publication

Picador (2022), 384 pages

Description

Fiction. Literature. Thriller. HTML: Named one of NPR's Best Books of 2021 From the author of Annihilation, a brilliant speculative thriller of dark conspiracy, endangered species, and the possible end of all things. Security consultant "Jane Smith" receives an envelope with a key to a storage unit that holds a taxidermied hummingbird and clues leading her to a taxidermied salamander. Silvina, the dead woman who left the note, is a reputed ecoterrorist and the daughter of an Argentine industrialist. By taking the hummingbird from the storage unit, Jane sets in motion a series of events that quickly spin beyond her control. Soon, Jane and her family are in danger, with few allies to help her make sense of the true scope of the peril. Is the only way to safety to follow in Silvina's footsteps? Is it too late to stop? As she desperately seeks answers about why Silvina contacted her, time is running outā??for her and possibly for the world. Hummingbird Salamander is Jeff VanderMeer at his brilliant, cinematic best, wrapping profound questions about climate change, identity, and the world we live in into a tightly plotted thriller full of unexpected twists and elaborate conspiracy.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member gypsysmom
I am concerned about habitat loss and species extinction. I take steps to limit my impact on green-house gas emissions. I support organizations such as The Nature Conservancy and the David Suzuki Foundation that advocate for a better future. Yet, I doubt I would go so far as "Jane Smith" does in
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this book.

Jane Smith is a fake name for a security consultant living and working somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. She has a husband and a teenage daughter and a good job. A former college wrestler Jane is a large woman but she continues to work out at a gym and so she has retained her muscular conditioning. One day, as she leaves her favourite coffee shop, the barista hands her an envelope that someone has left for her. Inside the envelope is an address and a key with the number 7 on it. She decides to go to the address and that starts her on a path that will turn her life upside down. The address is a storage compartment facility and Number 7 is an almost empty storage compartment. The only contents are a chair with a cardboard box on it. Inside the box is a taxidermied hummingbird and a note that says "Hummingbird .. .. .. Salamander" signed by someone named Silvina. Silvina Vilcapampa has recently died and she left a series of clues that takes Jane on a quest. Silvina may or may not have been an eco-terrorist. She may or may not have trafficked in wild animals. She may or may not have hoped to establish a new order that would allow humans to interact with the ecosystem in non-destructive ways. And for some reason she has chosen Jane to carry on her work. There are people who don't want Jane to succeed. Jane is watched and followed and attacked and held captive and shot at but, although injured and separated forever from her family, she carries on. It's an epic tale.

I haven't read anything else by this author but I'm thinking, based on this book, that I may have to read more.
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LibraryThing member invisiblelizard
What do you get when you combine equal parts noir with eco thriller? This book.

Let's start with what I liked. The writing was fantastic. The noir tone was so well crafted that I almost heard Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett calling from between the lines. And what a great character, the
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tough-as-nails Jane (Smith?, really?) leading us through her descent into some kind of controlled madness as she traces the clues backwards to figure out who, or what, Silvina was, starting with the titular Hummingbird. And the fact that as she followed these clues, pulled on these threads, she also gave us insights into her own life story and how inevitable her story and Silvina's overlapped. That was awesome. Parts of this story were edge-of-my-seat exciting.

Minor spoilers ahead, just be forewarned.

The inevitable downside to reading about a descent into madness, is you have to let go of any hope that her life, her normalcy as it was when the story began, can return. And the sooner you do that, the better off you're going to be. I spent the first half of the book hoping that she would work things out in such a way that a return to her home and her family would be possible. It would have been better (for me) if I'd let that go earlier on. The clues where there. For reasons that never get properly explained, Jane's insistence in pulling on those threads, causing the unraveling of her own life, left a scorched earth landscape behind her such that there was no going back. My advice to readers is to pay attention to the eco thriller aspects of the novel. The writing is clear on the proverbial walls. The landscape that Vandermeer is painting for us is bleak. Jane's story is a mirror of that.

Once I let go of those hopes, I realized how all the narrative paths lead to the same logical conclusion. And when Vandermeer took me there, I wasn't surprised, but I also wasn't disappointed. The ending is a little fantastic, but just a bit. I'm willing to suspend my disbelief and cling to the glimmer of optimism embedded in the finale.

Final thought: after struggling mightily (as I did) with Dead Astronauts, Vandermeer has completely redeemed himself. This book is another excellent example of his powers as a great writer.
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LibraryThing member mookie86
Not sure what to think after reading this. Iā€™m a big fan of VanderMeerā€˜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
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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.
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LibraryThing member N.W.Moors
This is the first book by Jeff VanderMeer I've read and it was quite a ride. Think of it as a Christopher Nolan script (not Batman, more Inception) narrated by Kathy Bates in Misery.
A mysterious and unreliable narrator tells how she was given a stuffed rare hummingbird by a dead woman named
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Silvina. The narrator, Jane/Jill as she calls herself, investigates to find out that Silvina is an eco-terrorist or maybe just an environmental activist. Jane/Jill follows incomprehensible clues (a random set of numbers happens to be the number of her childhood home) to find the truth about Silvina. Along the way, she's beaten up, shot, tortured, and manages to lose her job, her family, and associates, some literally. But Jane/Jill is obsessed and doesn't care about her daughter or others injured or killed by her actions. She's not a nice person.
I happen to like Nolan's movies and this was okay except it dragged on and on. The payoff at the end was meh, but the writing is very good.
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LibraryThing member whitewavedarling
A fast and twisty eco-thriller, Hummingbird Salamander packs a ton of story into a fast-paced read. I loved the blend of intrigue and climate/ecology-awareness, and the story kept me guessing. I'd say that reader of VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy will devour this, and I'm personally glad to
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have read it. I will say that something about the voice of this book put me off a bit--I'm not sure if it's that the voice was a little bit overdone for me, or if I just couldn't connect to the main character like I wanted to--but I still enjoyed the book and would recommend it. It's not my favorite of VanderMeer's, but since his earlier works have set a high bar for me, that only means so much.

Recommended as a great speculative thriller.
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LibraryThing member Sunyidean
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher and the author for the free copy, in exchange for an honest review.

THis is the first non-speculative Vandermeer book I have read; the rest are SFF to some degree (as far as I know.) Some parts of it I loved, and some parts I struggled with, but I overall
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found the book a really positive and engaging read. It's beautifully written, full of paranoia and sadness and love for the natural world, and has an intriguing main character who is difficult because she is so uncompromising.

For the areas I struggled with, I think this was largely down to expectation. The book is billed as an eco thriller, but it doesn't really meet my internal definitions of thriller, and I'm not sure it would meet industry ones either? I spent a year reading commercial thrillers to prepare for writing a thriller myself, and my understanding was that thrillers have a certain kind of structure. In HS, very few of the MC's plot goals are accomplished in the way that she hopes, put it that way, and the structure is sprawling rather than corseted.

When I let go of the idea that this was meant to be a thriller, and read it more as a deeply literary meditation on the collapse of civilisation as part of the aftermath of humanity's destruction of the natural world, then I found I enjoyed it much more. I stopped expecting certain plot point to unfold in certain ways, and could just embrace the book for what it was trying to do, and what it was trying to say.

In that sense, I approached Hummingbird much as I approached Dead Astronauts: by letting go of the proverbial wheel and trusting Vandermeer to present something artistic and unusual, a liminal book that defied its own supposed structure.
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LibraryThing member Charon07
When listening to an audiobook, I rarely go back whole chapters to listen again to something Iā€™ve missed, but about a third of the way in, I had to go back to almost the beginning and re-listen to the first few chapters. What the hell was going on? I still couldnā€™t figure it, and I still
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donā€™t think Iā€™ve figured it out. I mean, I got what was happening, but I still have no idea why any of it happened. And I donā€™t know why I should care about any of those people.
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LibraryThing member grumpydan
Iā€™m still trying to wrap my head around this book as I finished reading it three days ago. It is the story of a woman who calls herself Jane as is an analyst for a tech security company. One day while getting her coffee, she is given an envelope with a note and key. It was from someone she
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didnā€™t know ad finds out it is from a dead eco-terrorists. And the more she investigates the more dangerous the mission becomes. Is it a game or is it more? The way the story is written, ā€œJaneā€ doesnā€™t share with the reader the names of people as if it is some secret. She gives up her life, family, and her job to go on a perilous wild goose chase. This story was a roller coaster ride that I didnā€™t care for. We are left with a dystopian ending which I didnā€™t really care for.
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LibraryThing member ragwaine
I've enjoyed a bunch of VanderMeer's strange, original writing, but this one wasn't that exciting. I felt like I missed something at the beginning, a link between the 2 main characters, but then it got explained towards the end, so I felt better after finishing the book. It seems that the main
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character is on a "quest" to solve a mystery, but I still don't understand why/what was spurring her forward, especially when there was so much going against her.

The writing was gritty and sad, a slow drip of clues/revelations kept me reading, but really I think it was the amazing performance of the narrator that kept me listening. She was PERFECT for this book.
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LibraryThing member sturlington
What is it? A hard-boiled detective novel with a vaguely apocalyptic near-future setting.

Where is it set? Unnamed location in the Pacific Northwest, but context tells me it's mostly set in Oregon.

What I liked: The hard-boiled detective is a middle-aged female ex-wrestler who's not that great at
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detecting (though she gets better). Interesting ideas about the environment and our relationship with it.

What I didn't like: The plot was convoluted and sometimes hard to follow, but I find that's true of all hard-boiled detective novels. There were a lot of fight scenes.

What it compares to: It didn't move me as much as either the [Southern Reach] trilogy or [Borne]. Reminded me of [12 Monkeys].
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LibraryThing member hardlyhardy
Jeff VanderMeerā€™s ā€œHummingbird Salamanderl (2021) certainly doesn't sound like a thriller. And with its cover showing a colorful hummingbird against a white background, it certainly doesn't look like a thriller. Aren't thrillers supposed to have black covers? And yet a thriller is what it is,
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and a particularly fine nail-biter and edge-of-the-seater at that.

VanderMeerā€™s story takes place in the near future when the United States is near collapse because of climate change and environmental disaster.

A large woman (six feet tall, 230 pounds) who works as a security consultant. "Jane Smith," as she calls herself, has a husband and daughter at home. One day she receives a box containing a stuffed hummingbird, possibly the last of that particular species. A cryptic note from someone named Silvina hints that there is a stuffed salamander out there somewhere that she should find.

Jane once thought she might like to become a detective, and so she begins trying to unravel this mystery. It dominates her life, causing her to neglect both her job and her family. She and those around her are soon in grave danger. The mystery deepens, bodies pile up and eventually her quest takes her back to the beginning ā€” her own beginning.

By the novel's end it begins to read like science fiction, but until then it reads like a thriller, an unusually good one.
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LibraryThing member RandyMetcalfe
ā€œJaneā€ ā€” not her real name ā€” is given a curious object: a taxidermied extinct hummingbird. Itā€™s almost impossible not to see it as a message. Jane, inevitably, begins following the breadcrumbs. And at first they really are barely breadcrumbs. But then things begin to get big. And bad.
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Very, very bad. And pretty soon, itā€™s the end of the world all over again.

At first, this reads like William Gibson on steroids. Paranoid, rightly so, and so darn tense. I almost couldnā€™t continue or put it down either. Of course itā€™s a huge story and not entirely comprehensible, which is perfectly fine and so very Vandermeer. As ever, Iā€™m not sure the payoff warranted the ordeal but it was delicious while it lasted.

Definitely recommended for those who enjoy this kind of thing. (Which sometimes includes me.)
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LibraryThing member sleahey
Set in a very realistic near future in the Northwest, this is a novel of ambiguity. We don't really know who the characters are, can't understand their motivation, and can't imagine a possible outcome. What kept me reading was the richness of the main character narrator, who gave herself the
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pseudonym of Jane. She was damaged, unlikeable, introspective, smart, and skilled at all forms of security. When a clue came her way, she was able to decipher it and follow where it led, even though it wasn't at all clear why. When the last part of the book gave more explanation of the back story, Jane's whole journey made more sense.
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LibraryThing member soraxtm
I had a suspicion it was like this. You hear about all these authors trying to sell books winning awards and getting on lists and you think there must have been some winnowing down. Surely they can find fifty good books to put on a list. Nope not even close. This book is an affront. This book has a
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man writing as a kinda manly women for no reason. She want to live off grid is presented as some morsel of real life some everybody else has thought. All the observation aren't even on the level of a sitcom. The interior life of the person is just not there. She just gets annoyed at thing and likes to talk about it. ugh....
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LibraryThing member markm2315
I am a VanderMeer fan. That said, his half-sentence ambiguous style can seem like a drag on an otherwise typical mystery thriller, and I would have quit reading this if I wasn't aware of the way JV's stories go. Things pick up in the middle. Also, since VanderMeer's concerns are my own (I would say
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our own if I didn't occasionally turn on the TV) I was ultimately very satisfied with the whole.
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LibraryThing member tuusannuuska
This is really not the easiest book to review. It's a little bit different than the other things I've read from VanderMeer, but also carries a lot of the same themes and tone as The Southern Reach, for example. Everything's a little off kilter and nothing is really known until it steps upon you,
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but all the while you know that the narrator is telling her story after the fact.

I personally really enjoy VanderMeer's writing style and the themes he covers. I liked the main character as a character, but not really as a person. The side characters were maybe a little undercooked sometimes, but then again this was strongly a story from our main character's point of view, and to her, other people aren't really all that important.

The conflict resolution towards the end is pretty anti-climactic, and the actual end of the book is one that I'm sure will divide people in whether it's good or bad.

For me, the thing that keeps this book from being five stars is just the lack of impact. I guess I need to care about the characters and the plot in addition to merely being interested in them for the book to warrant the highest rating.

Still enjoyed it though.
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LibraryThing member modioperandi
Thanks to FSGxMCD for the advance reader copy. The ARC paperback is a beauty and so the production hardcover will be amazing no doubt. Jeremy Zerfoss contributing artwork is stellar and a real contribution to the novel just like in this past winters A Peculair Peril.

Hummingbird Salamander is not at
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all, as ever in Vandermeer's work, what it seems to be. What starts out as a clear, Finch-esqe but not even that, noir thriller, transforms by of hard-edged action, heartbreaking and often tender but broken family dynamics, and always, consistently, doggedly a story - a solid story - about crime, marriage, parenting, families, parents, children, and how to live in the world; a world that in Humming Salamander seems ever more a reality that we all must face.

Our unreliable narrator, Jane Smith, must navigate a world of intrigue and crime. Must explore her own grief and discover the grief that was welling up within her all along for the world falling apart around her. Jane Smith must follow the traces and pieces left behind by Silvina Vilcapampa and her family and her families nefarious network of companies and criminals. The book section by section and part by part whilwinds and vortexes into a tale that only Jeff Vandermeer could have told. The present moments leaks into the work in the best ways possible and demands an urgency about the failing world around us. It as ever in Vandermeer work is also about family and love and struggling to be a person in the world. In a world so full of humans but lacking in actual people.

An epic work. As ever looking forward to the next thing from Jeff Vandermeer.
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LibraryThing member grahzny
I powered through this one, so it must have held my attention pretty tightly. I liked narrator's rough inner landscape. I enjoyed the slowly-impinging sense of eco-social doom.

Language

Original language

English

Physical description

384 p.; 7.45 inches

ISBN

1250829771 / 9781250829771
Page: 0.7575 seconds