A review by silverjennydollar
Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff VanderMeer

adventurous dark hopeful reflective tense fast-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

4.5

“Delusional. Naive. Unworkable. Dangerous. That is what the enemy called the necessities for survival. For flourishing.”

4.5 stars. His best since Annihilation (to be fair, I have not read Dead Astronauts yet). One of the best female characters I have ever read! This was so well-paced and well-planned. The bits of the narrator’s childhood were perfectly interspersed until it all came together at the end. There were some lulls after the excitement of the halfway point, but the ending was so good. I really enjoyed this future dystopia because of how realistic it was, how close at hand. I also reveled in the naive utopias created by (at first) well-meaning activists. Even while I knew they were ridiculous. I wanted to go there. Like Epcot falling down in the middle of an apocalypse. This story served as a warning, a criticism, a call for desperate hope. But it was also a hell of an action story. When all seems hopeless, the best we can do is try, right? Better to try than to destroy.