Acceptance cover art

Acceptance

Southern Reach, Book 3

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Acceptance

By: Jeff VanderMeer
Narrated by: Carolyn McCormick, Bronson Pinchot, Xe Sands
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About this listen

The highly anticipated third volume of the haunting, disturbing and evocative Southern Reach trilogy.

It is winter in Area X. A new team embarks across the border, on a mission to find a member of a previous expedition who may have been left behind. As they press deeper into the unknown – navigating new terrain and new challenges – the threat to the outside world becomes only more daunting. In this last instalment of the Southern Reach Trilogy, the mysteries of Area X may have been solved, but their consequences and implications are no less profound – or terrifying.

©2014 Jeff anderMeer 2014 by VanderMeer Creative, Inc. (P)2014 2014 by Blackstone Audio, Inc. Adventure Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Science Fiction Technothrillers Thriller Thriller & Suspense Technology Exciting Suspense

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All stars
Most relevant
If Edgar Allan Poe, David Lynch, David Cronenberg and Stanislaw Lem are your kind of thing, you’ll probably like this. I found the whole trilogy really interesting and entertaining. I love the beauty and terror suggested by this supposedly alien world that is actually just a reflection of the ‘familiar’ wilderness in which we live. As the final instalment, ‘Acceptance’ answers all the right questions and leaves just enough intrigue to allow one’s own interpretation, a perfect balance.

The story is a slow burner, which I personally liked as it gradually built upon the ominous feeling that permeates the entire series and gave time to the necessary scattering of detailed descriptions. It is sci-fi but perhaps not in the traditional sense. It could also read in parts as a biographical diary written by a biologist or a psychological analysis of bad bosses, making the story relatable whatever your genre taste within reason. It isn’t a big, showy rollercoaster ride of a story with pop-up thrills and explosive shocks but a creeping, haunted ghost train of gradual realisation and growing unease, going who knows where.

The performances are really good, although let down by slightly dodgy recording quality every now and then. I wasn’t much bothered by this. There was only one significantly noticeable editing error where the sentence structure was temporarily lost. Other occasional sound issues weren’t so frequent as to be too distracting in my opinion.

Insidiously, enjoyably cerebral

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Enjoyed the overall trilogy but too many unanswered questions for me. as much as I love having something left to reflect on and work out I felt there was too much that was left unresolved here.

Good trilogy but not enough resolution or answers

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great narration, story, writing, everything. I love this series and his books. he is one of my favourite authors

nice ending to a great trilogy

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If the second book was a bit slow, this one dives straight into it. Intense from the get go and starting to answer questions.

Only thing I'm not sure on is performance. Voices change sometimes a bit randomly. I don't know if this is intended with how the book is written, maybe it's in a different font or it's just an artifact of the recording.

This book stepped it up a lot

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The story itself is fine. No issues there.

Audio editing takes you out of the immersion. It sounds as if, in some places, someone recorded additional lines on their phone and emailed it to the studio. I think in a few places they even had other narrators jump in and record those additional lines.

Some of the narrators were better than others as it seemed like one of them was putting on a voice which they couldn't pull off properly.

Audio editing made this a nightmare to listen to

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