Gave it the old college try, I really did. Just wasn't in the mental space for something so abstract and didn't finish. Swapped it out for Annihilation, which I really enjoyed. I still love VanderMeer and may circle back to this again sometime (but not before finishing the Southern Reach trilogy). ( )

OMFG that was amazing. I devoured it. I loved it. I read into the night until my eyes gave out. This is so much more of an experience than your average book. I was sucked in by the gorgeous yet strikingly unusual prose and compelled through the book by a hunger to consume it whole. It is perfect for those seeking an unusual reading experience.

(I would NOT recommend it on audio as there are key visual elements to the prose.) ( )

Most reviews of Jeff VanderMeer’s Dead Astronauts begin by making it somehow the story of Grayson, a black woman who returns from a disastrous interstellar mission to find the Earth filled with genetically engineered mutants, including a shapeshifting moss that becomes her lover. As she moves through space and time, she meets many creatures to be pitied and feared. There is Chen, who is subsumed by mathematics. There is Charlie X, an abused bat-faced boy, who grows up to create monsters, and there is Botch, a giant salamander who once was human. A biotech organization, known only as The Company, seems to be responsible for it all.
Yet the novel does not begin with Grayson or The Company but with a chapter titled: “v. 1. The Dream of the Blue Fox,” and it ends with the suggestion that Grayson, Chen, and Moss-Sarah may be a seventh instantiation of the incrementally reiterative dream song of the genetically engineered Blue Fox. The poetry of that song is a key to the structure of the novel’s fragmented narrative and its ecological message.
The novel is certainly a stylistic tour de force and worth an attentive reading. It will get five stars from those who don’t mind its literary flourishes—as it does from me. ( )

I am part way through this and unsure if I can get any further.
I like stories that you have to piece information together. The main plot points in the summary sound interesting.
The book is a slog. I am unsure if I am supposed to be high (not an option) while reading this, if the author was, or both.
This appears to be going nowhere in particular, and my to be read shelf is full.
I trust the judgment of the booksellers who sent me this, but... ehhh. I might give it another chance later.
Very very odd book. ( )

I am not sure what I thought about this book. I loved Borne and the world created in it, so another book in that world was most welcomed. This though is not told in a straight narrative, nor is it linear, and it is told in a dreamlike way. It is pretty experimental. I didn’t love it, nor did I hate it. It was similar to a Bourroughs book. ( )