One thing I didn’t foresee happening this year was that we got a new entry in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach series. But the author announced exactly that back in April, and I’ve pretty much been counting down the days to the book’s release ever since. Absolutionthe fourth novel in what was previously a trilogy, hit shelves this week and it takes us back to the beginning of Area X and the ill-fated first expeditions to explore it.

For the uninitiated, the series is about a strange coastal region of the United States that has inexplicably been shut off behind an invisible border and has returned to a wild state. A shady agency has been assigned to study it, but the people who went on these exploration missions either never come back out or come back different. Included in the series Holocaust (which inspired the 2018 film starring Natalie Portman), Authority and Acceptance.

Ten years after the series was originally released, a prequel feels like the perfect way to dive back into the mysteries of Area X and the Southern Reach. The trilogy ended in a way that answered some questions but also left so much else up in the air. And while you probably shouldn’t expect it Absolution to sum it all up neatly, it gives us more insight into the early days of the anomaly and the perspective of key characters in that timeline, like Lowry. Absolution is substantial — it is structured so that there are three novella-like parts, and is almost 500 pages long in total. Which is good, because I can’t get enough of Area X.