I'm on a mission to read all of VanderMeer's works; no matter what, each book is different while idiosyncratic to him. Unfortunately, this is the worst I've read yet of him. Barely speculative fiction given climate disasters are no longer speculative, Hummingbird Salamander follows an unnamed woman as she becomes obsessed with and deeply involved in an ecoterrorist's (from whose perspective?) life, death, and ultimate mission.

For being a thriller, there's not many thrills, and throughout the entire 368 pages I felt this book failed at telling me why I should care or why things were happening. It felt a bit like the environmentalist (read: responsible, well-informed person) response to Michael Crichton's State of Fear, including in-universe snippets from the ecoterrorist's diaries that basically said "you did bad to the earth". Lots of promise, but I was cold.