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Bliss
The Glass Drifters are musicians on tour in a nation that only recently completed a fifteen-year civil war. They are a trio, hopelessly intertwined with one another in terms of both history and romance. And they are headed down river to a big gig that might make or break them, but nobody, not even their mysterious local promoter, Bob-Henri—or possibly Henri-Bob—seems to have any details. This all happened a long time ago, “and in some other version of this story, the Glass Drifters never leave the fucking river.” In this version, they do.
In this startling new novel, Bliss, world-renowned, New York Times bestselling fantasist Jeff VanderMeer masterfully conceals and reveals, crafting a tale both intimate and far-reaching. Readers might feel unfooted, but they will never feel unsure, guided as they are by prose so assured it might turn the wind, or the tide, or a river’s current.
Bliss incorporates details of physical culture so vivid that they stir sense memories, and details of counter-factual history so specific that they threaten to undermine reality. At the same time, VanderMeer’s deep fascination with how humanity interacts with the environment is a constant during the Glass Drifters’ journey.
Jeff VanderMeer is the World Fantasy Award and Nebula Award winning author of the best-selling Southern Reach trilogy, basis of the critically acclaimed film Annihilation. VanderMeer has produced a body of work so unique and imaginative that the New Yorker crowned him “the King of Weird Fiction.” Bliss is yet another example why.
In this startling new novel, Bliss, world-renowned, New York Times bestselling fantasist Jeff VanderMeer masterfully conceals and reveals, crafting a tale both intimate and far-reaching. Readers might feel unfooted, but they will never feel unsure, guided as they are by prose so assured it might turn the wind, or the tide, or a river’s current.
Bliss incorporates details of physical culture so vivid that they stir sense memories, and details of counter-factual history so specific that they threaten to undermine reality. At the same time, VanderMeer’s deep fascination with how humanity interacts with the environment is a constant during the Glass Drifters’ journey.
Jeff VanderMeer is the World Fantasy Award and Nebula Award winning author of the best-selling Southern Reach trilogy, basis of the critically acclaimed film Annihilation. VanderMeer has produced a body of work so unique and imaginative that the New Yorker crowned him “the King of Weird Fiction.” Bliss is yet another example why.
- GenresScience Fiction
155 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2022
2 people are currently reading
207 people want to read
About the author
Jeff Vandermeer
240 books16.7k followersNYT bestselling writer Jeff VanderMeer has been called “the weird Thoreau” by the New Yorker for his engagement with ecological issues. His most recent novel, the national bestseller Borne, received wide-spread critical acclaim and his prior novels include the Southern Reach trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance). Annihilation won the Nebula and Shirley Jackson Awards, has been translated into 35 languages, and was made into a film from Paramount Pictures directed by Alex Garland. His nonfiction has appeared in New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Atlantic, Slate, Salon, and the Washington Post. He has coedited several iconic anthologies with his wife, the Hugo Award winning editor. Other titles include Wonderbook, the world’s first fully illustrated creative writing guide. VanderMeer served as the 2016-2017 Trias Writer in Residence at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. He has spoken at the Guggenheim, the Library of Congress, and the Arthur C. Clarke Center for the Human Imagination.
VanderMeer was born in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, but spent much of his childhood in the Fiji Islands, where his parents worked for the Peace Corps. This experience, and the resulting trip back to the United States through Asia, Africa, and Europe, deeply influenced him.
Jeff is married to Ann VanderMeer, who is currently an acquiring editor at Tor.com and has won the Hugo Award and World Fantasy Award for her editing of magazines and anthologies. They live in Tallahassee, Florida, with two cats and thousands of books.
VanderMeer was born in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, but spent much of his childhood in the Fiji Islands, where his parents worked for the Peace Corps. This experience, and the resulting trip back to the United States through Asia, Africa, and Europe, deeply influenced him.
Jeff is married to Ann VanderMeer, who is currently an acquiring editor at Tor.com and has won the Hugo Award and World Fantasy Award for her editing of magazines and anthologies. They live in Tallahassee, Florida, with two cats and thousands of books.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
January 11, 2023
It made no sense. But dreams didn't have to make sense. Dreams were like real life that way.
The last little bit of this is gorgeous, but unfortunately you have to slog through the rest of it to get there, and I don't feel like the payoff rises to the trouble of the journey. This man has written two of my all time favorite books, so I don't think I am being unfair when I say this one just isn't up to snuff. (It is possible my disappointed cover love is playing into this, but I don't think so.) VanderMeer says in the afterword that he didn't want to write a story where an American travels to another country and misunderstanding end in horror, but that's exactly what this reads like to me. In fact, if you took a mash up of two of the most wincing movies I've ever seen, The Last King of Scotland for the unrelenting brutality of Forest Whitaker's portrayal of Idi Amin against the fiction of a Scottish doctor caught in his vortex, and the absurdity and pointlessness of Happiness, you would get pretty close to Bliss. Some people would probably call that brilliant, but I'm not one of them, and the attempt to tell the story of totalitarian brutality at a remove is exactly the reason it doesn't work for me. It is particularly disappointing when we already have "Dradin in Love," in which VanderMeer has already visited very similar themes with incredible effectiveness. I also didn't find that the blurring of the lines between the persons of the band members was at all convincing or necessary. All in all, I am disappointed in this one.
The last little bit of this is gorgeous, but unfortunately you have to slog through the rest of it to get there, and I don't feel like the payoff rises to the trouble of the journey. This man has written two of my all time favorite books, so I don't think I am being unfair when I say this one just isn't up to snuff. (It is possible my disappointed cover love is playing into this, but I don't think so.) VanderMeer says in the afterword that he didn't want to write a story where an American travels to another country and misunderstanding end in horror, but that's exactly what this reads like to me. In fact, if you took a mash up of two of the most wincing movies I've ever seen, The Last King of Scotland for the unrelenting brutality of Forest Whitaker's portrayal of Idi Amin against the fiction of a Scottish doctor caught in his vortex, and the absurdity and pointlessness of Happiness, you would get pretty close to Bliss. Some people would probably call that brilliant, but I'm not one of them, and the attempt to tell the story of totalitarian brutality at a remove is exactly the reason it doesn't work for me. It is particularly disappointing when we already have "Dradin in Love," in which VanderMeer has already visited very similar themes with incredible effectiveness. I also didn't find that the blurring of the lines between the persons of the band members was at all convincing or necessary. All in all, I am disappointed in this one.
November 16, 2022
In an afterword, Jeff Vandermeer says he was working on this story right after his book “Annihilation”, about the mysterious 'Area X' in Florida that was cordoned off by an alien existence, and into which a party of explorers go, with dire results.
I can see the fingerprints of “Annihilation” in this, as a semi-famous rock trio (two men, one woman) are hired to do a gig at a mysterious remote jungle location for a dictator/billionaire and go on a ludicrously long journey. There's a whiff of “Heart of Darkness” in this plot line, but the early part is totally screwball, with amusing stuff happening between the band and their sort-of-English-speaking promoter and guide.
But this is Vandermeer, and he can't stay away from horror, or at least horror-adjacent writing. The encounter with the dictator/billionaire turns bizarre, and the member of the band that get out have to live with the memories and consequences.
This is a short book and I can see how he may have worked on it for some time, as the tone in the early part of the book has a bit of foreshadowing, but not matching the tone in the latter half. I suppose in horror there is a plot frame where the story starts funny but ends in tragedy, but I've never seen Vandermeer do out-and-out funny before, so it threw me off track.
Vandermeer turns down the surrealism from past books like 'Dead Astronauts' or 'The Strange Bird', with a more straightforward narrative, but this is still an effectively moody turn-out from a careful wordsmith.
I can see the fingerprints of “Annihilation” in this, as a semi-famous rock trio (two men, one woman) are hired to do a gig at a mysterious remote jungle location for a dictator/billionaire and go on a ludicrously long journey. There's a whiff of “Heart of Darkness” in this plot line, but the early part is totally screwball, with amusing stuff happening between the band and their sort-of-English-speaking promoter and guide.
But this is Vandermeer, and he can't stay away from horror, or at least horror-adjacent writing. The encounter with the dictator/billionaire turns bizarre, and the member of the band that get out have to live with the memories and consequences.
This is a short book and I can see how he may have worked on it for some time, as the tone in the early part of the book has a bit of foreshadowing, but not matching the tone in the latter half. I suppose in horror there is a plot frame where the story starts funny but ends in tragedy, but I've never seen Vandermeer do out-and-out funny before, so it threw me off track.
Vandermeer turns down the surrealism from past books like 'Dead Astronauts' or 'The Strange Bird', with a more straightforward narrative, but this is still an effectively moody turn-out from a careful wordsmith.
January 27, 2023
Bliss, the latest book by Jeff VanderMeer is a novella of about 150 pages + a short afterword. The first, special edition was published by Subterranean Press in October and is gorgeous, with cover art by Scott Eagle.
This review has some structural spoilers so fair warning...
VanderMeer is a wild writer with the ability to write weird fiction in a lot of different kinds of weird. He can change styles like hats from one book (or chapter, or page) to the next and Bliss is both like, in some ways, and yet totally unlike his other fiction.
It starts with a sort of introduction to the main characters, a rock (folky it seems to me) band of three who know each other too well and now in the early twilight of their young careers have accepted a "gig" in a neighboring country recently devastated by civil war. The job sounds sketchy from the get-go. Much of the first part of the book is the often comically absurd travails of their travel by boat(s) along a long, murky river. It reminded me of a comedy version of Sartre's No Exit, but on a boat. It's weird but funny, with hints of something else coming around the next bend. Or the next.
Now for something completely different. It gets creepy, increasingly so...until it becomes quite dark and disturbing. There is also an ever growing geographical confusion as to what fictional land they are traveling in, as the Band, the [Glass] Drifters walk and talk like modern, young Americans but America doesn't have Honduras or Chechnya just across the river...
It is mostly the writing style and beautiful description along with this turn from absurdist yet realistic comedy to shocking horror that really makes this book a VanderMeer book, that is, excellent.
It is a fast, awkwardly fun and compelling read that leaves it's mark on you.
Recommended, encouraged even, and if you haven't read anything by him yet this will do but keep in mind once again, every book he writes is quite unique: he has some big boys out there...three different trilogies of which some of the best novels of the 2000s are included (IMHO of course).
Note: The author includes an afterward explaining how his European trips early in his publising career directly influenced this tale: how subtle yet important details get lost in translation at times leading to bizarre outcomes not to mention the general gap that sometimes lies between different cultures and an individual's ability grasp or deal with it.
I think this may help ground the novel for some readers who get a bit lost on the journey.
This review has some structural spoilers so fair warning...
VanderMeer is a wild writer with the ability to write weird fiction in a lot of different kinds of weird. He can change styles like hats from one book (or chapter, or page) to the next and Bliss is both like, in some ways, and yet totally unlike his other fiction.
It starts with a sort of introduction to the main characters, a rock (folky it seems to me) band of three who know each other too well and now in the early twilight of their young careers have accepted a "gig" in a neighboring country recently devastated by civil war. The job sounds sketchy from the get-go. Much of the first part of the book is the often comically absurd travails of their travel by boat(s) along a long, murky river. It reminded me of a comedy version of Sartre's No Exit, but on a boat. It's weird but funny, with hints of something else coming around the next bend. Or the next.
Now for something completely different. It gets creepy, increasingly so...until it becomes quite dark and disturbing. There is also an ever growing geographical confusion as to what fictional land they are traveling in, as the Band, the [Glass] Drifters walk and talk like modern, young Americans but America doesn't have Honduras or Chechnya just across the river...
It is mostly the writing style and beautiful description along with this turn from absurdist yet realistic comedy to shocking horror that really makes this book a VanderMeer book, that is, excellent.
It is a fast, awkwardly fun and compelling read that leaves it's mark on you.
Recommended, encouraged even, and if you haven't read anything by him yet this will do but keep in mind once again, every book he writes is quite unique: he has some big boys out there...three different trilogies of which some of the best novels of the 2000s are included (IMHO of course).
Note: The author includes an afterward explaining how his European trips early in his publising career directly influenced this tale: how subtle yet important details get lost in translation at times leading to bizarre outcomes not to mention the general gap that sometimes lies between different cultures and an individual's ability grasp or deal with it.
I think this may help ground the novel for some readers who get a bit lost on the journey.
November 27, 2022
Creepy novella about a band travelling through the overgrown marshland of a failed state to play a concert for a mysterious wealthy benefactor. VanderMeer does weird very well, and this has some moments of genuine discomfort. The afterword helps fill in some of his writing process too, which is cool.
January 9, 2023
Okay, I was really leaning more towards a 3 Star review during the the “Good Twin” section of the book as I felt it was losing my interest. However, VanderMeer’s Afterword bumped this back up to a confident 4 Star. This man just makes me smile.
Bliss, like his other works, can be a hard read mostly due not to the content, but the way it’s presented. VanderMeer occasionally gets very abstract with his ideas sometimes to his detriment, and it’s usually up to a coin toss to whether or not I understand certain passages or ideas he’s trying to get across. However when things click, all the elements he implements come together so well.
The entire “Bad Twin” section of this novella is killer. It’s an ever-ramping unsettling trip through an unfamiliar land, with stranger and more absurd things happening as the main trio goes. Eventually, we get to a truly uncomfortable and nerve-wracking dinner-and-a-movie scene that is just perfect.
I won’t say too much more other than I hope since this currently is a very limited publication (750 copies only) that Jeff VanderMeer takes the time to polish (and potentially expand) this story. I’ll read anything this man writes. (Especially if he gets a better proofreader)
Now I go back to sitting and twiddling my thumbs, waiting for Southern Reach Book 4.
Bliss, like his other works, can be a hard read mostly due not to the content, but the way it’s presented. VanderMeer occasionally gets very abstract with his ideas sometimes to his detriment, and it’s usually up to a coin toss to whether or not I understand certain passages or ideas he’s trying to get across. However when things click, all the elements he implements come together so well.
The entire “Bad Twin” section of this novella is killer. It’s an ever-ramping unsettling trip through an unfamiliar land, with stranger and more absurd things happening as the main trio goes. Eventually, we get to a truly uncomfortable and nerve-wracking dinner-and-a-movie scene that is just perfect.
I won’t say too much more other than I hope since this currently is a very limited publication (750 copies only) that Jeff VanderMeer takes the time to polish (and potentially expand) this story. I’ll read anything this man writes. (Especially if he gets a better proofreader)
Now I go back to sitting and twiddling my thumbs, waiting for Southern Reach Book 4.
July 25, 2023
In true Jeff Vandermeer style, Bliss is both absurd and perplexing, or rather, confusing? I am left with so many questions and a desire to pick apart this book to find all the hidden gems. The novella begins with our three (or one?) main characters, part of a band, taking a trip down a river for a gig. As the story progresses, things become increasingly strange and bizarre. Even the language and wording of sentences feels off… I noticed some possible typos, but because of Vandermeer’s writing style, I can’t decipher the accidental from the intentional. It’s hard to know if this book is meant to be as straightforward as the afterward suggests. There are so many hints at alternate realities/versions that I find it hard to believe this is JUST a book about feeling out of place in a strange city or country. I thought maybe purgatory or the multi-verse might be coming into play here… but who knows? It’s Vandermeer, so we might never truly know.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 3, 2022
Look, I love Jeff’s work. I LOVE Jeff’s work. I will read anything he feeds me. This one I wasn’t so sure about. One thing that’s gonna bug me forever: Towards the end, when Ed is dead, there are times in Petey and Sarah’s conversation that Petey says something, but the book says that Ed said it. We know it wasn’t Ed’s hallucination talking to Petey because Sarah hears and reacts to it. I cannot for the life of me tell if it was intentional- meant to show that the lines between the apparition of Ed and Petey are blurring- or if it’s an error. It happens twice that I picked up on, once around the raspberry farm trip and again right near the very end.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 14, 2022
"The Glass Drifters"
End of road
They have come to realize
They are oxygenated cliches
And attempt and fail
To separate themselves
From their condemned state of being
Fade fantasy world beings that weren't.
#poem
Chris Roberts, Patron Saint of the Albatross
End of road
They have come to realize
They are oxygenated cliches
And attempt and fail
To separate themselves
From their condemned state of being
Fade fantasy world beings that weren't.
#poem
Chris Roberts, Patron Saint of the Albatross
November 29, 2022
This was a fun, creepy little novella from VanderMeer about a folk trio that's in the process of falling apart, and a last ditch trip to the neighboring country with a mildly sketchy political past, and the crazy engagement they end up falling into. It's amazing to watch the scale of what they're pulled into unfurl, and how it ends up splitting the cracks that are already there even wider. I also like that VanderMeer follows up with the aftermath of what happens, and shows the psychic fallout. Definitely go and pick this up - you'll be in for a treat.
July 15, 2024
"It made no sense. But dreams didn’t have to make sense. Dreams were like real life in that way."
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews