‘Hummingbird Salamander’ is a gritty eco-adventure

Your regular barista delivers an envelope with your morning latte. Do you open it? Or is it time to find a different coffee shop? Choose carefully. If you read the mysterious message, there’s no turning back.

For security consultant Jane Smith, this choice leads her to a key, a storage unit and a series of increasingly difficult decisions.

On this thrilling note, Jeff VanderMeer ( the “Southern Reach” trilogy, “Borne”) releases another gritty eco- adventure into the wild. “Hummingbird Salamander” reads like an existential James Bond novel crossed with a David Attenborough documentary, which should please his current fans to no end.

Newcomers may not be ready for this series of fiction wrapped truth bombs. That said, readers of all persuasions who appreciate dramatic tension will enjoy the adrenaline rushes that come and go as Jane’s adventure grows steadily more bizarre.

VanderMeer conveys a good deal of this frenzy through narrative technique. Sentences pulse like irregular heartbeats. Long stretches of Jane’s narration shatter into action with shootouts, chases, and dramatic confrontations. The result is that, like Jane, readers can never let down their guard for a moment.

All roads lead back to the mysterious Silvina, who is either humanity’s last, best hope for survival or a dangerous eco-terrorist, depending on your point of view. When Jane isn’t brooding or beating someone up, she’s researching Silvina’s accomplishments and soaking up facts on topics from endangered species to taxidermy.

VanderMeer seamlessly weaves these passages into the story, telling readers just enough to encourage Googling for more. It’s tough to integrate science into fiction without falling into didacticism, but “Hummingbird Salamander” manages beautifully.

Character-wise, Jane’s inner landscape is just as compelling as the novel’s external flora and fauna. Extreme calm and competence hide an equally extreme paranoia. Prepared for crisis long before Silvina’s note, Jane’s gear includes a go-bag and an oversized, overstuffed purse she calls Shovel Pig.

This raises the question of whether or not paranoia is justified if someone is actually out to get you. Given that Shovel Pig saves Jane’s bacon more than once, readers may very well say yes.

The novel’s structure is as intricate as Jane’s character. In fact, “Hummingbird Salamander” is actually an invitation, with the burden of knowledge passed from Silvina to Jane to the reader. Call it a reading from the Gospel of Silvina, according to the Book of Jane.

Once readers know what the women know, they have choices to make. Some will finish the novel and go back to their lives, entertained, but unmoved. Others will wear the burden of knowledge like a fur coat: feeling guilty, but not enough to change.

This casts Jane and Silvina as contemporary Cassandras, speaking prophecy that, while true, is largely ignored. But some will care, and then act. Will it be enough action, in time?

VanderMeer doesn’t have answers, but does offer hope: if someone as troubled as Jane Smith can learn to care and take action, he implies, so can we.

Cynical readers might disagree. Wearing masks and staying indoors during COVID-19 seems to be too much to ask of many, despite half a million lives lost. And when it comes to climate change the long list of people we haven’t listened to includes Autumn Peltier, John Francis and Greta Thunberg. Why would we heed Jeff VanderMeer now?

Because, despite our extreme inertia and bottomless cynicism, we humans are more likely to pay attention to hard truths when they come wrapped in engaging fiction.

Unlike lectures or white papers, a good story can make an abstract crisis feel both personal and visceral. And we tend to care more about things outside of our own experience when we realize they could — and probably will — happen to us.

That’s unfortunate, but at this stage of climate change, it’s what we’ve got. Everyone who already understood why the environment is precious has climbed aboard; everyone else should consider the hummingbird. And the salamander.

Don’t forget about the western lowland gorilla or the Yangtze finless porpoise, to name just two of many endangered species you can Google in your spare time. And don’t forget to thank VanderMeer for the wake- up call, whether you needed it or not.

Recommended for book clubs, diehard cli-fi fans and your grumpy Uncle Ralph who thinks climate change is a hoax. As of this writing an adaptation is under development at Netflix, so read the book before the story hits the small screen.