Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff VanderMeer is published by Fourth Estate (£16.99). In the end, there was nothing the hummingbird could tell me more than what lay behind its eyes.” What does it mean, though, to be led by the dead and by symbols of extinction in a time of mass extinction? “I’d gone down the rabbit hole,” Jane ultimately reflects, “of investing the hummingbird with so much meaning and emotion. It’s winter in the town of Eerie-on-Sea, where the mist is thick and the salt spray is ratt. It’s a path that puts Jane and her family dangerously at odds with those same dark forces, but she falls prey to fascination – with the details of Silvina’s life and visions for an ecological future – so that just when she might step back, she’s carried forwards, obsessively, convinced that Silvina’s story can yield a pathway out of the wider ecological catastrophe. A quirky, creepy fantasy set in Eerie-on-Sea finds a colorful cast of characters in hot pursuit of a sea monster thought to convey a surprising gift. Jane follows the clues that Silvina has left for her, on to the trail of criminal wildlife traffickers and murky corporations.

The author of this message and its mystery is a well-known eco-terrorist and corporate heiress, Silvina, believed to be dead. It’s set in a near future defined by escalating climate breakdown and neighbourhood drone patrols and tells the story of Jane Smith, a cybersecurity consultant, whose staid suburban existence in the Pacific north-west of America is thrown into turmoil when an anonymous barista delivers her a message and a key one morning, pointing her in turn towards the stuffed body of a hummingbird, now thought to be extinct.

Malamander book 5