sheilaokeefe's review against another edition
3.0
I think I liked the idea of this book more than the actual book. I love dystopian novels and mysteries. This book is both, so I should have loved it. But I kept drifting off while listening, finding my mind wandering and having to replay parts. Not sure if it was lackluster narration. I don't think so, I think it was more the writing, which has a tendency to meander and include lyrical descriptions.
chrissie's review against another edition
dark
slow-paced
4.5
This book is just different… weird. Beautifully written. I surely have to sit down and think about it before coming back for review. Side note: I sure would not necessarily mark it as horror. It is quite the doorstopper reading the three books in one go but by the third section it was difficult to put down.
murielc's review against another edition
3.0
I should have known this would have a vague non-ending.
clumsypenguin's review against another edition
2.0
I have... incredibly mixed thoughts on this series. Overall, I didn't enjoy it, but I'd be lying if I said it hasn't been on my mind since I finished it. The thing is, I somewhat enjoyed the almost fever dream-like nature of the book's prose... initially that is. The way the book is told does a stellar job at disorienting the reader and furthering the idea that Area X is this formidable place that nobody can hope to survive in. The thing is, the book doesn't really go further than that and it just left me unsatisfied and disappointed. Between the 3 books in the series, I enjoyed Authority the most (if I were to assign star values to each book it'd go: Annihilation - 2 stars, Authority - 3 stars, Acceptance - 2 stars), mostly since it has a much more compelling overarching narrative. As a whole though, I cannot say I enjoyed this series; for me, the experience of reading this series was as if I was constantly being led on with the promise of answers, only to gain virtually nothing by the end. I understand the overall themes at play here, what with accepting one's own death (a theme I love to see!), light environmentalism, and humanity's capacity for self-destruction in the pursuit of knowledge. All that I can get behind in concept, but as it's used in this book, I'm left wanting more answers than I got. I *understand* that the point of Area X is that it's impossible to fully understand Area X, but at the end of the day I'm left more frustrated from that lack of understanding than anything, and I only feel like I've wasted my time reading something that I've come out the other end of disappointed. HOWEVER, at the same time, as I said at the start of this review, I will still find myself periodically thinking about this book, still frustrating myself by trying to wrap my head around it all. And suddenly I'm stuck there realizing that just like the characters in the book itself, I'm driving myself towards my own self-destruction by endlessly trying to understand the book series myself. And then I'm just left frustrated because I can't completely hate the series as a whole if it managed to do that. But I still disliked this series. I guess this just wasn't for me.
Also, I kinda felt let down by the "horror" that goes on in here. Maybe it's just something else in this book that isn't for me, but I didn't really find any of it all that disturbing or unsettling.
Also, I kinda felt let down by the "horror" that goes on in here. Maybe it's just something else in this book that isn't for me, but I didn't really find any of it all that disturbing or unsettling.
shanth's review against another edition
5.0
Annihilation, the first in this trilogy is a fantastic work, which feels like what Lem's [b:Solaris|95558|Solaris|Stanisław Lem|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1498631519s/95558.jpg|3333881] was trying to be. Explorers encountering the truly unknown, or unknowable and trying to make sense of attempts to communicate with it. The trilogy is set around a government institute called the Southern Reach whose mission is to investigate and contain "Area X", which mysteriously appeared near the coast somewhere in the southern US. An area, where the ecosystem seems to be cleansing itself of human-introduced toxins and producing weird new flora and fauna. Most of all it seems to affect any humans who enter the area changing their behaviour and sense of purpose.
The trilogy focuses on the Biologist from the 12th expedition who
I think VanderMeer adds to Lem's statement that maybe we will never be able to communicate with a truly alien being, by saying some of us might and the rest of us already don't understand them.
The trilogy focuses on the Biologist from the 12th expedition who
Spoiler
is the only person who seems to get area X; the director of the Southern Reach, who sees this potential of the Biologist and wants to exploit it for her own purposes; and Control, and internal affairs investigator who's sent in to figure out what happened in the aftermath of the 12th expedition.I think VanderMeer adds to Lem's statement that maybe we will never be able to communicate with a truly alien being, by saying some of us might and the rest of us already don't understand them.
samnopal's review against another edition
4.0
I was interested in this book primarily because of feeling disappointed at the movie adaptation of Annihilation. You quickly discover that the movie did the book dirty, and in no way does justice to how eloquent VanderMeer is.
I found myself enraptured by many of his descriptions, yearning to be caught up in the weirdly bizarre but serene Area X.
What this series is not: a plot driven monster feature. You may not be satisfied by thinking that you're going to connect all the pieces, because that's not really the point.
What this series is: a rumination on humanity's place in nature and the wilderness. There's a lot going on: considerations of how we interact with and deal with cancer, environmental catastrophe, and the public v. private persona that present to the world.
I found myself enraptured by many of his descriptions, yearning to be caught up in the weirdly bizarre but serene Area X.
What this series is not: a plot driven monster feature. You may not be satisfied by thinking that you're going to connect all the pieces, because that's not really the point.
What this series is: a rumination on humanity's place in nature and the wilderness. There's a lot going on: considerations of how we interact with and deal with cancer, environmental catastrophe, and the public v. private persona that present to the world.
togdon's review against another edition
2.0
I struggled to finish this book, putting it down for an extended period somewhere in the middle of the second book. I think what bothered me about it is that I never connected with any of the characters AND I didn't find the meandering "plot" to be compelling. I can usually ignore one of the two for good writing--and the writing here is fine--but not both. I finished it in the hope to get some resolution that never happened, and if you were to ask me what it was about I'd have to say: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
gvenezia's review against another edition
4.0
VanderMeer's Search for Meaning in a Trilogy of Ideas: Climate Change, Philosophy of Language, Ecological Horror, Contusions of Self-Knowledge, the Social Nature of Truth, Bureaucratic Subterfuge, the Kafka-esque, the Weird, and the Sublime
While imperfect and at times plodding, VanderMeer's trilogy has accomplished what few series or standalone books can: serious engagement with the zeitgeist, tie-in with perennial literary themes, engaging plotting, aesthetic novelty, and a mature and measured ability to represent humanity's contradictions and unresolved theories in a generative way.
The trilogy is bookended by the metaphors and symbolism of Area X—its confounding nature, its echos, its copies, its unfathomability. The sequel, Authority, serves as the expository, Kafka-esque centerpiece. While the least effective of the three, the sequel expands the social ecology of Area X while focusing mostly on one character and his dealings with absurd bureaucracy, human drama, and a long-con. The third installment, Acceptance carries the most narrative and thematic threads, reflects on the trilogy's meaning and symbolism, and proves the most interesting from a character perspective. But as seed for the trilogy, a successful movie adaptation, and insightful literary analysis, Annihilation is the most effective, enjoyable, and meaningful.
While I've written more just on the first book here, the trilogy as a whole has generated some insightful analysis I've drawn from:
LARB
"The Ecological Uncanny"
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-ecological-uncanny-on-the-southern-reach-trilogy/
* Lovecraftian, The Weird
* Climate Change
* * "Like global climate change, this ecological development could annihilate the human race. However — again like climate change — the growth of Area X is easily ignored by governmental figures preoccupied by flashier, more imminent disasters"
* Language
* * “Annihilation, like the other novels in the trilogy, is preoccupied with the way that external environments and beings manipulate our internal selves. Language is held up to particular scrutiny. Characters are infected by words; stories are deployed as weapons; phrases derail characters’ ability to perceive objective reality. Cleverly, VanderMeer turns the text against the reader at times, alerting us to the fact that we, too, are being manipulated with language."
* * "We, like the narrator, are powerless to escape the narrative environment in which we are immersed"
* Trilogy
* * "Authority, its immediate sequel, requires more patience. If Annihilation draws on the Lovecraftian side of the Weird literary tradition, Authority favors the Kafkaesque."
* "While Acceptance is perhaps the most technically accomplished of the three novels, it is also the least able to stand on its own."
* Imagery & Literary
* * "All three of VanderMeer’s novels draw power from their gut-punches of vivid imagery."
* * "the novels also make effective use of what might be termed the ecological uncanny to build their atmospheres of dread. . . Doppelgängers — people who resemble us but are not us — and repetitions, as well as ghosts and emblems of death, serve as fundamental reminders of a past from which the adult self needs to disassociate itself in order to properly function in human society. In the Southern Reach trilogy, it is no longer just one’s psychological depths that are being repressed, but one’s knowledge of oneself as nonhuman, as much an alien part of a natural world as a plant or a whale. Rather than just tackling the psychological framework of the adult, it is the category of “the human” that these novels gleefully tear at, dissect, and absorb. As such, they make for appropriately spooky reading in the age of the Anthropocene, at our own moment of environmental crisis and uncomfortable self-recognition."
New Yorker
"Weird Thoreau"
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/weird-thoreau-jeff-vandermeer-southern-reach
* Trilogy Summary
* * "Broadly speaking, the novels, “Annihilation,” “Authority,” and “Acceptance,” are eco-sci-fi: they’re about researchers exploring a mysterious, deadly, and unaccountable wilderness called Area X. But they’re also experiments in psychedelic nature writing, in the tradition of Thoreau, and meditations on the theme of epistemic pessimism, in the tradition of Kafka. Often, speculative fiction betrays itself, becoming predictable just at the moment when it’s supposed to be “out there.” But the Southern Reach books make it all the way out. They imagine nature, both human and wild, in a new way. And they take a surprising approach to language: in addition to being confounding science-fiction novels, they are fractured, lyrical love letters to Florida’s mossy northern coast."
* Hyperobject and Epistemology
* * "Hyperobjects, Tompkins explains, are “events or systems or processes that are too complex, too massively distributed across space and time, for humans to get a grip on”:
'Black holes are hyperobjects; nuclear materials such as uranium and plutonium, with their deep-time half-lives, are hyperobjects; global warming and mass species extinction are hyperobjects. We know, we live with, the local effects of these phenomena, but mostly they are quite literally beyond our ken. In one sense they are abstractions; in another they are ferociously, catastrophically real.'
It’s an inspired connection: hyperobjects are everywhere in the Southern Reach books. Area X is a hyperobject; so, by extension, is nature itself. “Authority,” the second book in the trilogy, takes place largely within the offices of the Southern Reach, the government agency in charge of Area X: it imagines bureaucracy as a hyperobject.
While imperfect and at times plodding, VanderMeer's trilogy has accomplished what few series or standalone books can: serious engagement with the zeitgeist, tie-in with perennial literary themes, engaging plotting, aesthetic novelty, and a mature and measured ability to represent humanity's contradictions and unresolved theories in a generative way.
The trilogy is bookended by the metaphors and symbolism of Area X—its confounding nature, its echos, its copies, its unfathomability. The sequel, Authority, serves as the expository, Kafka-esque centerpiece. While the least effective of the three, the sequel expands the social ecology of Area X while focusing mostly on one character and his dealings with absurd bureaucracy, human drama, and a long-con. The third installment, Acceptance carries the most narrative and thematic threads, reflects on the trilogy's meaning and symbolism, and proves the most interesting from a character perspective. But as seed for the trilogy, a successful movie adaptation, and insightful literary analysis, Annihilation is the most effective, enjoyable, and meaningful.
While I've written more just on the first book here, the trilogy as a whole has generated some insightful analysis I've drawn from:
LARB
"The Ecological Uncanny"
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-ecological-uncanny-on-the-southern-reach-trilogy/
* Lovecraftian, The Weird
* Climate Change
* * "Like global climate change, this ecological development could annihilate the human race. However — again like climate change — the growth of Area X is easily ignored by governmental figures preoccupied by flashier, more imminent disasters"
* Language
* * “Annihilation, like the other novels in the trilogy, is preoccupied with the way that external environments and beings manipulate our internal selves. Language is held up to particular scrutiny. Characters are infected by words; stories are deployed as weapons; phrases derail characters’ ability to perceive objective reality. Cleverly, VanderMeer turns the text against the reader at times, alerting us to the fact that we, too, are being manipulated with language."
* * "We, like the narrator, are powerless to escape the narrative environment in which we are immersed"
* Trilogy
* * "Authority, its immediate sequel, requires more patience. If Annihilation draws on the Lovecraftian side of the Weird literary tradition, Authority favors the Kafkaesque."
* "While Acceptance is perhaps the most technically accomplished of the three novels, it is also the least able to stand on its own."
* Imagery & Literary
* * "All three of VanderMeer’s novels draw power from their gut-punches of vivid imagery."
* * "the novels also make effective use of what might be termed the ecological uncanny to build their atmospheres of dread. . . Doppelgängers — people who resemble us but are not us — and repetitions, as well as ghosts and emblems of death, serve as fundamental reminders of a past from which the adult self needs to disassociate itself in order to properly function in human society. In the Southern Reach trilogy, it is no longer just one’s psychological depths that are being repressed, but one’s knowledge of oneself as nonhuman, as much an alien part of a natural world as a plant or a whale. Rather than just tackling the psychological framework of the adult, it is the category of “the human” that these novels gleefully tear at, dissect, and absorb. As such, they make for appropriately spooky reading in the age of the Anthropocene, at our own moment of environmental crisis and uncomfortable self-recognition."
New Yorker
"Weird Thoreau"
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/weird-thoreau-jeff-vandermeer-southern-reach
* Trilogy Summary
* * "Broadly speaking, the novels, “Annihilation,” “Authority,” and “Acceptance,” are eco-sci-fi: they’re about researchers exploring a mysterious, deadly, and unaccountable wilderness called Area X. But they’re also experiments in psychedelic nature writing, in the tradition of Thoreau, and meditations on the theme of epistemic pessimism, in the tradition of Kafka. Often, speculative fiction betrays itself, becoming predictable just at the moment when it’s supposed to be “out there.” But the Southern Reach books make it all the way out. They imagine nature, both human and wild, in a new way. And they take a surprising approach to language: in addition to being confounding science-fiction novels, they are fractured, lyrical love letters to Florida’s mossy northern coast."
* Hyperobject and Epistemology
* * "Hyperobjects, Tompkins explains, are “events or systems or processes that are too complex, too massively distributed across space and time, for humans to get a grip on”:
'Black holes are hyperobjects; nuclear materials such as uranium and plutonium, with their deep-time half-lives, are hyperobjects; global warming and mass species extinction are hyperobjects. We know, we live with, the local effects of these phenomena, but mostly they are quite literally beyond our ken. In one sense they are abstractions; in another they are ferociously, catastrophically real.'
It’s an inspired connection: hyperobjects are everywhere in the Southern Reach books. Area X is a hyperobject; so, by extension, is nature itself. “Authority,” the second book in the trilogy, takes place largely within the offices of the Southern Reach, the government agency in charge of Area X: it imagines bureaucracy as a hyperobject.
billiams01's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0