Blurb:
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM ALEX GARLAND, STARRING NATALIE PORTMAN AND OSCAR ISAAC
The Southern Reach Trilogy begins with Annihilation, the Nebula Award-winning novel that "reads as if Verne or Wellsian adventurers exploring a mysterious island had warped through into a Kafkaesque nightmare world" (Kim Stanley Robinson).
Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; the second expedition ended in mass suicide; the third expedition in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another. The members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within weeks, all had died of cancer. In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition.
The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.
They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers—they discover a massive topographic anomaly and life forms that surpass understanding—but it's the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything.
Review:
Annihilation. The destruction, the casting into oblivion of something. That is what the word evokes. Of course, that is what you assume when looking at the title of Jeff VanderMeer's first novel in the Southern Reach series. What actually happens however is both benign and beyond what you'd expect. It's a short read, can span a couple of hours of reading straight through it or a couple of minutes over a period of several days yet it questions the nature of humans, the tales we tell ourselves and the tales we tell others. Not only that, but the environment, nature as we perceive it, and nature as we fight against it, fight for it, through whatever means we have at our fingertips is brought into perspective and given a surreal and strange environment that captivates the mind.
Pitching this book in a short sentence should be easy. It's short, thin and starts in familiar ground. Emphasis on should. It should, it should, it should. But it's not. This is not the first novel I have read by VanderMeer, it is the fourth. The first three were the Ambergris trilogy. I read those five or six years ago. And those still haunt me, vaguely, "Shriek: An Afterword" most of all.
Saying "Annihilation" is describeable in a short sentence stretches short beyond its intended meaning and becomes instead a long rambling paragraph with no rhyme nor reason that only makes sense in the hindsight that is gifted in the reflection upon the words and how they play and tumble and twist and turn into a tapestry held together by convincing storytelling and a sense of wonder in how present and vivid the image therein is presented to you, the reader.
So, I think it best I not even begin to approach it from that angle. I should approach my description of it to you as the march of nature, ceaseless and meticulous, wielding biology, entropy and time against the intruders, us and our presence. That is in essence what "Annihalition" tries to capture, and succeeds in doing so.
First off, the character, the biologist. We know not her name, just her title, like the other three with her. Her introverted nature and fascination with the wilderness is a friction upon the group of four. The dynamic she has with both the team and the insights she gives about her personal life show how much she communicates with very little amount actually being said. From the normal beginning to the slow slide into the unknown, the surreal and madness, the information given is sparse but much can be pieced together just from reading between the lines that she wrote.
Then, the plot, the thread of conversation the biologist is giving with her journal, it starts normal, a general survey into the unknown that eats all technology. Then, however, it turns to the abnormal, with the topographical anomaly eating up much of the journal entries, due to how the group perceives it and how the biologist perceives it. Shenanigans, as I usually say, ensue, with more being learned and discovered about the area, all in lockstep with the mounting horror of just how much is hidden away in Area X.
Worldbuilding is hard to describe. It is earth, but it is not earth, with an agency just known as Central running a station called Southern Reach sending expeditions into an area called Area X. Before Area X,it was just... coastland, a refuge for the downtrodden and the criminal. Still a strange place, but like any strange place, it was just that. Nothing crazy going on there. Parallel or forgotten, it is unclear if they still exist, is the Seance and Science brigade. Paranormal experts using science equipment and the scientific method to explain the unnatural in all its unnaturalness. More is expounded upon in the later books.
The only downside, the negative about "Annihalition" is also, I believe, its selling point. It is the start of normalcy and its descent into madness and surrealness. The fact that it does so is a testament to how VanderMeer writes a story that slowly turns up the pressure so that you are, in essence, the frog. The story is the pot of water that is slowly being set to boil.
Overall though, if you enjoy the weird and fantastical, with a bit of horror of the unknown tossed in, "Annihilation" is for you.
If you've made it this far, thank you for reading this review. And if this doesn't sound like your cup of tea, there is always another book out there that might appeal to you more, which is why this link to a random review exists. It might be something that you are looking for, it might not, you never know, that's the fun of it.
As always, wherever you are reading this, have a good morning, good afternoon, good evening and good night!
