Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer

ANNIHILATION 
Jeff Vandermeer  
2014

 

 

 

Reviewed by Carol

Recommended for fans of jeanette winterson, environmental exploration, the New Weird

 ★    ★    ★    ★    1/2

 

 

“The effect of this cannot be understood without being there. The beauty of it cannot be understood, either, and when you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you. Desolation tries to colonize you.“

So is it with Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer. Summaries do not do this book justice. Its story colonized me. It was not an invasion; it did not attack my brain, insistent that I continue reading. I was not forced by fear to discover if the hero lives. My limbic system did not spike me with adrenaline until I finished. Instead, slowly, phrase by phrase, the story moved into my head. Area X edged into my imagination. The biologist’s words whispered to me. Leafy tendrils unfurled around me, gently scenting the air with greenness.


The basic plot: a biologist, a psychologist, a surveyor and an anthropologist are the twelfth team sent to explore the mysterious, primitive, Area X. Other expeditions have all gone drastically wrong, but due to an inability of technology to function in Area X, no one knows exactly how or why. In order to maintain control over the trip and the experience, the team is stripped of their personal identity, leaving only their roles to define themselves. 

The biologist narrates their experience in Area X, providing a touchpoint for the reader’s conception of the world Vandermeer is working in. I found the combination of the uncertainty of the background world, the mystery of Area X and the beauty and specificity of the writing irresistible. 

“I thought again of the silhouette of the lighthouse, as I had seen it during the late afternoon of our first day at base camp. We assumed that the structure in question was a lighthouse because the map showed a lighthouse at that location and because everyone immediately recognized what a lighthouse should look like. In fact, the surveyor and anthropologist had both expressed a kind of relief when they had seen the lighthouse. Its appearance on both the map and in reality reassured them, anchored them. Being familiar with its function further reassured them.“

In fact, it functioned as a lighthouse for them, adrift in Area X and from each other. The biologist is a solitary woman, and her self-containment makes a profound statement. Of course, they all are particularly isolated–there is a strange lack of emotional connection between them–but the biologist’s fascination with the creation around her sets her apart.


“The tension lifted somewhat, and we even joked a little bit at dinner. ‘I wish I knew what you were thinking,’ the anthropologist confessed to me, and I replied, ‘No, you don’t,’ which was met with a laughter that surprised me. I didn’t want their voices in my head, their ideas of me, nor their own stories or problems. Why would they want mine?“

I finally realized the deep sense of familiarity I had reading: Jeanette Winterson’s profound, substantive writing style (Lighthousekeeping) collaborating with David Quammen’s enthusiasm for biology (I really need to bump him up on the to-re-read list). Together Vandermeer has created a sophisticated blend of science fiction, vaguely ominous, reminiscent of Sherri Tepper mid-career. Identity, connection and environment are all major themes threading through Annihilation,  themes that are often shared with the writers mentioned.


For some, the pitch-perfect writing won’t be enough to sustain them through slow plot build and even slower resolution. Like The Night Circus (review), this isn’t a plot-driven story as much as one based on both character and ideas, with writing that is truly well-crafted. It worked for me, yet I’m also left with the feeling that I might just want/need to read it again after finishing the final book, Acceptance. It’s that kind of story.

Cross posted at my blog:  http://clsiewert.wordpress.com/2014/09/19/annihilation-by-jeff-vandermeer/

Beauty Queens

Libba Bray
Scholastic Paperbacks
Reviewed by Nancy
4 out of 5 stars

Summary


From bestselling, Printz Award-winning author Libba Bray, a desert island classic.

Survival. Of the fittest.

The fifty contestants in the Miss Teen Dream Pageant thought this was going to be a fun trip to the beach, where they could parade in their state-appropriate costumes and compete in front of the cameras. But sadly, their airplane had another idea, crashing on a desert island and leaving the survivors stranded with little food, little water, and practically no eyeliner.  What's a beauty queen to do? Continue to practice for the talent portion of the program - or wrestle snakes to the ground? Get a perfect tan - or learn to run wild? And what should happen when the sexy pirates show up?

Welcome to the heart of non-exfoliated darkness. Your tour guide? None other than Libba Bray, the hilarious, sensational, Printz Award-winning author of A Great and Terrible Beauty and Going Bovine. The result is a novel that will make you laugh, make you think, and make you never see beauty the same way again.


My Review


I was on the fence about this book. A story about teen beauty pageant contestants stranded on a desert island just doesn’t do anything for me. After reading Stephanie’s review, I decided to try the audio version. At first, I thought it was ridiculous, irritating and just plain stupid. It wasn’t long before I was laughing and snorting in public places.

In the beginning, it was a little difficult to get to know the characters. The story is told from different perspectives and it was hard for me to get all the girls straight. Some of them had unique qualities and “secrets” that made them stand out, while others were a little flat and unmemorable.

I loved the Miss Teen Dream Fun Facts Page, the wacky footnotes that explained products and status symbols, famous personalities, and TV shows, like “Bridal Death Match, the popular TV show about brides who cage fight each other in order to win the wedding of their dreams.”

This story is a satire about the superficiality of consumer culture, politics, and mega-corporations that control everything we watch, read, and buy. It deals with racism, disability, and sexuality. There is adventure, mystery, and a dollop of romance. There are important messages here about survival, friendship, beauty, acceptance, independence, and what it means to be a woman.

Hilarious, empowering, honest, and highly recommended.

SECRETS THAT AREN'T SO MINIATURE

The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

”Behold,

as the stars of heaven for multitude….

How can I myself alone bear your cumbrance,

and your burden, and your strife?”

Deuteronomy 1:10-12


The Miniature Petronella Oortman

Petronella Oortman is barely eighteen years old in 1686 when she marries a rich merchant named Johannes Brandt and moves to his house in Amsterdam. It is unnerving to move so far away from her relatives and all the people she has known her entire life, but it is also exciting to finally escape the boredom of the country and the oppressive slow slide into poverty that her family has been experiencing before, and progressively faster, after her father drank himself to death.


The Miniature Peebo!

She has a parakeet named Peebo and very little else to her name when she arrives in Amsterdam. Her husband, a man she barely knows, is not there to greet her, but his sister is.

Madame Marin.

The Mrs. Danvers of Amsterdam.

In theory the household belongs to Nella, but everything is so different from her former life that she ends up doing what little she is allowed to do wrong, and every time she tries to have a conversation with one of her fellow inhabitants she seems to end up inserting one dainty foot between her lips. This isn’t due to the fact that she is spiteful or sarcastic or silly or stupid, but has to do with the plethora of secrets that infest the entire household. They are the unknowable things that make her feel exactly what she is...an outsider.

Cornelia knows.

Well she thinks she knows.

She is the household maid. She is the keyhole listener, a snatcher of pieces of conversations. She looks through keyholes sometimes seeing an arm or a leg, but never seeing the body complete. She fills in the blanks, sometimes correctly, but sometimes not, and those of us who have studied language know how critical getting one word wrong or right can be in having a proper understanding of a situation.

There is Otto as well, a man who wears his foreign heritage in the color of his skin. He is a walking circus, an inspirer of twittering conversations behind hands or for those more bold catcalls of a derogatory nature everywhere he goes. Johannes saved him from dire circumstances, so despite having to live in a hostile city his loyalty to the Brandts keeps him in Amsterdam.


The painting that inspired the author when she describes Madame Marin.

Madame Marin has never married, despite being beautiful and wealthy. She inherited this household at a young age after their parents died and saw no need to exchange it for possibly a less desirable position as a wife. As the plot unfolds we learn more about Marin and the first impressions we have of her turn out to be but a few flakes in a wind blown snowstorm. She turns out to be much more complex and more humanistic than her cold demeanor and her simmering fury will allow the world to see.

”There’s something about Madame Marin. She’s a knot we all want to untie.”

Nella has been in Amsterdam for eleven days and her husband has not visited her wedding bed. For a girl that was expecting to be “made woman” this is confusing and embarrassing. He is always busy, rushing about down to the wharf to conduct business or locked up in his study, when at home, late into the night.

”Nella inhales the air in the boat, the hint of the places he’s been, the scent of cinnamon stuck in his very pores. he smells vaguely of the musky tang she smelled in his study the night he first came home. Her husband’s brown face and his too-long hair, bleached and toughened by sun and wind, trigger an awkward longing--the desire not necessarily for him, but to know how it will feel when they finally lie together.”

He travels the world in an age where most people may never leave the city they were born in or explore further than a few miles from home. Amsterdam is a city of merchants. Greed is the worm that everyone has swallowed. Brandt has turned out to have a gift for negotiation and for swaying men with his charm and wit. He has made many men rich. He is tired of the life and finds he would rather have fluffy, roasted potatoes than a pile of glittering gilders.

”Greed is not a prerequisite for being good at business, Nella, I crave very little for myself. Just potatoes?” He smiles. “Just potatoes. And you are right, I am not a philosopher, I am merely a man who happens to have sailed to Surinam.”

“You said the sugar was delicious.”

Sugar becomes the watchword of this book. The world has a craving for it and Brandt has accepted a commission to sell bricks of it for some frenemies. The sugar, unfortunately, proves to be a “millstone” around his neck.


A dollhouse owned by a real Petronella Oortman currently in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

Johannes buys his bride a cabinet, a miniature dollhouse of “her” house. It is expensive and certainly he doesn’t send the right message to his young bride who is still too closely tied to dolls and toys. His intent was generous and Nell becomes caught up in the spirit of the gift and contacts:

MINIATURIST
Residing at the sign of the sun, on Kalveerstraat
Originally from Bergen
Trained with the great Bruges clockmaker, Lucas Windelbreke
ALL, AND YET NOTHING.

Miniature Houses became all the rage in the 17th century. People spent ridiculous sums making their miniature houses as sumptuous as possible. Brandt had an exact duplicate of his house made for Nella, well except for one missing room, but you will have to read the book to figure out why.

Nellal orders items to make her house even more her own. The miniaturist as it turns out has some ideas of what she needs as well. She starts sending her unsolicited packages with cryptic notes and presentiments of what will be.

It all becomes rather alarming.

She writes the miniaturist receiving no replies. She stops at her shop. She sees her on the street, a splash of yellow hair, but can never catch her. She is a phantom whose intentions are hard to fathom. This Miniaturist can see into people’s souls. As spooky as it all seems these packages become Nell’s lifeline to understanding the truth.

Those secrets that everyone hoards like gold, start to be spent.

There is an English lad named Jack Philips, a fly in any ointment, an actor, a bohemian, a blackguard, a destroyer of worlds. ”Jack steps into the light at the sound of her, opening his arms wide. He is really so beautiful, Nella thinks. So wild. She cannot take her eyes off him.” He has a puzzling hold on Johannes, another of those secrets that will soon be out in the air. Nella’s own attraction to him is unsettling, but really he is just a good looking sprite of a man that can temporarily stir the hormones of anyone.


When I saw this photo of the author I was not surprised to learn that she had worked as an actress.

As Nella’s world begins to unravel just as she starts to understand it, we will see the resolve of the entire cast of characters tested, one by one, as the wheel of fate continues to turn. Jessie Burton, for such a young writer, kept a steady hand on the tiller and unspooled the plot judiciously to lend maximum impact to the final chapters. She showed wisdom beyond her years, exposing the misconceptions that we all have about each other, even sometimes those people we feel we know well. Nella learns how intolerance leads to cynicism and how dark secrets can become cancers.


No more secrets...but we all have secrets, layers of them, some are spun gold and others are a lead weight lending joy or anxiety in equal measures. Some add spice inspiring giggles and smiles when remembered. Others are sour like vinegar pulling down the corners of our mouths, stealing the bliss from any new found pleasures.


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Mars Returns to Neptune

The Thousand Dollar Tan Line by Rob Thomas and Jennifer Graham 
2014
Reviewed by Diane K.M.
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I'm a marshmallow. I admit it. 

Which means I am a Veronica Mars fan. Which means that not only have I watched all three seasons of the TV show (ahem, multiple times), I was also one of the 91,585 backers on Kickstarter who helped get the Veronica Mars movie made.

In short, I am the perfect audience for this book. If you liked the TV show and/or the movie, you will probably enjoy this novel, which is a new mystery (this is NOT a novelization of the movie or any of the episodes). The writing is true to the characters, and while I read I could even hear them speaking the lines. Kristen Bell's narration was so good that her thoughts and dialogue are especially vivid.

About the story, it's set shortly after the events of the movie take place. (If you have not yet watched the Veronica Mars movie, there are some spoilers in the book for how that case is solved.) It's Spring Break in Neptune, California, and a young woman goes missing. Veronica is hired as a private detective to try and find her, and while she's working that case, BOOM, another girl goes missing.

The plot twists are good, and as usual, Veronica gets herself into a few dangerous situations, but she's able to use her smarts (and the occasional weapon) to get out of a jam. The story pacing was good, and I raced through the book in just two sittings. I was even satisfied with the resolution of the cases. 

The story allows for interactions with almost the full cast of the show, including appearances by Wallace, Mac, Cliff, Weevil, and a few other surprises. Sadly, there isn't much with Veronica's boyfriend, Logan, because he's on military deployment for several months, but I read that Rob Thomas says the next book in the series will have more Logan in it. (Insert fangirl SQUEEEE here.)

I'm not going to try and convince non-Veronica fans to read this (if you want to be converted, I would recommend you start watching season 1 of the TV show), but if you are already a fellow marshmallow, you should check out the book. 

Now sing it with me: "A long time ago, we used to be friends..."

The Name of the Game is Death

The Name of the Game Is Death by Dan J. Marlowe
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When a bank robbery goes pear-shaped and he is wounded, Roy Martin (aka Chet Arnold) and his partner split up, with the plan being Roy will receive payments in the mail. When the money dries up under suspicious circumstances, Roy goes on a road trip to investigate. Will Arnold get his money?

The Name of the Game is Death is a hardboiled gem that's been on my radar for a long time. Why didn't I take it from the mountainous unread pile before now?

It reads like one of Richard Stark's Parker books told in the first person. The man known as Roy Martin, Chet Arnold, and later, Earl Drake, is a slightly less mechanical version of Parker, a man that doesn't kill indiscriminately but does what it takes to get the job done. In this case, the job is finding out why the bank job money stopped being sent. The main character is pretty brutal, especially by the standards of the time this was written. Women and men alike fall beneath his guns.

Marlowe's prose is economical and punchy, again, similar to Richard Stark's. The plot has some wrinkles in it but it's pretty much a detective yarn with a criminal doing the detecting. This isn't literary fiction and doesn't try to be. It's full of bullets, booze, blood, and broads, everything a pulp detective story needs. It also has great lines like "It was as cold as a whore's heart."

Fun Easter Egg - The name of the bar Chet Arnold frequents is The Dixie Pig, the same name as the bar in The Dark Tower. I know Stephen King was into detective yarns at some point so it's a pretty safe bet he read this one.

The Name of the Game is Death is a pretty slim book but it's as long as it needs to be. Maybe the advent of e-books will user in a new golden age of detective novels that are 200 pages are less. They don't make them like this Fawcet Gold Medal classic anymore. 4 out of 5 stars.

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Matthew Scudder Takes a Walk Among the Tombstones

Reviewed by James L. Thane
Four out of five stars

For the last thirty years or so, I've been reading Lawrence Block's Matthew Scudder series which, for me at least, is hands down the best P.I. series that anyone's ever done. I mean no disrespect to authors like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, both of whom I admire greatly. But their body of work is relatively small by comparison. Block, on the other hand, created a fantastic character right out of the box, put him in a great, gritty setting, surrounded him with an excellent supporting cast, and then only continued to get better and better, book after book.

I normally read one about every four months or so, working my way back through the series in order. But I'd only just worked my way back to the beginning of the series when, suddenly, the release of the movie based on A Walk Among the Tombstones was imminent. I've been reading at a much quicker pace over the last couple of months so that I'd be caught up by Friday when the movie opens at a theater near me, as they say.

I confess that I have serious reservations about the whole idea of making a movie from this series. I've studiously avoided seeing the film adaptation of Eight Million Ways to Die, in which Jeff Bridges played Scudder and in which the plot was transferred to L.A., which as any fan of the series could tell you is beyond sacrilegious to the power of about ten. After spending so much time with these books, I have my own very fixed ideas about all the characters, Scudder in particular, and about the setting. And I don't want any movie, no matter how brilliant the people involved, screwing them up.

That said, I'm probably going to see the movie adaptation of this one, assuming that the early reviews are good. I like Liam Neeson, and he's probably about as close to my idea of Scudder physically as any actor could be. Plus, the movie is set in New York and, from what I've read is faithful to the setting. Finally, of course, Mr. Block himself seems genuinely enthused about the film and I trust that he wouldn't lead me down a wrong path. But still...

As this book opens, a drug dealer's wife is kidnapped, brutally raped and tortured, then killed and returned to the drug dealer in pieces. The drug dealer is actually a fairly nice guy as drug dealers go, which is to say that he's way up high in the food chain and is not personally peddling crack to small school children. The dealer's brother knows Matt Scudder from AA, and Matt agrees to investigate the case and try to determine who the guilty parties might be.

Scudder doggedly pursues the case, as he usually does, doing research and interviewing people who might be able to shed light on the situation. He discovers that the drug dealer's wife was not the first victim of these killers and doubtless won't be the last. But will he be able to close the net around them before they claim another victim? And what will happen if he does?

The tension mounts throughout the story, leading to a great climax. But, as always, the character development is key to these stories. The street kid, TJ, who first appeared in the last book, A Ticket to the Boneyard plays a larger role here, as does Matt's main squeeze, Elaine Mardell. Fans of the series know that Elaine is a high-end prostitute that Matt first met back in the days when he was still on the job as a cop. But the relationship has reached something of a critical juncture, and the tension involved in that subplot is almost as great as that in the main plot.

As ever, it's a great ride; I can only hope that the movie comes even close to doing it justice. Wish me luck...

Dostoyevsky, You So Crazy!

Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Madness...This is madness, I tell you!

Or worse, it's philosophy, some sound, some twisted in counterintuitive logic.

In the first part of Notes for Underground the narration reads like the journal of a rambling genius or psychopath. It's difficult to decide. This section had my mind wandering in a whirl of amazement, boredom and confusion. If the entire book went on this way, as slim as it is, I doubt I would've finished it, or if I had, you'd not see a four star rating up there.

The second part of Notes... takes a standard, first person storytelling approach and felt more in the style of Crime and Punishment, only perhaps more personal. Perhaps too personal for my tastes, because I had the misfortune of hating the narrator. He is a coward, a coward who yearns to be courageous, but in all the wrong ways. He wishes to strike down those that have wronged him, but after listening to his self-absorption, imagined slights, and impossibly high and complicated morals, I myself wished to strike him down with a solid backhand, one I hope would wake him up to his own idiocy. Likely it would only get me added to his hate list.

Did you notice what happened there? I felt the urge to hit a fictional character. Well played, Dostoevsky, well played. That is the writer's genius, to craft a character I felt was real enough to touch. I don't know what he looks like other than being a small man, but I know the man's inner self, and that is knowing more about a man than anything I could glean from the outside. Ah, if only all characters were created equally well...

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Not About a Killer Mailman? What?!

The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Don't you love it when something you've heard about for ages turns out to be really good, but in a delightfully different way than expected? ...What do you mean, "no"? Go to hell!

I've been laboring under the misapprehension that this was a play about a killer mail carrier. Maybe that's because I grew up in a time when the phrase "going postal" was coined. (In a sidebar: Isn't it great how the English language is still evolving to incorporate new words and phrases?!) My mother had just recently joined the ranks of those crazy bastards and as the years progressed her bouts with pms turned our house into the Rumble in the Jungle once a month, so I readily expected her to go fully postal. Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked. It turns out the title is just allegorical!

The Postman Always Rings Twice is a taut noir about a drifter who thinks he's the sharpest knife in the draw. He snatches up a job in one of those highwayside nothings that you can still find out there in the California desert near the Arizona border. The drifter latches on to the wife of the goodly Greek gas station/diner owner. The wife hasn't realized her western dreams. The drifter is always looking for some easy scratch. A plot is hatched and nothing goes as you think it will.

That's the beauty of this aging novel: the surprises it still holds after all these years. After all the pulp crime dramas churned out for decade upon decade now, The Postman Always Ring Twice can still ring yer bell, toots.

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After Ever After

Jordan Sonnenblick
Scholastic Press
Reviewed by Nancy
4 out of 5 stars

Summary

An amazing sequel to the groundbreaking debut, DRUMS, GIRLS & DANGEROUS PIE.

Jeffrey isn't a little boy with cancer anymore. He's a teen who's in remission, but life still feels fragile. The aftereffects of treatment have left Jeffrey with an inability to be a great student or to walk without limping. His parents still worry about him. His older brother, Steven, lost it and took off to Africa to be in a drumming circle and "find himself." Jeffrey has a little soul searching to do, too, which begins with his escalating anger at Steven, an old friend who is keeping something secret, and a girl who is way out of his league but who thinks he's cute.


My Review


In Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie, Jeffrey Alper was a child recovering from cancer. Now he is in eighth grade and while the cancer is now behind him, the chemotherapy treatments left him with a limp and caused some problems with thinking and memory, making it difficult to keep up with his classmates.

Jeffrey’s older brother, Steven, who was a major source of support for Jeffrey needs to “find himself” and is off banging drums in Africa. While Jeffrey’s parents continue to worry about him, he has the typical issues an eighth-grade boy must deal with, like a best friend hatching a secret plot, the new girl from California who’s totally hot, and the standardized state-wide exams every student must pass in order to enter high school.

I was hoping to find an audio version of this book, since I so enjoyed Joel Johnstone’s narration of the first story, but had to settle for the book, which I devoured in one day. Again, some of the situations were predictable, but I laughed and cried, and loved every moment with Jeffrey, his family, and his friends.

AUTHORITY BY JEFF VANDERMEER (SOUTHERN REACH TRILOGY #2)

Authority by Jeff VanderMeer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

”In the black water with the sun shining at midnight, those fruit shall come ripe and in the darkness of that which is golden shall split open to reveal the revelation of the fatal softness in the earth.”



John A.K.A. Control has been made director of The Southern Reach Facility. The last director finagled her way onto the last expedition into Area X and has never been seen or heard from again. The assistant director doesn’t only dislike him, but is working actively to undermine him. I’ve been in a similar circumstances before with a job. It is time consuming winning everybody over so that the work environment can settle into a new normal.

As it turns out Control doesn’t have months to convince anyone of anything.

There is something wrong with the building...it smells like rotting honey.

Some of “the twelfth” expedition which were all women have returned, remembering next to nothing, scattered thoughts. Soon he is focused on The Biologist, the main character from Annihilation, whose answers are not...quite...right. There is blue sky in the amnesia that makes Control suspicious that she remembers more than she is letting on.

”They were beginning to exist in some transitional space between interrogation and conversation, something for which he could not quite find a name.”

She is bemused by him.

He discovers notes by the original director about The Biologist that he hopes will offer some clarification, but they only create more questions.

”Not a very good biologist. In a traditional sense. Empathic more toward environments than people. Forgets the reasons she went, who is paying her salary. But becomes embedded to an extraordinary extent. Would know Area X better than I do from almost the first moment sets foot there. Experience with similar settings. Self-sufficient. Unburdened. Connection through her husband. What would she be in Area X? A signal? A flare? Or invisible? Exploit.



Control has been resurrected from what should have been a career ending disastrous string of decisions on his last assigning. The type of judgment calls that haunts your career for the rest of your life. His mother, Severance, currently works for Central in some nebulous position deemed Classified. His grandfather also used to work for Central as well and filled Control’s head with all kinds of platitudes.

”So long as you don’t tell people you don’t know something, they’ll probably think you know it.”

Gramps didn’t pass along anything original, but as his situation becomes more and more tenuous Control finds his grandfather’s voice in his head very reassuring.

”Is your house in order?” the Voice asked. “Is it in order?”

That voice is not grandfather, but his contact at Central. The entity that is supposed to be running interference for him at Central and buy him time to work his way through this puzzle. But why does he always feel so damn funny after talking to him?

Then there is the plant in his desk drawer; the plant that won’t die. It is obviously from Area X. Somebody gave it a dead mouse to eat.


Rabbits will do what rabbits do best, but what will Rabbits do best in Area X?

And then there is Whitby talking about the terror, the terroir. The French word meaning the set of special characteristics that the geography, geology and climate of a certain place possess and how it is interacting with plant genetics.

Area X=TERROIR!

Why don’t we agitate it? Make it do something.

Will it bring him ”closer to the truth about Area X, and even if the truth was a fucking maw, a fanged maw that stank like a cave full of putrefying corpses, that was still closer than he was now.”

Control is opening that door that defies the first rule of every horror film…DON’T OPEN THE DOOR.


Control would have been so much more focused if he’d had Dana Scully licking his face.

This was such a surprise after reading book one. I was expecting to be up to my armpits in malicious people eating foliage, attempting to keep my brain from going completely Gonzo, and hopefully finding answers to some lingering questions about Area X. Jeff Vandermeer switches gears on us and puts us in the middle of an X-File with a Fox Mulder without the steadying influence of a Dana Scully. The suspense builds beautifully with many moments of...that was odd...until finally it reaches a crescendo with Control on the run not only from Area X, but also from the people at Central. And now I MUST read Acceptance.

ANNIHILATION review Book one of the Southern Reach Trilogy



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