Annihilation

The main character is pretty bland. The story is... well, it does one clever thing, but in brutal honesty? It's not that great. The ending is... pretty bad, actually. And it's not enjoyable, in the sense of just-fun-to-read, either.So why the hell am I giving this 4 stars?It's the atmosphere. The writing, I can just get behind. Remember when you were a teenager and you first read Lovecraft? You got that eerie feeling from his work, because the narrator(s) didn't strike you as particularly sane, and frequently unreliable? Or maybe [b:Gateway 218427 Gateway (Heechee Saga, #1) Frederik Pohl https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388262265s/218427.jpg 1668837], where everything had a feeling of emptiness (from the character looking out) and suspense (from how little the character knows, how dangerous the universe is, and how aware he is of it).It's one of a very few books in many years that made me feel that again. It takes a lot to take a rather unenjoyable book and turn it into something worth reading. Bravo.