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.

I don't really know how to react to this book... it was interesting and engrossing, and at the same time weird and confusing. It's the first of a trilogy, and I think I'm going to have to read the rest of the books to satisfy my curiosity about Area X. I appreciate that it didn't attempt to explain away all the weirdness, but just let it wash over the reader.

I almost gave this 3 stars instead of 4, but it was a close call and I'm going err on the side of being positive.

What a curious little book. I liked the nameless navel-gazing protagonist, and the sheer weirdness and unreliability of it all. I want to explore Area X further, this seems rather promising.

Kind of tedious.

I like the premise, and I like the idea of modern takes on what's essentially a Lovecraft story. I like that the book has a predominantly female cast with only two male characters of note. I like the idea of an unreliable narrator, and I like the subtle way that the nature of her unreliability was handled.

There were only a couple of instances of her being outright deceptive, but ultimately the unreliability comes by virtue of her realizing that she's not as introspective/self-aware as she'd always let on. It's a really interesting and mature idea that a lifetime coming across as terse or guarded isn't a result of being in complete control, but just the opposite.

Basically I wanted to like everything, but the narrator is SO flat that everything just falls flat as a result. Even at 200 pages, it feels overlong. I honestly think 1990s Stephen King could've covered all this material in about 30 pages and it would've been just as satisfying. Things that I think should've been major bombshells were underplayed, and minor revelations were stretched out as if to oversell their significance. All the questions left unanswered don't feel like intriguing ambiguity so much as threads left dangling.

It feels like this should've been one book instead of a trilogy, although I doubt I would've finished the book if this had been the end of Part One.

The premise and plot were incredibly intriguing, but I kept waiting for some revelation or tidbit of information that would make some kind of sense and it never came. I'm sure that's the point, but there's only so much obfuscation and abstraction one can take without some tiny bit of clarity to keep the interest up. The best kinds of carrot on a stick answer questions while raising new ones. Every time Annihilation had the opportunity to provide answers, it pulled back. Again, I'm sure that's by design, but it's because of this that it failed to really grab me. There's so much opportunity in Area X, I want to learn about it and the Southern Reach. I'm hoping the second book will provide more answers than this one due to the fact that it's from the perspective of the Southern Reach instead of the explorers themselves. If not, I may not finish the trilogy.

Executive Summary: It's well written, but just never clicked for me.

Full Review
This is a hard review to write. I didn't exactly dislike this book, I just never got into it. The writing is good, the world seems interesting.

I love the mystery of it all. As someone who was a fan of Lost and the puzzle/exploration Myst games before it, it reminded me fondly of both of those things. But much like Lost I felt that it got too caught up in presenting mysteries to the audience while never really doing a good enough job of revealing things.

Now I know this is book 1 of a trilogy, but I felt like there just wasn't enough answering. I also had trouble connecting with the Biologist. She felt more like a camera. I didn't really care what happened to her or the other characters except for how it allowed me to learn more about Area X.

There just wasn't enough here for me to be interested in continuing on. I've heard mixed things about how much is actually revealed in the later books, and I have too many other things I want to read instead.

Either way, it's a short read and I'm glad to have checked it out.

This review is coming several months after I've read Annihilation, the first installment ofJeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, but I thought it was about time I got around to reviewing it. The books in this collection have been getting quite a bit of buzz and has won the 2014 Nebula for Best Novel, the 2014 Shirley Jackson Award for best novel, and was the Sword & Laser book club pick for February of this year.

Annihlation is the first in a trilogy about the mysterious Area X, a region that has been quarantined from civilization due to the odd things that keep happening in the area. The only people who enter Area X are the members of occasional expeditions of specialists who are attempting to understand what is creating this strange region. In Annihilation, the expedition consists of four female scientists who are trained in anthropology, biology, psychology, and surveying. The women start the expedition by working together, but, after an odd fungus infects the biologist, the others start to disappear in strange ways.

Based off of the description this seems like the sort of book that would be right up my alley - scientists, strange biological beings, mysteries to be solved. Unfortunately, I can't say that I was very excited by the events of the book. The story is told from the perspective of the biologist, who, despite having recently lost her husband, was not the most exciting character to read about. Her husband had been a member of the previous Area X expedition, but returned to civilization unexpectedly with no memory of his travels, and died shortly thereafter from cancer. These odd series of events happened to every member of his expedition, which should add to the mystery and create suspense for the well being of our current explorers. However, as I felt almost no emotional connection to the biologist, it was difficult to concern myself with her prolonged well being. The biologist is a very stoic character (it has been argued that she may feel so emotionless due to some odd influence from being inside Area X, but she makes enough references to her life outside of Area X that I tend to think it really is just her personality), which makes it difficult to really care about her journey to understand Area X and its connection to her late husband. The book itself isn't poorly written, and it clearly has done quite well with the critics and on the awards circuit. I just never really connected with it. There was nothing that grabbed my attention, or made me care about the characters or the plot. It was the sort of book I had to force myself to read, and one where I found my attention wandering away from the words on the page as I read it. I wonder if I would have enjoyed it more as an audiobook, though I tend to think I would have just tuned it out if I'd read it that way instead of on paper.

Originally, the Southern Reach Trilogy was meant to be published as one novel. As Annihilation is the first book of the trilogy, I had considered that perhaps I would have a greater appreciation for the work if I read the series as a whole. After listening to Tom on the Sword & Laser Podcast, I thought maybe the other two books in the series might be necessary to pull the whole story together, but looking at some of the reviews on Goodreads, I'm not sure that either of the follow-up stories will do that at all. And a lot of the less than favorable reviews are from people who admittedly liked the first book. I've gotten a lot of “meh” reports about the series as a whole, and since I wasn't overly excited by the first novel, I'm having a difficult time finding the motivation to read the other two books. I sort of wish that these books had been published together, because then I would have read the story in its entirety, but, on the other hand, since I didn't really enjoy this book all that much, perhaps I should be grateful that I only had to read a third of the story?

This is one of those books that wasn't really a bad in any discernible way, yet it was incredibly difficult for me to get through. I suppose it comes down to personal taste; for me to have enjoyed the book I think I either needed a more complex main character, or a more complex plot. The idea of Area X is rather interesting, but the book never made my curiosity about the region strong enough to entice me to read any further than necessary. I don't want to say that I don't recommend it - it has won some rather significant awards, so clearly it has some merit in the science fiction genre - but I can't say that it was a great read for me. It is, however, a rather short novel on its own, so if you are curious it isn't too much of a time investment to give it a try.

Well, to be fair I drifted in and out of this a lot; that could be blamed on listening to the audiobook rather than reading the book, but if it had been a good book for me it would have kept my attention. Annihilation reminds me of the first [b:Wool 12287209 Wool (Wool, #1) Hugh Howey https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327889474s/12287209.jpg 17263666] story in the sense that it's a self contained story which sets the scene for a bigger story (as I've heard Annihilation is in the Southern Reach trilogy) but the difference is that Wool #1 is a compelling story in itself. This book, not so much. Had Annihilation been a longer book (audiobook was only 6 hours at 1x speed) I would not have finished it; as it was so short I kept giving it a chance to improve but it didn't.

Written well but did not appeal to me.

The “goodness” of this story cannot be judged based on this one part as the story told here is incomplete. This Act 1 of a 3 Act story.

This first book is a personal research journal from an expedition. It contains all the story-limitations that perspective entails. It makes no attempt to be anything else.
The story goes so much further if you have the patience to read the rest....

This is a curious world, and it gives few questions and fewer answers. It can mean so many things, depending on how your mind chooses to see... It is beautiful.

I liked the premise and found it interesting. However, for me it did drag quite a few times. I would recommend reading it.

So this is another book I wouldn't have found without Sword and Laser but boy oh boy am I glad I did.

It's not easy to summarize this book without massive spoilers, but it exists somewhere on the continuum between H.P. Lovecraft and House of Leaves. Even when very little is happening (which is plenty of the time), you are still on the edge of your seat because you known any minute now the silt is going to get real. And then it gets REAL

The narrator in this story is a biologist who studies life without ever truly partaking in it. Her studies of ecosystems, her work, and her marriage are all things she observes without experiencing. Then she volunteer to observe Area X, a twilight zone just barely removed from on our reality. She can't trust her team, her superiors, or herself, and the resulting narrative is brilliantly original. It would be hubris to say I totally understand this book. I don't. It left me very confused and disturbed, and I'm the type of reader who is made happy by that sort of ending.

Also, I am always happy to see a sci-fi book whose away team is composed entirely of female scientists. The other characters don't get a lot of screen time, but hell yes anyway.

This book is intentionally weird, slow and creepy. The story centres around the mysterious “Area X” which has appeared at a unrevealed location. It is surrounded by a border, the nature of which is not clarified and it's purpose and origin are unknown. We follow an unnamed biologist and her fellow unnamed investigators as they enter Area X to determine, well, pretty much anything they can about the weirdness.

I must say, as someone who loves discovering the setting of any given novel I really enjoyed the first half of this novel. I loved the descriptions of the setting and the tantalising clues left here and there. There is a very tense and well written sequence in the middle of the book which I enjoyed, but it was after that that the true nature of the novel came to light.

We are treated to many flashbacks of the unnamed biologists past. Yet at the same time we are none too subtly told that actually her memories may not be accurate – she is the ultimate unreliable narrator.

This is not a book in which you get to know the characters, or the setting, or solve the mystery. This is in fact a book in which you are supposed to revel in the unknown. If you are the sort of person who enjoys that sort of thing – this is a book for you.

By the time I got to the end of the novel I felt as if I'd been trying to put together a 1000 piece jigsaw only to find that every piece came from a different picture....and that was why it was supposed to be cool!

Everyone is different. I can see the appeal of the book and appreciate the skill of the author. For me this book was not satisfying. I know there are sequels that may round things out, but after the effort of getting through that novel, I'm going to read something a little more satisfying.

This book is hard to categorize. You can call it weird fantasy I suppose.
It is very well written, but not my cup of tea.

Really enjoyed this; reminded me of my favorite parts of Lost but also a little frustrating. Hopefully the rest of the trilogy illuminates more.

A fantastic read. Thrilling and fresh. Can't wait to dig into the next book. Great story!

The first book of the Southern Cross trilogy sees our crew enter Area X, a heavily quarantined area of unknown threat. Tasked to explore this mysterious zone and discover what happened to the previous 11 expeditions it naturally goes sideways fast.

It's grim and violent but told in an almost affectless, distant manner which renders it all the more frightening. It's like the first season of Lost where it's all vague threat and delicious possibility. Released in early 2014, the remaining two books are following shortly with the final slated for September. I'm curious if VanderMeer can ride this pony home without going all Matrix Revolutions.

How does on describe fear? This is the main problem that dogs every horror writer. How does one begin to explain what it feels like? How does one communicate the experience, the specific flavour of adrenaline and panic on the back of one???s tongue? What words can the writer use to specifically calibrate the level and extent of fear that the reader feels? Compared to that, filmmakers have it almost easy.

Writing horror is a challenge, but horror writers (the good ones, anyway) are capable of something a lot of filmmakers can???t quite get right: subtlety. Great horror writers can create a truly immersive atmosphere, capable of sucking the reader in and holding them there in a way that film isn???t quite capable of just yet. And once they have the reader in their grip, horror writers are capable of weaving truly nightmarish stories - and since there is no better movie theatre than the imagination, the visions they create can linger for days, even weeks. Of course, certain horror writers cater to specific reader preferences - after all, what one person finds terrifying might only be vaguely chilling, even boring, to someone else - but when one finds that particular writer whose writing results in sleepless nights, then one knows that one has a winner.

I, for my part, am something of a picky reader, when it comes to horror. I don???t have any specific authors in mind that I follow faithfully, but I do know what kind of horror I enjoy: the kind that plays around with perception and expectation in unexpected ways - the kind that makes dark things live in the shadows and around unknown corners, and then has those dark things come out to play.

But the thing about that kind of horror is that it can be found in nearly any kind of book. There are some writers, and some books, that are dedicated to that very specific kind of horror (H.P. Lovecraft is the granddaddy of them all), but it???s the sort of thing that sits comfortably in any other genre novel, only to slink out, little by little, until the reader realises - perhaps too late - that they are, in fact, reading a horror novel when they were expecting something else.

That???s what happened to Hope when she picked up Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer, the first novel in the Southern Reach Trilogy. By the time she was done with it, she sent it my way, saying it was a mighty fine read indeed, with exquisite language, but with one warning label: it was, to use her own word, ???terrifying???. This made me rather curious: as far as I knew, Hope wasn???t as interested in horror as I was. What was it about this book that she found so scary?

A lot, as it turned out.

Annihilation begins with what looks like a simple premise: the Southern Reach, a secretive government agency tasked with understanding the mysterious place called Area X, sends in a twelfth expedition, consisting of four women with different areas of expertise. They don???t have any names, and are only know by their functions: the surveyor, the anthropologist, the psychologist, and the biologist. The biologist is the narrator of the story, and what she describes as she and her colleagues explore Area X is equal parts fascinating and chilling, raising questions about what happened before - and what might happen in the future.

At first glance, it???s easy to think of Annihilation as a science fiction-esque thriller of some kind. It contains all the usual elements: shadowy organisation; little-understood frontier; small but specialised exploration team; and the possibility of strange, alien creatures and events. With a setup like that, one can expect action, adventure, and yes, even horror, to a degree, but not to the same extent as what one gets in Annihilation.

Then again, the kind of horror being presented in Annihilation isn???t quite typical, either. It???s more akin to the kind of horror Mark Z. Danielewski inspired in his novel House of Leaves - a fear borne not of blood or gore or even the supernatural, but the kind that breeds in the nest of shadows we all possess in our heads, and which we try our very best to stifle. It???s the kind of horror we feel as children, and which some of us can still feel today: a fear of unlit spaces and shuffling noises, of things that we don???t know - of things we can???t know.

That is my favourite kind of horror - not supernatural horror, and certainly not blood-and-guts horror. Supernatural horror so very rarely scares me anymore - or if it does, I simply read it in broad daylight, and all the ghosts and ghoulies disappear. As for blood and gore, I???m one of those people who can watch some of the more graphic episodes of The Walking Dead and still enjoy my meal, so that sort of thing hardly registers in my brain anymore.

But what VanderMeer does in Annihilation isn???t like that. The writing is very subtle, very low-key, but it builds and builds until it grabs the reader by the throat and never lets go. As soon as the story starts there is a vague sense of unease that goes down to the bone. It???s never really spelled out, but the reader can catch it in the biologist???s choice of words, in the cadence of them as she tells her story (both past and present). It is following the thread of her words, the rush of them as she heads to the frightening and inevitable end of the novel, that really creates that sense of fear.

VanderMeer accomplishes the above with an exceedingly clever use of foreshadowing. Of course, this is something a lot of horror writers are fairly good at doing, but the way VanderMeer uses it cranks the fear factor of the novel up several notches. I personally find this enjoyable in my reading, and Annihilation was a treat in that regard: something small but oddly resonant becomes the cornerstone for something bigger and creepier.

None of this, though, would work without a perfect narrator, and the biologist is just that. I find her detachment from the rest of the world very interesting, along with her ability to turn inwards and view that part of herself with remarkable clarity (though I???m sure a lot of that clarity comes from hindsight, given how the story is told). One would think that her tendency to distance herself from what is happening around her should reduce the novel???s scare factor, but it doesn???t; instead, it seems to refine and enhance it, her observations and remarks making the whole thing even more chilling. Because she speaks so calmly, so rationally, the reader begins to accept that what she is saying is true, has to be true, which means that whatever she is narrating has to be real - and if it is real, then it???s a terrifying reality indeed.

There is also an interesting theme that is threaded through the novel, one that has to do with the setting itself. It???s suggested that humanity is on the brink of some ecological disaster, but Area X is ???a pristine environment???. Normally, that phrase is viewed positively, but in Annihilation, it is viewed with suspicion. Why that is becomes clear (after a fashion) as the novel progresses, but it does build on one of humanity???s old fears: the fear that we cannot control nature. Right now there???s a trend towards viewing nature as a positive force, something to be nurtured and cared for - justifiably so, considering what we???re doing to the environment. But Annihilation shows the other side of that coin - and the possibility that maybe, letting nature run wild and destroy our species is the better option, after all.

Overall, Annihilation is a creepy, spine-chilling novel, self-contained in its own way but with enough questions left over to leave the reader wanting to find out more. While horror is a matter of taste, there???s no denying that it is a very well-written, very fascinating story, told in VanderMeer???s exquisite language through a character that is very intriguing to read about in her own right.

But for those who enjoy horror stories that rely on playing with space and perception to create that sense of fear, then this book is guaranteed to scare. Best read in broad daylight, though I can???t guarantee that that will really take care of the fear, because I was reading this in full sunlight on a late summer???s day and I still felt chills up and down my spine, still felt goosebumps rise on the back of my neck and arms. This is the sort of novel that follows one around, day and night - and for me, that???s precisely the kind of novel I enjoy the most.

Since the next book, Authority, is already out, I???ll be getting on that soon enough. Or maybe not - might be best to let the nightmares fade a little, after all, before starting them up all over again.

What just happened : Now that I've had a chance to process - this book is like what I was hoping [b:Rogue Moon 939709 Rogue Moon Algis Budrys https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1280105196s/939709.jpg 924687] would be like. Something/place eerie and otherworldly, that messes with your perceptions and makes you question your identity and place in the universe. Annihilation is like Rogue Moon without the 60's style pissing contests and gender roles. It's slow-moving, but reading it at night, some of the passages made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Definitely not boring.

Scary! Pacing of the ending was a little slow. And the whole premise is still confusing to me. But I am looking forward to the next book, hopefully it will answer my questions.

My Amazon Review -

http://www.amazon.com/review/R1Z144DEIMGGE5/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

Annihilation is an original tale of ecological horror and suspense. The story takes place entirely in a region known as Area X and Vandermeer does a wonderful job taking the reader into this world and making it feel real. While I didn't find the story particularly compelling, the pacing was good and the narrative was concise.

Fans of speculative fiction will likely adore this piece. Me, I'm a little more picky. I didn't care for any of the characters. The tone and narrative choice, i.e. journal entries, kept me far too distant from caring about much at all. And I just wasn't really into the story. There are some good ideas to be explored, but Annihilation didn't engage me enough to keep going.

......dang. I feel bad giving this 3 stars, but I just somehow “feel” this deserves it. Did that frustrate you? Good, cause that's exactly how I am after finishing this book.

First critique: “Without sauce a man is lost, but a man can become lost in the sauce.” - the wise philosopher Gucci Mane. I feel as if Mr. Vandermeer got lost one too many times in the sauce. In most of my personal opinions on books that I've read, I find that this phrase holds water almost every time.
To be fair, it is a very large trap to fall into because of the fine line of not giving enough detail or too much detail. I understand that we need to peer into the biologist's mind to fully understand her thoughts on a particular event or subject, however the author sort of drones on in these instances. I don't feel like someone's thoughts take this long to flesh out when there is the looming risk of life or death possibly just around the corner.

Second critique: flow did not meet the pacing for me. In areas I felt like we needed to slow down, the author sped up and vice versa for areas that needed to get on with it.

In conclusion, will probably read the rest of the trilogy.