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Joe's Reviews > Annihilation
Annihilation (Southern Reach, #1)
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Joe's review
bookshelves: sci-fi-apocalyptic, sci-fi-first-contact
Feb 24, 2014
bookshelves: sci-fi-apocalyptic, sci-fi-first-contact
Reading for the 2nd time. Most recently started July 30, 2022.
The next stop in my end-of-the-world reading marathon was Annihilation, the first entry in Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy. While the novel doesn't introduce a doomsday scenario or send the population of a major city fleeing in terror, an apocalyptic vibe permeates the story, which is elliptical, imaginative, removed, occasionally creepy and mostly lifeless.
The heavily concept oriented novel deals with an expedition into Area X, an ecological dead zone that has appeared in an unnamed region (the black pine forests, swamp and ocean suggest Florida) of an unnamed country (the United States, most likely) apparently being studied by an agency known as the Southern Reach, which has previously sent in eleven teams to study the area. Death, suicide and madness visited those teams. Apparently.
The twelfth expedition is an all-female team which include an unnamed Biologist, Surveyor, Anthropologist and the team leader, a Psychologist. After six months of training, a Linguist attached to the team suddenly bowed out. The women are hypnotized in order to walk through the border of Area X and once there, begin to investigate a mysterious tunnel that appears on no map. Death, suicide and madness ensue.
This is the shortest plot summary I've ever had to submit for a novel I read all the way through. I don't feel that I'm leaving a lot out. I'm a huge fan of mysteries of the unknown like the Bermuda Triangle, Loch Ness or The Zone of Silence and didn't mind the tight, minimalist approach to the mystery. VanderMeer generates a fair amount of unease with this slow motion nightmare. His descriptions are vivid yet controlled.
The novel is controlled from start to finish by something I dislike the more I encounter it in fiction: the unreliable narrator, or, the Choose Your Own Adventure approach. VanderMeer spins a colorful wheel of fortune and challenges the contestant, I mean the reader, to test their luck at figuring out the puzzle. Is Southern Reach a lie or a figment of the imagination? Is Area X? Are the characters real? What is "real"? That's not a story! That's a parlor game.
Annihilation has all the excitement of a viewing at a funeral parlor.. At all times I felt like a reader reading a science fiction story. It's "interesting", which means I didn't much like it. I'm giving the book two stars for keeping me on as a reader until the end, but have deleted the two sequels from my reading docket and will move on to science fiction with characters, dialogue and a pulse.
The heavily concept oriented novel deals with an expedition into Area X, an ecological dead zone that has appeared in an unnamed region (the black pine forests, swamp and ocean suggest Florida) of an unnamed country (the United States, most likely) apparently being studied by an agency known as the Southern Reach, which has previously sent in eleven teams to study the area. Death, suicide and madness visited those teams. Apparently.
The twelfth expedition is an all-female team which include an unnamed Biologist, Surveyor, Anthropologist and the team leader, a Psychologist. After six months of training, a Linguist attached to the team suddenly bowed out. The women are hypnotized in order to walk through the border of Area X and once there, begin to investigate a mysterious tunnel that appears on no map. Death, suicide and madness ensue.
This is the shortest plot summary I've ever had to submit for a novel I read all the way through. I don't feel that I'm leaving a lot out. I'm a huge fan of mysteries of the unknown like the Bermuda Triangle, Loch Ness or The Zone of Silence and didn't mind the tight, minimalist approach to the mystery. VanderMeer generates a fair amount of unease with this slow motion nightmare. His descriptions are vivid yet controlled.
The novel is controlled from start to finish by something I dislike the more I encounter it in fiction: the unreliable narrator, or, the Choose Your Own Adventure approach. VanderMeer spins a colorful wheel of fortune and challenges the contestant, I mean the reader, to test their luck at figuring out the puzzle. Is Southern Reach a lie or a figment of the imagination? Is Area X? Are the characters real? What is "real"? That's not a story! That's a parlor game.
Annihilation has all the excitement of a viewing at a funeral parlor.. At all times I felt like a reader reading a science fiction story. It's "interesting", which means I didn't much like it. I'm giving the book two stars for keeping me on as a reader until the end, but have deleted the two sequels from my reading docket and will move on to science fiction with characters, dialogue and a pulse.
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Reading Progress
February 24, 2014
– Shelved as:
to-read
February 24, 2014
– Shelved
March 2, 2015
–
Started Reading
March 2, 2015
–
1.0%
"All of this part of the country had been abandoned for decades, for reasons that are not easy to relate. Our expedition was the first to enter Area X for more than two years, and much of our predecessors' equipment had rusted, their tents and sheds little more than husks. Looking out over that untroubled landscape, I do not believe any of us could yet see the threat."
March 2, 2015
–
18.0%
"The psychologist stepped into our rising panic with a strange assertion: "I talked to her late last night. What she saw in that, structure, unnerved her to the point that she did not want to continue with this expedition. She took a partial report with her so that our superiors will know our progress." The psychologist's habit of allowing a slim smile to cross her face at inappropriate times made me want to slap her."
March 2, 2015
–
29.0%
"He died six months later. During all that time, I could never get beyond the mask, could never find the man I had known inside of him. Not through my personal interactions with him, not through eventually watching the interviews with him and the other members of the expedition, all of whom died of cancer as well. Whatever had happened in Area X, he had not come back. Not really."
March 3, 2015
–
76.0%
"But I had begun to realize that you had to wage a guerilla war against whatever force had come to inhabit Area X if you wanted to fight at all. You had to fade into the landscape, or like the writer of the thistle chronicles, you had to pretend it wasn't there for as long as possible. To acknowledge it, to try to name it, might be a way of letting it in."
March 3, 2015
–
98.0%
"But the longer I stared at it, the less comprehensible the creature became. The more it became something alien to me, the more I had a sense that I knew nothing at all--about nature, about ecosystems."
March 3, 2015
– Shelved as:
sci-fi-apocalyptic
March 3, 2015
–
Finished Reading
March 6, 2015
– Shelved as:
sci-fi-first-contact
July 30, 2022
–
Started Reading
Comments Showing 1-16 of 16 (16 new)
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Cassy
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rated it 3 stars
Mar 03, 2015 07:30PM
Great review, Joe. I totally agree with you. I won't be reading the next two either.
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LOL Oh, no! I loved this book. I'm sorry it didn't do much for you, Joseph. Great review!
Good review, I also had lukewarm feelings about this one
Hilariously, the very things which pushed you away are the things that drew me in. I loved the atmospheric, slow moving, character driven story telling of it all. The fact that so much was left unsaid and simply hinted at are again things I really enjoyed. In fact, I think the story over all suffered once the 'monster' was finally named and a face put on it.
Yes! Why should we have to guess about what "really" happened in a book? I'm with you--I want answers, dangit.
I thought this was going to be amazing, but I trust you and am now wondering if I really should have bought it. Good thing my TBR is huge and I can push it back w/o guilt.
(What is going on? You decide!) I hate that too. If the author couldn't be bothered to know, why should the reader care?
Kandice, I think if you've read and enjoyed Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness you'd enjoy this. If Lovecraft is hit or miss with you, or you don't understand the appeal you probably want to pass.
Cassy wrote: "Great review, Joe. I totally agree with you. I won't be reading the next two either."Thanks, Cassy! Coming from someone who's friends with Carol Danvers (Captain Marvel), that sentiment carries weight. I don't know how else you flew up that mountain for your profile photo, unless, you are Captain Marvel. Hmmmm ...
Carmen wrote: "LOL Oh, no! I loved this book. I'm sorry it didn't do much for you, Joseph. Great review!"
Gracias, Carmen. Libros de terror no son su taza de te. Estoy feliz que to haya gustado.
Sonja wrote: "Good review, I also had lukewarm feelings about this one"
Thank you, Sonja. It's good to know I'm not alien in my thoughts on this book. Your review is very indicative of my feelings as well.
Melani wrote: "Hilariously, the very things which pushed you away are the things that drew me in."
I'm drawn in by those qualities as well, Melani. I'm always game for suggestion and for using my own imagination to complete a scene. My favorite movie of all time, Alien, does this. Minimalism and poetry aren't my taste and VanderMeer may have read The Road or some important Cormac McCarthy books one too many times.
Tadiana wrote: "Yes! Why should we have to guess about what "really" happened in a book? I'm with you--I want answers, dangit."
Dangit, Tadiana, resolving a mystery is so hard to do. Why not let the reader write their own answers? I'm not a big fan of that approach. I think you can leave certain questions on the periphery open ended but there needs to be an emotional satisfaction that the story is finished.
Kandice wrote: "I thought this was going to be amazing, but I trust you and am now wondering if I really should have bought it. Good thing my TBR is huge and I can push it back w/o guilt."
I think that Melani's disclaimer is a very good one. If H.P. Lovecraft curls your toes, you'll probably enjoy this. If you've already purchased it, give it a try.
Kerri wrote: "(What is going on? You decide!) I hate that too. If the author couldn't be bothered to know, why should the reader care?"
Yup! I agree, Kerri. VanderMeer's approach is more cerebral, more "artistic" than I could tolerate personally. Other readers may find something here that's original and empowering.
Thanks, Joe - you made me laugh!
I kind of liked the first one in the trilogy. It had a very Lovecraftian feel to it, but Lovecraft-style stories are far better suited to short forms so I do see where you're coming from. (For what it's worth, I detested the second two books in this series.)
I think the operative phrase in your review is "mostly lifeless." I couldn't for the life of me figure out why I should care about any of these characters. Very low signal to noise.
I've started this with high hopes but am considering giving it up after unrelenting nightmares about it last night. And I love your review!
Great review. Thanks for reading my mind :)
Interesting! I have had this recommended to me by 2 people now so I think I'm going to give it a shot . . . but if it's as dead as you say, I likely won't get very far. My patience level with books is (sadly) rapidly declining.
Coming several years late to this review, but you pretty much covered my feelings on this (in my opinion) highly overrated book. I love your point about the "choose-your-own-adventure"-style narrator, and about this type of plot being more parlor game than story. (I'd add that I found VanderMeer's prose style pretty subpar, too.)
