Book Review: Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer

Pros: fascinating story, get some concrete answers

Cons: lots of detail

Picking up where book two leaves off, Acceptance follows three individuals: Saul, the lighthouse keeper in the days before Area X; the Director and the lead up to the twelfth expedition; and Control and Ghost Bird, wandering through Area X, looking for the Biologist on the island.

While I enjoyed Saul’s story the most, it was fantastic finally learning more about Area X’s creation and the Southern Reach’s real inner workings. While not every mystery is solved, enough concrete answers are given that having to interpret some for yourself is fine.

The story does get bogged down in details at times, making some parts harder to get through than others. I found my mind wandering at times and had to reread sections to make sure I wasn’t missing something essential.

It was a good conclusion to the series, bringing in a lot of elements from both of the previous books. 

Book Review: Authority by Jeff Vandermeer

This is book two of the Southern Reach trilogy. 

Pros: interesting characters, interesting mystery

Cons: drawn out, boring at times

John Rodriguez, or Control, as he prefers to be called, is assigned as the new director of the Southern Reach project, the organization that oversees Area X. His assistant director, Grace, is openly hostile, while the remains of the science team are a helpful, if slightly unhinged bunch. Even his handler, the mysterious Voice, whom he phones reports in to daily, becomes antagonistic towards him as the days pass. Control isn’t sure how he’s supposed to bring the agency under control considering the opposition, especially when it becomes clear that secrets have been kept from him.

While it’s not essential to read book one in order to understand the majority of this book, the biologist does play a role and some information from Area X makes more sense if you have read that book.

I have mixed feelings about this book. I enjoyed getting to know Control and seeing the inner workings of the Southern Reach. While I understood some of Grace’s resistence to his being there, her continued undermining of his job started to grate on my nerves. Indeed, about 200 pages into the book I began to realize that I didn’t like any of the characters and no longer cared if Control succeeded in his mission.

I really wanted to learn more about the organization and Area X, but the book’s more interested in the inner working of Control and how the various revelations affect his mental state. While the mystery was interesting, so little was uncovered by the 3/4 mark and in such roundabout ways (scenes intercut with other scenes, making it hard at time to piece together what was present and what was past) that I found myself getting bored and no longer caring what was going on. Things picked up in the last third of the book, getting first fascinating, and then kind of boring again. 

The book brings up a lot of new questions but doesn’t answer many. I’m wary of reading the third book for fear that no answers are coming.

Book Review: Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer

Pros: interesting premise, strange

Cons: few answers

The Biologist is one of four women sent into Area X on the twelfth expedition to learn more about this mysterious region.

Written as a journal, the book details the expedition, their findings, and the strange occurrences of Area X. Events happen quickly and are very focused, so there isn’t time to learn much about anyone other than the Biologist. The Biologist herself is taciturn and secretive, though you do get flashback scenes that help flesh her out. She’s also not the most reliable narrator, as you sometimes learn that she hasn’t been entirely honest in this account.

The mystery is interesting, though don’t expect to fully understand what’s going on. The story does wrap up nicely.

It’s a quick, unsettling story.

Shout-Out: Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer

Now this is a book that sounds awesome.  It came out February 11th.

Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization, and the government is involved in sending secret missions to explore Area X. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; all the members of the second expedition committed suicide; the third expedition died 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 months of their return, all had died of aggressive cancer.

Annihilation opens with the twelfth expedition. The group is composed of four women, including our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain and collect specimens; to record all of their observations, scientific and otherwise; and, above all, to avoid succumbing to the unpredictable effects of Area X itself.

What they discover shocks them: first, a massive topographic anomaly that does not appear on any map; and second, life forms beyond anything they're equipped to understand. But it's the surprises that came across the border with them that change everything-the secrets of the expedition members themselves, including our narrator. What do they really know about Area X-and each other?