Annihilation
by Jeff VanderMeer (2014)
2024 reads, 22/22:
“The birds sang as they should; the deer took flight, their white tails exclamation points against the green and brown of the underbrush; the raccoons, bowlegged, swayed about their business, ignoring us. As a group, we felt almost giddy, I think, to be free after so many confining months of training and preparation.”
Kind of funny that my last two books have been in the realm of “ecological sci-fi,” but here we are. However, Annihilation strips away any satire and comedy that may have been in Galapagos, and instead presents an anxiety-ridden atmospheric novel of four scientists who go out to explore the dangerous and unfamiliar “Area X.”
The descriptions of the flora and fauna of Area X are great, and the narrator writes with an unreliable tone while at the same time, sounding like writing a lab report. It’s kind of jarring, but VanderMeer captures the surreal and tense mystery through his Lovecraftian prose very well.
“I took samples as we went, but halfheartedly. All of these tiny remnants I was stuffing into glass tubes with tweezers … what would they tell me? Not much, I felt.”
However, while there was a plot, it didn’t go very far for me. And that’s okay, sometimes things don’t need to happen – I tend to really enjoy books that have no plot line at all. But for this particular brand of sci-fi, I wish for a little more. What might help with this, though, is not reading the blurb on the back of the book. Nothing is spoiled, but some things might hit harder without knowing ahead of time.
Will I finish the trilogy? Maybe. It’s not on the top of my to-read list, but I am curious to learn more about Area X and the world of Southern Reach. But if the genre of eco-horror sci-fi sounds interesting to you, you should pick this one up – and let me know your thoughts.
“You would love it here.”