From the Bookshelf of On Paths Unknown…

Annihilation (Southern Reach, #1)

Jeff VanderMeer

Start date: January 6, 2016

Finish date: October 10, 2018

Discussion: THE SOUTHERN REACH TRILOGY

Why we're reading this: We think Jeff Vandermeer is ok!
[close] We think Jeff Vandermeer is ok!

Find A Copy At

Libraries

Group Discussions About This Book

Showing 2 of 5 topics — 119 comments total

THE SOUTHERN REACH TRILOGY

Authority SPOILERS THROUGH END OF BOOK
By Amy (Other Am… · 12 posts · 21 views

last updated Apr 23, 2016 07:56AM

Annihilation thread #3 (ch 5 Dissolution) SPOILERS THROUGH END OF BOOK
By Amy (Other Am… · 54 posts · 22 views

last updated Apr 22, 2016 11:32AM

showing 3 of 3 topics view all »

What Members Thought

Sep 18, 2014 Amy (Other Amy) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: good-again, twins, books-on-books, reviewed, x-audio, stories-about-the-nature-of-stories, story-in-a-story, 5-stars-favorites, nebula, chills-are-hard-to-come-by

The water was so dark we could see our faces in it, and it never stirred, set like glass, reflecting the beards of gray moss that smothered the cypress trees. If you looked out through those areas, toward the ocean, all you saw was the black water, the gray of the cypress trunks, and the constant, motionless rain of moss flowing down. All you heard was the low moaning. The effect of this cannot be understood without being there. The beauty of it cannot be understood, either, and when you see bea The water was so dark we could see our faces in it, and it never stirred, set like glass, reflecting the beards of gray moss that smothered the cypress trees. If you looked out through those areas, toward the ocean, all you saw was the black water, the gray of the cypress trunks, and the constant, motionless rain of moss flowing down. All you heard was the low moaning. The effect of this cannot be understood without being there. The beauty of it cannot be understood, either, and when you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you. Desolation tries to colonize you.

First book of 2025. Still fantastic.

On reread 1/9/16: This book! Wow! Still! What's that you say? You'd like an actual review? Most of my original review still stands. I will add a few things. VanderMeer is playing with some very big ideas here. I'm finding it extremely difficult to talk about any of them without spoiling anything. So I guess I'm going to leave it at this: Big ideas, breakneck pacing, killer characterization, and a genuinely Other setting for it all to play out in. And it holds up on reread. This one is going to go down as one of the greatest SF books ever written, and should rightfully go down as some of the greatest literature ever written.

It does have some things that make it difficult going, depending on your predilections as a reader. Its narrated by a heroine many readers appear to have found rather unlikable, judging by the reviews. The biologist is an antisocial loner with a battered heart and a mercenary agenda, operating in an unknown arena with minimal information given by an uncaring government agency. She is, as her title suggests, a scientist, and she's going to approach her mission like a scientist. (view spoiler) Also, there's no hand holding here: VanderMeer throws the reader head-first into Area X, and we only get explanations as our guide gets them or remembers them. Ultimately, she does not have a lot of explanation to give, although on rereading I found there were much more solid answers than I felt I had the first time I read it. There also will not be any happy endings here; it is the first book of a trilogy, after all.

Speaking of the trilogy, I'd like to mention that I still haven't gotten around to reading the rest of it. (It appears VanderMeer does the same thing with Authority in this trilogy that he did with Finch in the Ambergris trilogy, switching not just characters and point of view but even genres, and I just haven't been up for those gymnastics yet.) Which is to say that Annihilation works perfectly well as a stand alone novel, and you need not worry about committing to an entire trilogy to get closure. I will still be reading the rest; I do deeply want more of this world. But I am also completely satisfied with this one book. I do not get to say that about books very often.

**Original review, 9/18/14:**
I do not normally enjoy books of this type. The tale largely exists as a platform for the language, which is almost a character in its own right. (Fitting for a book that centers more on epistemological questions than the tale itself - how do we know who we are? How do we become ourselves? Can we ever know someone else?) I do not really go for apocalyptic fiction, which (I think) this is. I mostly bought it because it was on Kindle Daily Deal and looked interesting enough to spend $2 on. It was worth more. I loved this book. I found the fact that the team members were stripped of their names made identification with them and their strange plight easier rather than harder. The Biologist easily became one of my favorite heroines in recent memory (she would dispute the title). I found the microstory in the disintegration of the team (and the team members themselves) was easily strong enough to carry me past the reality that the reader is ultimately never really given a clear look at what exactly is happening in Area X, (view spoiler). ~~(I'm not sure if that's a spoiler, but I'm hiding the review just in case.)~~* I only hope that the rest of the trilogy is just as good; I bought them both the day I finished this.

*Personal progress: I have learned about spoiler tags since 2014. Go, me! ...more

14 likes · Like · see review

Feb 13, 2015 Matt rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: media-ebooks

“Words? Words?” the anthropologist said. Yes, words. “What are they made of?” the surveyor asked. Did they need to be made of anything?

What is this book about? Frankly? I have no idea. It could be the diary of a madwoman written from the insane asylum; or maybe it’s the description of dream slash nightmare induced by psychedelic drugs. Could also be the woman is trapped somewhere in a subterranean cave by some monstrous fungoid organism; you know like Mully and Sculder or whatever their names we ...more

9 likes · Like · see review

Jul 02, 2019 Christian Molenaar rated it really liked it

Shelves: sci-fi

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Jeff VanderMeer constructs a thrilling, quick sci-fi adventure that keeps the audience guessing, though not always in the manner intended. While the novel contains enough twists and turns within its short page count to satisfy any reader, its characters' motivations often seem muddled. (The Southern Reach's intentions hardly make any sense internally, even by clandestine government agency standards.) Many reviewers have praised Annihilation as an effective character study of its nameless protago ...more

2 likes · Like · see review

Nov 04, 2019 Karin rated it it was amazing

How am I now just discovering Jeff Vandermeer? Annihilation is a beautiful, stunning book that turned my mind inside out. I hope the second and third books in the series are just as amazing as the first. Looking forward to reading them!

2 likes · Like · see review