Annihilation (Southern Reach, #1) in The Sword and Laser

Feb 01, 2014 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: own, read2014, sci-fi-fantasy, nebula-winners-or-nominees

I've put off reviewing this for a few days because I feel like the author is out there watching me, ready to scream "Annihilation, annihilation!" if I get it wrong. Ahem.

I have seen a lot of pre-press hype for this book, partly because I follow the author on Facebook. I even went to a reading in 2012 where Jeff VanderMeer read from an earlier draft, based on a dream he had with writing on the wall. I knew back then that I would need to read the book, and then it turned into a trilogy!

A lot of co I've put off reviewing this for a few days because I feel like the author is out there watching me, ready to scream "Annihilation, annihilation!" if I get it wrong. Ahem.

I have seen a lot of pre-press hype for this book, partly because I follow the author on Facebook. I even went to a reading in 2012 where Jeff VanderMeer read from an earlier draft, based on a dream he had with writing on the wall. I knew back then that I would need to read the book, and then it turned into a trilogy!

A lot of comparisons have been made to Lovecraft, and I don't disagree I guess, the swampy horror element is definitely there. It kept reminding me more of another well-known work - The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. I'm not sure where Area X is exactly, nor do I know if there are aliens involved, but the reason I kept thinking of it has to do with dangerous expeditions. I found the Martian Chronicles really disturbing. I had a hard time focusing on all the descriptions and stories because I kept coming back to the fact that they had sent people to Mars before, and everyone always died! I couldn't understand what motivated people to go when they knew this to be true.

That brings us to Annihilation, which starts with four women heading into the twelfth expedition into Area X. The surveyor, anthropologist, and the biologist seem to know very little about what they are getting into, and the psychologist (and group leader) seems to know more than the others based on the fact that she has to hypnotize them to get them in. I'm not sure why that is. The things I thought I knew about Area X as a reader became less clear throughout the short novel. I found that the more I thought about the unknowns, the less I really wanted to know the answers, yet the author insists on unveiling them in a gradual way and it makes them so much worse. Oh yes, this is horror through and through. I'm afraid to read the following books of the trilogy; I'm afraid not to.

Quit reading reviews! Read the book instead! Go pick up the first chapter at io9. Hurry back, because I have another comparison I want to make but you have to read the book first.

"Desolation tries to colonize you." ...more

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Dec 31, 2014 Jlawrence rated it really liked it

Shelves: sword-and-laser

Four and 1/2 stars.

One part J.G. Ballard, one part LOST, and a smidge of Lovecraft, but the combo being its own intoxicating, surreal, creepifying thing. VanderMeer sucked me into his tale of an all-female expedition (a psychologist, a surveryor, a anthropologist, and our unnamed narrator, a biologist) exploring Area X, an uncanny slice of wilderness cut off from the rest of civilization by the mysterious border, a place which has undone multiple expeditions before them.

The Ballard vibe comes fr Four and 1/2 stars.

One part J.G. Ballard, one part LOST, and a smidge of Lovecraft, but the combo being its own intoxicating, surreal, creepifying thing. VanderMeer sucked me into his tale of an all-female expedition (a psychologist, a surveryor, a anthropologist, and our unnamed narrator, a biologist) exploring Area X, an uncanny slice of wilderness cut off from the rest of civilization by the mysterious border, a place which has undone multiple expeditions before them.

The Ballard vibe comes from the powerful sense of a malignant or mutant nature reclaiming its own in the landscape of Area X, though VanderMeer is much more interested in his character's psychological reactions than Ballard (from what I've read of Ballard, he seems to only get interested in psychology when it veers to the pathological).

The LOST echoes come from the sense of an organization that knows more about the strange 'natural' area in question than it lets on, and which is lying to and manipulating our protaganists in order to try to find out more - and the shocks the protaganists go through at peeling back these layers (and frankly (view spoiler)). But again, VanderMeer has his own nuances and twists at play here.

VanderMeer excellently slow-burns the paranoia (view spoiler), creates an amazing, unsettling atmosphere, makes the unreal seem real, and puts an interesting narrator at the center of it all (I especially liked the flashbacks to her studies of the overgrown pool as a kid, and how that pattern of behavior echoed through her life).

My only disappointments were (view spoiler)

I've gathered from some comments on the S&L forums that the other books in the trilogy don't "answer everything," but I'm hooked and will be trying them out. I'm okay with the uncanny remaining uncanny if the quality of the tale remains this good. ...more

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Mar 30, 2015 E.C. rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Before reading ANNIHILATION, I probably would have insisted this kind of story couldn't be sustained for an entire novel, let alone a trilogy, but I was captivated throughout. The setting is so fascinating and weird, and the writing so beautiful and engaging, that I was completely pulled into the book. The lack of answers and explanations isn't as frustrating as it might be in other, less skilled hands; I do expect to learn more in the next two books, but I'm not sure how important it is that I ...more

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Mar 24, 2014 John Wiswell rated it really liked it

Full disclosure: I won a copy of this audiobook from Jeff’s blog.

Annihilation boldly answers the question of what Lost would have been like if it focused on setting instead of character. Here we explore Area X, a beautiful and mysterious wilderness, overflodded and seeming to bridge several kinds of environments. It may even be spreading, and the government has routinely dispatched teams of scientists to determine its nature, though the teams keep going missing, and sometimes members reappear in Full disclosure: I won a copy of this audiobook from Jeff’s blog.

Annihilation boldly answers the question of what Lost would have been like if it focused on setting instead of character. Here we explore Area X, a beautiful and mysterious wilderness, overflodded and seeming to bridge several kinds of environments. It may even be spreading, and the government has routinely dispatched teams of scientists to determine its nature, though the teams keep going missing, and sometimes members reappear in the civilized world, psychologically shattered, with no explanation for how they returned. As soon as our narrator says the government forbid her a compass and watch, we wonder if it’s even the wilderness that the government is testing.

There’s a decidedly Lost-like intrigue about Area X, especially once we discover a tower that runs underground rather than into the air, its walls scrawled with seemingly Biblical text that is written in an organically growing fungus. This is the kind of Weird that attracts me to the VanderMeers. Our questions aren’t answered by aliens or a secret tribe of humans building things here; Area X has a longer history than the explorers expected, and its ecosystems may be more complex than the human mind has evolved to deal with. Therein, it begins to feel like a more textured Solaris, boldly inhuman in the Lem tradition, wherein characters exist to be peeled apart by the environment.

Our narrator, a disappassionate biologist, doesn’t have too much going on. She’s always fascinated by the way life spreads, and she lost her husband to a previous excursion to Area X. She’s not dynamic, and can’t even hold up interesting conversations with the rest of her crew. But what she is, and wonders about, what she remembers of an odd starfish or a swimming pool overtaken by biology, comes seeping out of her as she is exposed to Area X’s fungal spores. The great trick of Annihilation isn’t for her overcome the odds and save everyone, to triumph over a tragic past and learn herself. It’s for us to see what happens to a mind in this place, and at the same time, for her to experience what befell her husband. In doing so we tumble into the surreal and see her become a part of the landscape she can’t look away from. It’s not typical SpecFic, and it’s absolutely worth the journey.

My first exposure was through the audiobook, read by Carolyn McCormick. Her voice work is smooth and largely as dispassionate as you’d imagine the biologist’s voice would be, without being grating or uninterested. Rather, McCormick makes some great narrative choices, including not raising her voice in dialogue when you’d expect the speaker to be scared – because that’s not who the biologist is. That’s who other people are, and she is steadily becoming something else. ...more

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Feb 06, 2015 Maire rated it liked it

yeah, on to finish this trilogy i guess

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Jun 23, 2014 travelgirlut rated it liked it

I find it interesting that where most people seemed to find this book creepy and horrific, I found it to be almost serene in nature. I think I have a similar personality to the main character, the enjoyment of being alone. Yes, some weird and funky things were going on, but I was never concerned by them. I'll admit I was a bit shocked when the main character did that one thing to the surveyor. It seemed a bit out of character. Though I think this speaks to how much information the narrator was w ...more

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Dec 05, 2014 Matt rated it liked it

A little disappointing given they hype around this book recently. There are some cool ideas here and I liked the mystery and that not everything about the world(s) is explained. The author overuses the technique of going to a flashback right at a pivotal point in the story in my opinion. It builds suspense the first couple of times but becomes annoying after that. I also felt the book didn't really deliver at the end. There is so much weirdness and mystery in the first 2/3 of the book but the en ...more

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Mar 25, 2014 Samantha rated it liked it

Shelves: 2015, challenge

I still don't know what to think of this book, I'm not even real sure I liked it. Parts of it were really interesting and weird, but then parts were boring. And I'm not real sure what happened. I'm interested enough to check out the second book, but seriously, this book is weird. ...more

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Nov 28, 2016 Steve Coughlan rated it it was ok

Shelves: scifi

Not what I expected. Not what I normally enjoy (see Space Opera). Expanded my comfortable limits a bit, but they don't feel permanently stretched enough to encompass the next two books in the trilogy. ...more

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