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Annihilation (Southern Reach, #1)

Jeff VanderMeer

Start date: August 23, 2017

Finish date: August 23, 2017

Discussion: Buddy Reads

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Mar 30, 2018 Sean DeLauder rated it liked it

Shelves: harry-sf-book-club

There's plenty of promise in Annihilation, though much of that promise is undermined by the telling of the tale. The book focuses heavily on character and feeling, often clever and often moving, and frequently achieves an overarching sense of unease, but the full picture is something viewed through a glob of petroleum jelly. At the end it's still indistinct, indeterminate, unexplainable, and these things I find intolerable in a story because it makes it seem to me as though the author themselves There's plenty of promise in Annihilation, though much of that promise is undermined by the telling of the tale. The book focuses heavily on character and feeling, often clever and often moving, and frequently achieves an overarching sense of unease, but the full picture is something viewed through a glob of petroleum jelly. At the end it's still indistinct, indeterminate, unexplainable, and these things I find intolerable in a story because it makes it seem to me as though the author themselves does not know the answer to the questions they've posed, that I've been the victim of a prank intended to make me spend time on something created solely for the purpose of cheating me out of it. I find stories that present an abundance of questions and hint at connections without bothering to answer those questions or definitively make those connections infuriating. I have enough faith in VanderMeer as a writer to believe this is intentional, but I can't help the sense of frustration anyway, nor resentment for his having done it.

The book likely requires a deep and intense read, the sort of which I was unable to give it while listening intermittently on an 18-hour overnight drive. Not only was I not diving deeply as I should have, I was tired. Annihilation is terribly descriptive, given to long asides to develop background, and even scenes of great tension were teased out over extremely long periods. Not the sort of story one generally takes with them on a long trip with the intention of keeping oneself awake, though it was by no means a boring tale. Protracted might be a better term.

Questions generally are not answered, but Maybed. That dolphin with the familiar eye was maybe a transformed someone--it's reasonable to assume, given the poetry in "the tower". The source of Area X maybe one thing or another. All the knowledge we have about Area X and prior expeditions prove to be founded upon lies and deception, so our footing is uncertain and it never fully resolves in a satisfying way. We never know why the explorers are lied to, why they have to be manipulated through hypnosis, or the meaning of much of anything. Everything we know is based on assumption, and is nebulous and mysterious, and while it may be described it isn't explained. The narrator, the Biologist, frequently encounters one thing or another worthy of description and explanation, but is sometimes either incapable of describing it or turns away rather than seeking an explanation (the doorway at the base of "the tower" really stands out here).

So much is left unsettled by the end of the story that it isn't a satisfying ending. It's not a traditional story, and that's where it let me down, though this isn't something that should deter other, more contemplative readers.

I've read a few other reviews and discerned this was a quasi-horror book. I think this tells me that I don't understand horror because not having a full understanding of things isn't horrifying, it's irritating. The discomfort that arises from a lack of understanding isn't derived from fear (personally, that is; this is absolutely the case where societies and cultures and unfamiliar creatures interact), it's curiosity, and when that curiosity isn't sated I am dissatisfied.

The further along you get in the story, the more clues appear, and yet these clues only cloud the picture. The only thing that becomes clear is that your questions won't be answered, and by then it's too late. I've gotten quite agitated with the penchant for serial television's absence of a game plan with respect to making programs--the formula seems to be to establish an interesting premise and plunk in some mysterious characters, then heap on questions rather than answering the old ones. It's a practice that infuriates me because it's an obvious money grab with no overarching plan other than to keep the ball rolling for as long as possible, then tie a sloppy bow on the end when people start to lose interest. It's the wrong way to write, and though I'm sure this was not VanderMeer's intent, this is how it read to me.

To the story's credit, it established an unwitting connection with me through the mere mention of a particular fauna: the antlion. I first came across this peculiar animal years ago in my copy of Charlie Brown's Super Book of Questions and Answers. I'd made reference to the creature countless times since then and no one had any inkling of what I meant, and sometimes I'd wonder if Charlie Brown, et al, had gotten something wrong. But Jeff VanderMeer understood. So in at least one sense in the course of this book we both understood one another. I'll have to finish the series to determine if we make any more subtle connections.

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May 27, 2020 Aaron rated it really liked it

3.5 stars. The premise of this book is cool, some weird, mystical landscape stuck in the our world. I had two issues with the book. Some of the prose was too abstract, too cryptic. I would have liked a more direct story, rather than descriptive, flowery prose. The main character was also an enigma. It didn't seem like she had any grounding, changing throughout the book to fit some narrative. It was just hard to connect to her as a real person. I'm left wanting to know what happens next in the se ...more

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