Annihilation: A Novel: 1 (Southern Reach Trilogy)

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You do not know whether you have left this earth or crossed through an alternative dimension, or whether you yet remain in a strange forgotten corner of the world. In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition. I knew that it was planned as a trilogy by the author, but there was only the manuscript for the first book. The team, consisting of a biologist, an anthropologist, a psychologist, and a military-trained surveyor, believe they are the 12th expedition into Area X.

It veered abruptly leftward, with what I can only describe as a great cry of anguish, into the underbrush. I also felt a lack of empathy for any of the characters to the point where the biologist (narrator) was the only necessary character.I was impressed from page one, and before page 3 I was completely enthralled and helplessly captured. The tower, which was not supposed to be there, plunges into the earth in a place just before the black pine forest begins to give way to swamp and then the reeds and wind-gnarled trees of the marsh flats. A team of four women (a psychologist, an anthropologist, a surveyor, and a biologist) are sent on a mission into Area X, a mysterious zone that has developed in their version of our world.

I felt no compulsion whatsoever, but clearly we had been preprogrammed to enter a hypnotic state in response to those words, uttered by the psychologist. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. There are certain kinds of deaths that one should not be expected to relive, certain kinds of connections so deep that when they are broken you feel the snap of the link inside you. VanderMeer’s writing is effortlessly engaging, leading the reader one step at a time into this strange, hypnotic and almost hallucinogenic world which, whilst not overtly involved, rides a line of tension from beginning to end.

There are so many aspects of how VanderMeer has constructed this tale, from the intentionally unnamed characters, the unreliable history of previous expeditions, the imposition of hypnotic distortions of perception, the almost biblical poetry of The Biologist's progressing insanity, the surreal sounds and images, the tension and mistrust of the team, and the growing realisation that all will go terrifyingly wrong, trapped with no way out.

We should explore farther first, and we should come back to it with whatever data we gather from our other investigations—including of the lighthouse.I hadn’t even thought of this, though I should have; I was still trying to parse the lingual meaning, had not transitioned to the idea of taking a physical sample.

On the whole, by dusk this strategy of busying ourselves in our tasks had worked to calm our nerves. It’s neither hard sci-fi nor hard horror, more a creepy, deeply unsettling exploration of a world similar to our own but entirely apart. Annihilation is a strange, disquieting and eerily beautiful novel which takes the reader on an expedition into Area X; where those who enter leave changed, if they leave at all. For example, although we had all received basic weapons and survival training, the surveyor had far more medical and firearms experience than the rest of us. A religious or superstitious person, someone who believed in angels or in demons, might see it differently.This occurred on our fourth day after reaching base camp, by which time we had almost gotten our bearings.