Creeping Into Your Senses: Review of Annihilation

Annihilation (2014)
Written by: Jeff VanderMeer
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 208 (Paperback)
Series: Book One of The Southern Reach Trilogy
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Why I Chose It: Having seen the movie and my curiosity already piqued, I figured this was only the next logical step. Especially since I wanted to see just how the two compared given that the movie wraps itself up (fairly) neatly, but there are two more books after this one.

The Premise:

Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; the second expedition ended in mass suicide; the third expedition in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another. The members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within weeks, all had died of cancer. In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition.

The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.

They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers—they discover a massive topographic anomaly and life forms that surpass understanding—but it’s the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything.

No spoilers

Discussion: Three of my coworkers were already reading Annihilation. I was eager to discuss things with them, so once I saw the movie, I dove into it myself. I’d been curious ever since seeing the movie’s trailer, and because I work at a bookstore it was easy for me to occasionally pick it up and peek inside. There was strangeness in there. And after what I’d experienced in the film, I really wanted to know how the book measured up.

None of the characters have names, first and foremost. They are only ever known as the psychologist, the surveyor, and the anthropologist. The biologist is our narrator, told in first person, describing her experiences with Area X. Telling us how she got there. Why she joined the expedition. What happens once they experience what Area X has to offer. The biologist quickly learns things about her team members, the Southern Reach (which, by the way, is a part of a larger clandestine organization), but not so much about Area X. She wants to know what caused Area X in the first place. What is making it so pristine?

The topographical anomaly houses some bizarre stuff. Words on the wall made of living organisms. But what is making the words? How far down into this tunnel—or tower, as the biologist wants to call it—should they go? Or should they travel to the lighthouse? There are so many points of interest, and the biologist keeps uncovering strange element after strange element that you begin to realize that she may never uncover anything of any explanation of all. But besides that (since there are two more books so there’s plenty of time for explanations later), will she get out of this haunting, brain scrambling place alive? And, as with the movie, her husband was a part of the eleventh expedition—will she find him somewhere alive himself?

The atmosphere in this book is excellent. It’s easy to fall into this zone of discomfort, curiosity, and detachment. Area X is normal and alien all at once, and the biologist’s reaction to things help to shape the way we feel as well. Her own indifference to humans coupled with her ability to be almost a part of the nature she surrounds herself with makes her an interesting narrator. A coworker and I discussed whether or not the biologist might actually be a sociopath (upon learning more, I would say she’s not, though she does exhibit several traits associated with sociopaths).

In Conclusion: You will go in with questions. You will leave with questions. You will be intrigued and possibly a little disturbed. But then, there are two more books to go through. I suppose the only way to discover what Area X is, what it is doing, and whether or not it can be stopped is to keep reading…