Authority (2014)
Written by: Jeff VanderMeer
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 352 (Paperback)
Series: Book Two of The Southern Reach Trilogy
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Why I Chose It: Well, I had to find out what happened after the first book, didn’t I? Especially since I’d decided I liked the movie better and I needed to see if this book would help sway my opinion on that.
The Premise:
After thirty years, the only human engagement with Area X―a seemingly malevolent landscape surrounded by an invisible border and mysteriously wiped clean of all signs of civilization―has been a series of expeditions overseen by a government agency so secret it has almost been forgotten: the Southern Reach. Following the tumultuous twelfth expedition chronicled in Annihilation, the agency is in complete disarray.
John Rodrigues (aka “Control”) is the Southern Reach’s newly appointed head. Working with a distrustful but desperate team, a series of frustrating interrogations, a cache of hidden notes, and hours of profoundly troubling video footage, Control begins to penetrate the secrets of Area X. But with each discovery he must confront disturbing truths about himself and the agency he’s pledged to serve.
In Authority, the New York Times bestselling second volume of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy, Area X’s most disturbing questions are answered . . . but the answers are far from reassuring.
Some spoilers
Discussion: In the premise of the book it states, “Area X’s most disturbing questions are answered.” I can assure you right now that this is a lie. You discover very little regarding Area X aside from hearing about some of its past (and even then when only associated with certain people) and its next chess move.
Likewise, the premise states that “Control begins to penetrate the secrets of Area X.” He absolutely does not, and instead finds himself as baffled as the rest of us and only really discovers that some of the people working at the Southern Reach may just be batshit crazy.
Authority is where I think most, if not all, my coworkers fell off the Southern Reach wagon. We’re not in Area X anymore; rather we’re stuck dealing with the Southern Reach building and its employees while Control attempts to get everything back in order after being put in charge as the new Director. There are elements of the annoying in that Grace, the Assistant Director, is all pissed that Control is now driving this particular ship, and does things to make life difficult for him. People in the building don’t want to mess with her, and they do things that I feel like anyone else with any sense would immediately be alarmed about and try to change. Hell, I’d request a ton of new staff because my initial reaction is that most of these people have been at the site within proximity of Area X for too long, and now either their ideas at dealing with it/fixing it have become stale or they’re just plain losing sight of reality.
Look, I’m just saying that when you find rooms covered in ranting script or weird paintings and some of your staff act straight up unhinged, you fucking tell someone. You don’t just set it aside like so much junk mail to be dealt with later.
Along those same lines, the political jockeying got tiresome. Control’s paranoia got tiresome. While the latter thankfully get dealt with, the former is never properly addressed. Area X kills people. It’s that simple. It’s a truly bizarre anomaly when it comes to our grasp of what our world is capable of, and yet these people are wrapped up in their own dumb bureaucracies? I will grant that people are absolutely that stupid and it wouldn’t surprise me if they actually acted this way in such a situation. Perhaps part of it was because Area X had been around for so long that people became complacent. But Grace knew better, given her experiences with the former Director as well as her current beliefs, which is why she pissed me off so much. Control came in blind, but instead of helping him understand the place, the situation, and the people, and then work with him in order to make some, any, kind of progress, she does nothing but hinder him at almost every turn.
I was also annoyed in that we still don’t know what happened to any of the previous teams. We learn a scant handful of things, but at one point Control goes into a highly classified room to watch recovered video from a certain expedition. We get the tiniest glimpse that’s almost Blair Witch-like before getting tossed into the next moment where Control exits the room and is in such a freaked out state he actually drops to one knee in the hallway. That’s not scary to me. That does nothing to further my discomfort of Area X because I still don’t know what it does. Instead, I know the exact same amount that I knew at the end of book one and a few chapters into this book.
While again, the atmosphere of this book is excellent in terms of where we are (stuck inside the Southern Reach building 90% of the time) and I did like Control’s character since he really is just trying to put the place back together and figure out how to get this whole mess of a thing back into one semi-decent piece, it took time for anything to really, truly happen. When it does, you have maybe a quarter of the book left, and even then the event is brief and you’re back with Control, this time hoping the next book gets back on track and we get a final solution to dealing with Area X.
In Conclusion: Contrary to all my ranting, I didn’t hate this book. The main problem is that this particular installment of the trilogy is fairly tedious. It’s easy to put down (which I’ve heard isn’t exactly something you want in a book) and does nothing to alleviate the pressing questions that Area X offered us in the first book. I can see why my coworkers left this one by the wayside, leaving me to venture on into the final stage of Area X alone. Options? Go through it page by page like I did; like Control did with all of the previous Director’s papers, notes, and scribbles. Or just cheat and look up a summary. Or hell, ask me. I’ll tell you. Then try on the final book and see how it suits you.
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