The team must be hypnotized in order to pass through the only portal through the mysterious barrier that surrounds the area. They have been sending expeditions into the region for years, and those expeditions have more often than not come to unexplained or horrifying fates.Īnnihilation, the first of the trilogy, is a first-person narrative of the twelfth expedition into Area X, told from the point of view of an expedition member initially known only as “the biologist.” The very use of personal names in Area X is apparently dangerous, so the team members are known only through their professions: biologist, anthropologist, psychologist, and surveyor. Since that time, a government organization known as the Southern Reach has been studying Area X, trying to understand its nature, its purpose, and whether it is a threat. The trilogy is centered upon an area of an evidently uninhabited and wild coastal area known only as Area X, which became isolated from the rest of the world some 30 years earlier due to an “event” whose nature is not understood. Bewildering, intricate, confusing, surreal, thoughtful, haunting, poetic, horrific, terrifying, beautiful? It is all these things, and more. It is hard to find the right words to describe these novels. Over the course of about 5 days, I read all three books of the trilogy. Until, that is, I read the first description of the upcoming movie version of the first book, which instantly intrigued me. One of his earlier novels, Finch, is on a very short list of “best books I’ve ever read.” I suspect that I simply read the name “Southern Reach” and it somehow evoked images of the Southern United States in a weird way that didn’t appeal to me, and I just never got around to looking at the books. You die a withered husk, still wondering.I’m not entirely sure why it took me three years to read Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy. You know through connected root networks that it's happened to other plants, but you can't understand why you have been chosen. Before it came you saw a fluttering shadow between you and the sun, felt the rustle of your leaves.Īs the new chemical burns and collapses your cell walls, you try and understand and what has happened and why it's happening.
Now, imagine that in day you sense a strange new chemical in your root flow. These things are your way of knowing the world. Like all plants, you are alive, and you "understand" the world through your available senses: heliotroping, vibration of your cellular material, the mineral flow to your roots. If you need clear, concrete answers, you'll be disappointed, because one of the central features of Area X is that it's unknowable.
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