"Annihilation (Southern Reach, #1)" by Jeff VanderMeer, 2014

"Annihilation (Southern Reach, #1)" by Jeff VanderMeer, 2014

In Annihilation, the novelist and publishing entrepreneur Jeff VanderMeer sets out to create a lasting monument to the uncanny by revisiting – without embellishment, and with a pitiless focus on physical and psychological detail – some very old ground. An alien invasion site. Assimilative spores. An unfurling of promiscuous alien biology.

On the first page we are told that the women's enterprise is doomed. Their equipment is either nonsensical, or inadequate, or antiquated. Their training and instructions are sometimes vague, sometimes misleading. They cannot recall the moment they crossed into Area X, and they have no clear idea how they will leave. They cannot agree about what they are seeing (a shaft? a tower? a throat?) and three of them are all the while half-aware of being hypnotically manipulated by their team leader.

The uncanny, by VanderMeer's measure, is not, and never was, a thing. It is, and has always been, the actual state of the world. Familiarity is a fiction we perpetuate through psychological necessity. The closer the nameless biologist comes to this reazisation, the more she falls back on her scientific training – not in any petulant, pedantic way, but rather as a means of limiting the kinds of questions she needs to ask the world, and of her rapidly transmogrifying self.You enter Area X with them, thinking the uncanny must lurk in some particular spot. The lighthouse? The reed beds? The "tower"? Very quickly you spot your mistake, as a subtle, well-engineered wrongness turns up in every character, every deed, every observation until, at last, you find yourself afraid to turn the page.

Infected early in the book, she wonders if she has "changed sides", become more "X" than human. She decides the question is meaningless. "A religious or superstitious person, someone who believed in angels or in demons, might see it differently. Almost anyone else might see it differently. But I am not those people, I am just the biologist; I don't require any of this to have a deeper meaning."

From this self-destructively objective vantage point, there can be no "us" or "them", no threshold to cross, no home to flee to when all's done. Science is there to handle the uncanny, and the biologist's declaration near the end of the book – "Our instruments are useless, our methodology broken, our motivations selfish" – is anything but an expression of doubt. It is as stirring in its admission of human frailty and ambition as Beckett's "You must go on. / I can't go on. / I'll go on."

A suspenseful book, Annihilation catches one's attention with a powerful narrator and a fantastical world. The voice of the biologist is strong, creating a kinship between the main character and the reader, and her need to uncover the truth of Area X draws the reader in. Furthermore, VanderMeer's skill in writing is showcased through powerful scenic description that conjures a new world before the mind's eye. The reader becomes entranced, sharing the biologist's need to discover the unknown of Area X no matter the cost. However, the book creates more questions than it answers, ultimately leaving the reader confused. We are given thousands of possibilities as to what Area X could be, but by the end the reader feels as if they know less than they knew in the beginning. All in all, Annihilation is a gripping book that keeps one reading long into the night. Those interested in science fiction with beautiful prose and magical scenery will be unable to put it down, while those with an interest in mystery will be pulled along by the story waiting to be uncovered from the very first pages of the book. This is reinforced by the strong main character, ultimately creating an all-around sensational reading experience. 

My rating: ★★★★★ (5 out of 5 stars) - Wow. I loved it!

Plot from Wikipedia:

Plot[edit]

A team of four cross the border into an uninhabited area known as Area X. The group consists of an anthropologist, surveyor, biologist, and psychologist. None of the team is ever identified by name. The story is told through the biologist's field journal. They are part of the 12th expedition into Area X, and it is revealed that the biologist's husband was part of the previous expedition into the same area. The narrator's husband returned unexpectedly from the expedition, showing up in their kitchen without any recollection of how he got there. The rest of his expedition show up similarly. A few months later he died of cancer along with the others in the 11th expedition.

After the first night spent at the base camp, the 12th expedition come upon a set of spiral stairs into the ground. Inside the staircase (which the biologist repeatedly calls a tower), they find cursive writing that begins with the words "Where lies the strangling fruit...." The writing appears to consist of a plant material growing several inches from the exterior wall. While the biologist is examining the writing, she accidentally inhales spores from one of the script-defining growths. After returning from the tower, the biologist discovers that the psychologist, who is the appointed leader, has programmed the group with certain triggers via hypnosis. By saying the phrase "consolidation of authority," everyone except the biologist immediately enters a state of hypnosis. The biologist believes that the spores she has inhaled have made her immune to the hypnotic suggestions and influence of the psychologist. The group decides to return to base camp for the night. At dusk, they hear a moaning noise from far away.

"Where lies the strangling fruit that came from the hand of the sinner I shall bring forth the seeds of the dead to share with the worms that gather in the darkness and surround the world with the power of their lives while from the dim lit halls of other places forms that never were and never could be writhe for the impatience of the few who never saw what could have been."^[7]

After spending the night at the base camp, the anthropologist is missing the next morning; the psychologist claims the anthropologist decided to leave and returned to the border. The group then make their way back to the "tower" where the surveyor and narrator descend back down the stairs while the psychologist stands watch. Eventually, the surveyor and biologist come upon the body of the anthropologist. It is believed she came into contact with the writer of the text on the wall (which the narrator names the Crawler). When the group returns to the top, they find the psychologist missing.

The biologist and surveyor decide to return to the base camp after a fruitless search for the psychologist. That night the biologist sees a light from the area of a distant lighthouse. The next day she leaves for the lighthouse while the surveyor stays behind. At the lighthouse, she finds a pile of journals from past expeditions, indicating that there have been many more expeditions than they had been told - among them is her husband's journal. The immediately preceding expedition which included her husband was actually "expedition 11g", with others stretching back to "11a", and so on. She also finds a photograph of what she thinks is the lighthouse keeper from 30 years previously, when Area X had been abandoned. Near the base of the lighthouse, she finds the psychologist seriously injured. The psychologist becomes frightened by the biologist's approach and screams the word "Annihilation" repeatedly, which she later reveals is supposed to induce suicide in the biologist through hypnotic suggestion. The psychologist also reveals she had leapt from the top of the lighthouse trying to escape an unknown entity. Before dying, the psychologist tells the narrator that the border is expanding slowly northward. She also says that the biologist now has started to glow, her body emitting a dim yellow light.

On her way back to base camp, the biologist has a close encounter with the moaning animal she hears every night in the reeds. She is able to escape though she is ambushed by the surveyor. They exchange gun fire and the biologist manages to outflank and kill the surveyor, but is wounded in the process. She learns that being injured impedes the process of her "brightening" but that as she recovers whatever it is continues to take over her body.

Now the only surviving member of their expedition, the biologist takes time to analyse material she found on her way to the lighthouse and realizes that certain moss and decayed "animals" have human cells. She also finally reads her husband's journal of his expedition with an all-male team of eight explorers. The biologist's husband's team found the "tower" on their fifth day but did not explore it, moving to the lighthouse first. After discovering the huge pile of journals the team of explorers split up with two members choosing to explore the "tower", four deciding to remain in the lighthouse and the biologist's husband and his team's surveyor choosing to explore the land beyond the lighthouse. Finding that Area X seemed to stretch out indefinitely they returned to the lighthouse only to find that their team's psychologist had been murdered by a beast and then had somehow been resurrected and the rest of the men had turned on one another. Returning to the tower the biologist's husband and the surveyor were unable to find the other two men. They later see doppelgängers of all the men (including themselves) except the psychologist, entering the tunnel. At this point the two remaining men decide to abandon their mission. The surveyor tries to return to the border via the way they crossed; however, the biologist's husband decides to repair a boat and try to cross back by following the shore.

Having read her husband's journal, the biologist decides to return to the tunnel to see if she can find the Crawler. She makes her way down the spiral staircase and eventually finds the Crawler. After a nearly fatal encounter she looks back to see the un-aged face of the lighthouse keeper within it, focused on the writing on the wall. The book closes with the biologist stating she doesn't plan to return home. Instead she decides to stay in Area X and find perhaps any part of her late husband's presence which she believes remains somewhere in Area X.