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What’s it all about?

Acceptance is the concluding volume in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy. Where the first volume told the story of the 12th expedition into Area X and the second looked at things from the perspective of the organisation tasked with sending those expeditions in to investigate, this final volume brings both sides of the story together as surviving characters deal with the aftermath of earlier events and try once again to understand the anomaly from the inside.

Why did I want to read it?

I just love this series of books and hated having to wait quite so long to get my hands on the final volume. Even though I was in the middle of something else when this arrived on my Kindle app I just had to start reading, and I finished it in a single Saturday’s concentrated effort. Though it really wasn’t an effort at all, I was totally absorbed.

What did I think of it?

I really really liked Acceptance, I thought it was a very fitting conclusion to the series and brought together existing strands and themes very well while still managing to introduce new material, including quite a few flashbacks which explained some of the background to both what Area X is and how it came to be. I found myself really committed to the characters and the growing sense of otherness and weirdness was gripping, especially to someone like me who has a great love for all things strange. It manages to balance the creepiness of a Lovecraft tale with real human drama as characters I had come to care about dealt with their experiences.

I don’t want to go into too much detail because this is a book that only makes senses if you have read its predecessors. What I will say though is that I will definitely re-read this trilogy and I have already sought out more of VanderMeer’s work. Though I can understand why some readers have found the lack of a complete set of answers a bit frustrating I rather liked the open ending. Really really enjoyed it.

What’s it all about?

Authority is the second novel in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy. It picks up from the events of the first novel with the survivors of that expedition having made their way back without knowing how and remembering little if anything of what happened while they were there.

This new instalment is told through the perspective of Control, the new leader of the team of scientists who monitor the Southern Reach and who send each expedition in and try to deal with the aftermath. Control wants answers, but is himself apparently thwarted at every turn by his second in command and becomes dangerously obsessed.

Why did I want to read this?

I really loved the first volume, Annihilation, which I devoured and wrote about here. I pre-ordered this as soon as I finished the first and I’m anxious to get my hands on the final volume when it comes out later this year.

What did I think of it?

I just thought it was all wonderful stuff. The change of perspective was unexpected but just as compelling as the events in the first novel. It’s not really a fair or accurate comparison, but while I was reading it in my head I had the feeling that if Annihilation was Alien then Authority is Aliens and that has kind of stuck with me as a reference.

I loved the fact that we were seeing quite extraordinary events from the the other side of the fence (almost literally) with office politics and alliances and secrets and behind-the-scenes machinations all getting in the way of Control figuring out what’s going on.

I really liked the fact that his predecessor had actually broken protocol and led the ill-fated (as they all are) 12th expedition, which gives the events of the first book a really different slant (and guarantees a re-read). The sense of dread, the unsettling feeling, the paranoia all carried through to Authority, and once again I read this in virtually a single chunk, I was so keen to find out what revelations were in store. And we did get some revelations, though as with all of these things we may have been given some answers but there are still a lot of questions tantalisingly hanging there.

I have absolutely no idea what’s going to happen next, but I can hardly wait to find out!

What’s it about?

The first in a trilogy, all three to be published this year, Annihilation tells the story of an expedition into the mysterious Area X, the twelfth such to be sent in the thirty years since a supposed environmental disaster cut the area off. The story is told from the viewpoint of the biologist, one of four women making up this most recent attempt to investigate.

As the blurb says, their mission is:

to chart the land, take samples and expand the Southern Reach’s understanding of Area X.

But of course it’s not as simple as that.

Why did I want to read it?

I’m not sure where I first saw this book mentioned, but it seemed to pop up all over the place with what seemed like uniformly positive reviews. I’m not one who normally follows what everyone else is reading (I think I’ve actually said before that I actively avoid those books until the fuss dies down) but something about this intrigued me and onto the Kindle app it was summoned. I’ve also never read any VanderMeer before though he has been on my radar for ages.

What did I think of it?

This is a really strange book, but I mean that in a good way. For a start we never know the names of the four women who make up the twelfth expedition, they are only ever referred to by their job titles (as well as the biologist we have an anthropologist, a psychologist and a surveyor). We learn early on that there was a fifth woman, a linguist, but we don’t know what happened to her. We also know that previous expeditions have spectacularly failed and its’ clear that things are going to go wrong with this bunch too, and fairly quickly.

There is a tower (or is it a tunnel?) with strange writing that appears to be alive. There is a lighthouse which is somehow significant. There is clear evidence that the team is being manipulated in some way by Southern Reach, the organisation that has sent them in. The psychologist knows more than she is letting on and is using hypnotic suggestion to control her team mates. And of course the biologist has a secret, a reason of her own for having volunteered for this mission.

This is  short book, some 200 pages or so, and I read most of it in one sitting. It’s really very strange and I’m not entirely sure what I think of it, other than that it was compelling and communicated a real sense of mystery and dread and weirdness. Things moving in the dark, things that are unnatural, a feeling that nothing is what it seems, foreboding and otherness. A bit Lovecraftian in places (a good thing IMHO). Unsettling.

I’m not articulating my thoughts terribly well because it’s still percolating. But I’ve already pre-ordered the second in the trilogy which comes out in May and I can’t wait to see what more we will find out.