Review: Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

Good evening! Due to the book club I helped start up at my office, I recently picked up a digital copy of this book, what I consider to be an adult experimental sci-fi thriller, Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer. I wrote up a review partially for this blog, but to a large degree so that I could have the excuse of breaking it down before the club even meets for the first time!

Goodreads Summary: 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; all the members of the second expedition committed suicide; the third expedition died 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 months of their return, all had died of aggressive cancer.

This is the twelfth expedition.

Their 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 and collect specimens; to record all their observations, scientific and otherwise, of their surroundings and of one another; and, above all, to 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.

Original reading: N/A
Recent reading: 10/2/14-10/5/14

3/5 stars


I think that I'm an intelligent enough person to understand this book. I understood the characters, the creepy elements, the strange situations and the ongoing mystery. What I do not understand is the why. I'm not sure what the point of that journey was, or why I really bothered to take it.

The main theme that seems to be the focus here is a fascination with the natural world, and the ways in which it can seem utterly alien to humans, unless those humans happen to have an almost sociopathic separation from their fellows. The main character has no name other than the mean-spirited (or wistful, if looked at a different way) nickname of Ghost Bird, which aptly describes the way she is very little beyond a series of ideas floating in the ether, rather than a real and relatable person. She is sent out to explore Area X with a group of people that are boiled down to a biological taxonomy that reduces them from human beings with identities to a group of creatures that are defined by their careers and some archetypical character traits. No one has any facial features, though one or two may be described as having broad shoulders or curly hair. They eat and sleep (but never go to the bathroom or have a period). They are female but it doesn't really affect anything in the plot other than the fact that Ghost Bird had(?) a husband.

Apart from the window dressing of scientific curiosity, there's no real reason to make the reader understand why the characters in this novel go to one place or another, which makes it seem like the events in the novel are not really in any particular order. It would make for a fantastic adventure game, since then there would be a reason for the player's godhand to move the character from one scenery set piece to the next, with a series of circumstances to survive at or between each piece. In this novel, though, there's no such godhand other than the author, and it's a little transparent.

The whole problem I have with this book is, I think, that it wasn't really written for me. I can't relate to the main character, and I don't find myself fascinated with this strange world because I don't care to see it through her eyes. She is pure scientific fascination and a touch of sociopathy, and that's apparently all there is to it. There's not much of a dymanic change, despite the physical change that's openly described. She says herself that she's the same person that she was in the beginning, and even if she says it in a way that seems like dissembling, it's pretty much the truth, which makes her a bit of a failure as a protagonist. The only mental or emotional change is that she's more interested in her past than she was while she was living it. Maybe she'll be more human in upcoming books. The problem is, whether she does make some further transformation, I don't find myself invested enough to investigate further.

Now I have to admit that the writing in this novel is very good. The descriptions are vivid without being flowery, and there are some remarkable observations and really beautiful turns of phrase. The events described were very sharp and clear, except when they weren't, and at those points they were obviously meant to be unclear. But because of the way this was written, all clearly in hindsight from the beginning with an oft-repeated attempt at "objectivity" in the prose, it's a nightmare viewed in the daylight. The bad parts might make you cringe, but in the end, none of it really makes your heart race. I might be just curious enough to look up spoilers about the other two books in this series, but I won't be reading them. Kind of a shame.

Cross-posting of this Review: Goodreads