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jessthanthree's review
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death and Body horror
Moderate: Cancer, Gun violence, and Infidelity
lynxpardinus's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Gaslighting, Gun violence, Mental illness, Body horror, Grief, and Death
Moderate: Suicide, Toxic relationship, Medical content, Cancer, Alcohol, Sexual content, Alcoholism, Blood, Infidelity, Animal death, Mass/school shootings, Medical trauma, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Self harm
Minor: Child death and Physical abuse
Further warning for descriptions of drowning, and a very brief mention of child-on-child sexual abuse.madarauchiha's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
❤️ 🧡 💛 💚 💙 💜 my about / byf / CW info carrd: uchiha-madara 💜 💙 💚 💛 🧡 ❤️
Ignore that lil bitch that says '195 pages'. This shit sticks to your esophagus on the way down. Take your time.
I liked how clinical the prose is, yet it's still enticing and draws you in. The writing is fantastic and lyrical, and I love the tiny glimmers of personality for each character. I loved the gentle use of fungi / plant horror. I appreciate the uncommon creepiness of using natural, organic materials and twisting it into something uncanny and horrifying. I wouldn't class this as straight up horror, more scifi than anything.
content warnings:
minor insects, suicide, guns, drowning, marital infidelity, suicide ideation, blood, animal death,
medium cancer, insects, alcohol use, injuries, blood, bone fractures, military,
major unreality, guns, death, manipulation, mind control?, gun violence, gore, body horror, death,
Ignore that lil bitch that says '195 pages'. This shit sticks to your esophagus on the way down. Take your time.
I liked how clinical the prose is, yet it's still enticing and draws you in. The writing is fantastic and lyrical, and I love the tiny glimmers of personality for each character. I loved the gentle use of fungi / plant horror. I appreciate the uncommon creepiness of using natural, organic materials and twisting it into something uncanny and horrifying. I wouldn't class this as straight up horror, more scifi than anything.
content warnings:
minor insects, suicide, guns, drowning, marital infidelity, suicide ideation, blood, animal death,
medium cancer, insects, alcohol use, injuries, blood, bone fractures, military,
major unreality, guns, death, manipulation, mind control?, gun violence, gore, body horror, death,
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gun violence, Emotional abuse, Gore, and Body horror
Moderate: Cancer, Alcohol, and Blood
Minor: Suicide, Gun violence, Infidelity, Suicidal thoughts, Blood, and Animal death
jellygiraffe's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Annihilation annihilated me and I loved every minute. The moment I started reading all I could think of was that this is what I imagine Cormac McCarthy would write if he wrote speculative, cosmic, ominous science fiction. The melding of nature and the human world, the constant overflow of the natural and the unnatural, and the constant questioning of reality and morals and what should even be considered ‘natural’ in the first place.
As the biologist remarks: '... did it surprise me that I could understand the language the words were written in? Yes. Did it fill me with a kind of elation and dread intertwined? Yes.'
This is a truly fascinating book and I can’t wait to read the rest of the trilogy. It thrilled me and half the book is underlined given how beautiful the writing is. It’s a short book but it packs a punch with pared-down characters who become more complex and yet more hidden as the narrative progresses, a process mirrored (ha ha) by Area X.
‘What he was really saying was that we should abandon the mission, that we should lose ourselves in the landscape.’
The mere concept of this book is not a particularly ground-breaking one but it has a truly timeless quality in how it addresses key concerns about being human, especially about being a species which has wrought so much damage onto a natural system that we are part of, not wardens of. This book is American pastoralism twined with a kind of cosmic horror that only really goes to show how unknowable the universe is and how easily humans as a cluster of atoms can cease to exist.
‘A name was a dangerous luxury here. Sacrifices didn’t need names. People who served a function didn’t need to be named.’
I loved the unnamed characters, the lack of insight into most of their lives, even the protagonist’s—a bold choice in my opinion especially since it was her relationship with her husband that in part drew her to the Southern Reach. Despite how minimalistic some of it is it really provides just enough for you to assume and create fully-fledged characters and worlds in your own mind. Even Area X experiences this limited perspective. The protagonist is a biologist—how does that affect her narration and descriptions of this alien place? As she says at one point: 'I am just the biologist; I don't require any of this to have a deeper meaning.' What would the surveyor or the psychologist or the anthropologist do differently? This book is so layered and so delicate in many ways even though much of it explores vicious deaths and an environment that I hesitate to call ‘alien’ but cannot think of a better name. It posits the possibilities of an unknown area being studied by an ambiguous governmental body by people with ambiguous personalities and everything becomes murky and that’s the point.
'We were scientists, trained to observe natural phenomena and the results of human activity. We had not been trained to encounter what appeared to be the uncanny.'
This kind of eco-literature is eco-criticism itself. I listened to numerous podcasts and read articles that featured Jeff VanderMeer talking about Annihilation and it’s fascinating to hear how he developed the concept, high on pain medication, recalling his walks through Florida’s everglades, and with one of many devastating BP oil spills occurring in the background. This melding of a subconscious mind with the destruction of the natural world rings through so clearly and yet this book leaves so much unanswered without me being mad about it.
'Looking for hidden meaning in these papers was the same as looking for hidden meaning in the natural world around us. If it existed, it could be activated only by the eye of the beholder.'
The biologist’s actions as she becomes increasingly ‘part of’ Area X or whatever has crash-landed in it (though this isn’t confirmed in the book unlike how it is in the adaptation, which is equally as brilliant) were a fascinating journey to go on. Being narrated in retrospect gives it an observing sheen, and because of her personality and her role as a biologist there’s a slant to it that’s rather unemotional and allows certain ominous and downright freaky aspects of the book (I’m talking about the dolphins with human eyes OBVIOUSLY EW ) to be reported on in such a detached manner that it makes them even more creepy.
'I had the unsettling thought that the natural world around me had become a kind of camouflage."
Loved the interplay of the other characters as they try to figure each other out while hiding themselves at the same time. The anthropologist’s fate is truly horrifying especially considering the surveyor argued that she tried to ‘come back’. The surveyor’s breakdown was a perfect hinge upon which to balance the entire book as it destabilised everyone else, even the biologist, who so often is in her own head. The psychologist absolutely fascinated me!! The hypnosis, the odd smiles, the dissonance in her lies, the odd turns of phrase she uses… all of it a game of smoke and mirrors and yet also an intentional act of hypnosis. Her screaming ‘annihilation’ was a stunning moment of terror.
'There is no one with me. I am all by myself. The trees are not trees the birds are not birds and I am not me but just something that has been walking for a very long time...'
All in all this book is a hypnotic one, drawing you into Area X while also keeping you at arm’s length. It’s half dream, half reality, and 100% something other, a place where nature is not as we think it is and therefore a narrative in which the answers themselves do not matter so much as the ways in which they are given. 'Not everything that is happening to us has a rational explanation.'
Five stars!
Stand out quote: 'Time elongated, was nothing but fuel for the words this thing had created.'
As the biologist remarks: '... did it surprise me that I could understand the language the words were written in? Yes. Did it fill me with a kind of elation and dread intertwined? Yes.'
This is a truly fascinating book and I can’t wait to read the rest of the trilogy. It thrilled me and half the book is underlined given how beautiful the writing is. It’s a short book but it packs a punch with pared-down characters who become more complex and yet more hidden as the narrative progresses, a process mirrored (ha ha) by Area X.
‘What he was really saying was that we should abandon the mission, that we should lose ourselves in the landscape.’
The mere concept of this book is not a particularly ground-breaking one but it has a truly timeless quality in how it addresses key concerns about being human, especially about being a species which has wrought so much damage onto a natural system that we are part of, not wardens of. This book is American pastoralism twined with a kind of cosmic horror that only really goes to show how unknowable the universe is and how easily humans as a cluster of atoms can cease to exist.
‘A name was a dangerous luxury here. Sacrifices didn’t need names. People who served a function didn’t need to be named.’
I loved the unnamed characters, the lack of insight into most of their lives, even the protagonist’s—a bold choice in my opinion especially since it was her relationship with her husband that in part drew her to the Southern Reach. Despite how minimalistic some of it is it really provides just enough for you to assume and create fully-fledged characters and worlds in your own mind. Even Area X experiences this limited perspective. The protagonist is a biologist—how does that affect her narration and descriptions of this alien place? As she says at one point: 'I am just the biologist; I don't require any of this to have a deeper meaning.' What would the surveyor or the psychologist or the anthropologist do differently? This book is so layered and so delicate in many ways even though much of it explores vicious deaths and an environment that I hesitate to call ‘alien’ but cannot think of a better name. It posits the possibilities of an unknown area being studied by an ambiguous governmental body by people with ambiguous personalities and everything becomes murky and that’s the point.
'We were scientists, trained to observe natural phenomena and the results of human activity. We had not been trained to encounter what appeared to be the uncanny.'
This kind of eco-literature is eco-criticism itself. I listened to numerous podcasts and read articles that featured Jeff VanderMeer talking about Annihilation and it’s fascinating to hear how he developed the concept, high on pain medication, recalling his walks through Florida’s everglades, and with one of many devastating BP oil spills occurring in the background. This melding of a subconscious mind with the destruction of the natural world rings through so clearly and yet this book leaves so much unanswered without me being mad about it.
'Looking for hidden meaning in these papers was the same as looking for hidden meaning in the natural world around us. If it existed, it could be activated only by the eye of the beholder.'
The biologist’s actions as she becomes increasingly ‘part of’ Area X or whatever has crash-landed in it (though this isn’t confirmed in the book unlike how it is in the adaptation, which is equally as brilliant) were a fascinating journey to go on. Being narrated in retrospect gives it an observing sheen, and because of her personality and her role as a biologist there’s a slant to it that’s rather unemotional and allows certain ominous and downright freaky aspects of the book (I’m talking about
'I had the unsettling thought that the natural world around me had become a kind of camouflage."
Loved the interplay of the other characters as they try to figure each other out while hiding themselves at the same time. The anthropologist’s fate is truly horrifying especially considering the surveyor argued that she tried to ‘come back’. The surveyor’s breakdown was a perfect hinge upon which to balance the entire book as it destabilised everyone else, even the biologist, who so often is in her own head. The psychologist absolutely fascinated me!! The hypnosis, the odd smiles, the dissonance in her lies, the odd turns of phrase she uses… all of it a game of smoke and mirrors and yet also an intentional act of hypnosis. Her screaming ‘annihilation’ was a stunning moment of terror.
'There is no one with me. I am all by myself. The trees are not trees the birds are not birds and I am not me but just something that has been walking for a very long time...'
All in all this book is a hypnotic one, drawing you into Area X while also keeping you at arm’s length. It’s half dream, half reality, and 100% something other, a place where nature is not as we think it is and therefore a narrative in which the answers themselves do not matter so much as the ways in which they are given. 'Not everything that is happening to us has a rational explanation.'
Five stars!
Stand out quote: 'Time elongated, was nothing but fuel for the words this thing had created.'
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder and Violence
Minor: Alcoholism and Infidelity
More...