Annihilation (Southern Reach, #1) in Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge

May 14, 2014 Crowinator rated it really liked it

Shelves: genre-horror, genre-science-fiction, dystopia-post-apocalypse, unreliable-narrators, memorably-scary-or-disturbing, adult, 2014-reads, weird, also-a-movie-game-show, fungi-of-the-damned

As a child, I had stared up at the night sky and searched for shooting stars like everyone else. As an adult, sitting on the roof of my cottage near the bay, and later, haunting the empty lot, I looked not for shooting stars but for fixed ones, and I would try to imagine what kind of life lived in those celestial tidal pools so far from us. The stars I saw now looked strange, strewn across the dark in chaotic new patterns, where just the night before I had taken comfort in their familiarity. Was

As a child, I had stared up at the night sky and searched for shooting stars like everyone else. As an adult, sitting on the roof of my cottage near the bay, and later, haunting the empty lot, I looked not for shooting stars but for fixed ones, and I would try to imagine what kind of life lived in those celestial tidal pools so far from us. The stars I saw now looked strange, strewn across the dark in chaotic new patterns, where just the night before I had taken comfort in their familiarity. Was I only now seeing them clearly? Was I perhaps even farther from home than I had thought? There shouldn’t have been a grim sort of satisfaction in the thought.

I think the challenge of weird fiction is in achieving the balance between being weird enough to keep the mind unsettled, frantically scrabbling for an understanding that seems just out of reach, and being too weird, so weird that the mind goes “Ah, eff it,” and gives up trying to think the unthinkable. A rage-quit moment. There should be moments of the “too weird”, I think, because the whole idea is to point out how you can never really know anything, even things that you think are familiar to you, but there should also be moments that seek to normalize or provide a break so that you can take a breath before plunging more into the unknown. (For me, these moments succeed most when they come from connecting with a character or a bunch of characters. If I have a character I can hang on to, at least there’s one thing I might be able to understand.) And of course, there’s the looming questions: will this story make sense at the end, or was all of that hard work to figure it out for nothing? And how do you feel about not knowing?

Some questions will ruin you if you are denied the answer long enough.

Obviously this threshold will be different for everyone, and for me, weirdly, Annihilation struck the right balance, even though the focal character, the biologist, doesn’t ever become close enough for comfort. She is one of a four-person team tasked with mapping and recording Area X, an place somehow cut off from reality but bordering it, the twelfth expedition sent in after eleven others failed. The story is written by her as a record of what has already happened to the others, the surveyor, the anthropologist, and the psychologist, and what has already happened and is still happening to her. She tells a few stories from her life before Area X that seem to provide meaning to her life and shared humanity for readers, but her stories are already colored by her experiences in this place, so even her past as she tells it is suspect. Everything is suspect. She stands on the other side of the threshold, able to be seen but never fully known, and so she’s the perfect narrator for this book.

There are so many moments in this book that are dizzying and strange and full of dread and yet lyrical, and so many that might trick you into thinking you know what’s going on, and for me, there was at least one moment where I gave up trying to understand and just let the words carry me on. The other side of the “ah, eff it” response, where the mind gives up by giving in instead of quitting. I think it’s the same ineffable feeling you can get late at night, gazing up at the stars, feeling dizzy, pondering the unknowable vastness of the universe, as it were, and you’re either going to shriek in horror or feel comforted.

This book is an experience, but I think it helps that it’s short. I don’t think I would have had the patience for 300 pages of this unmoored, unsettling stuff that I can’t make sense of. At some point, I think I would just drift away out of boredom. I know there are two others coming in this series, but it helps that they’re discrete entities, new stories about Area X and the mysterious organization Southern Reach that controls (is controlled by?) it, not continuations so much of the biologist’s story. I don’t know, maybe it will all make sense in the end. I’m not sure if that would be disappointing or satisfying.

Read-alikes: Bad Glass, by Richard E. Gropp, though it's not nearly as good and the main character only grows more obnoxious the more you learn about him. ...more

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Jan 01, 2016 Chessa rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: series, audiobook, sf_fantasy, nebula_award_winner, sf-f-challenge

I did not love this audiobook. I am a person who likes to KNOW things (eventually! It doesn't have to be immediately!) and this is decidedly a book that doesn't give a fuck about that.

I really wish I had tried it in print, because this is a tough book to follow, and I think I would have gotten more out of it had I had the chance to flip back and reread certain passages. However, I didn't like the story enough to retry it in print, so oh well.

I've heard from folks that were also "meh" on this f ...more

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Sep 09, 2014 Erin rated it liked it

Shelves: post-apocalypse-dystopia

As I write this review, I'm still a bit unsure as to my thoughts about this book. From the description it sounded like something I would absolutely love and it's gotten many rave reviews. I guess I liked, but didn't love it....yet I was frantically turning the pages to see what was going to happen.......and turning, and turning....

Area X has been abandoned for about three decades - the official story is some sort of environmental disaster adjacent to a military facility and I guess the American ...more

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Aug 28, 2014 Kristen rated it it was ok

Shelves: sci-fi, book-club, 2014

I have no earthly idea what this book was about. I was intrigued enough to keep reading, but I am not intrigued enough to read the others in the series. I have little patience for books that seem to exist just to get you to read the next in the series. Two stars since it did keep me reading through to the end. Oh well.

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Jan 30, 2015 Elizabeth added it · review of another edition

Shelves: adult, audio, fiction, e-book, more-than-32-pages, overdrive, 2015

I liked it enough to start listening to the 2nd one, so that's a good sign. I knew from reading reviews that I might not "understand" it, but that's okay, because I still found it mostly compelling. ...more

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Mar 03, 2014 Tara rated it it was amazing

What a strange and wonderful book. Curious to see how the trilogy progresses.

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Oct 25, 2017 Samantha rated it it was amazing

A strange and wonderful little book. Annihilation forces you to consider the edges of your own humanity against the wild and imaginative backdrop of a world beyond "the border." ...more

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