Book Review: Annihilation (Jeff VanderMeer)

What could happen if an alien ecology invaded ours? Imagine how horrific, uncanny, and unreal it would be to watch nature transform into something completely alien. The process of doing so means wiping out what existed before--hence, annihilation.

Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation follows the path of a biologist who ventures into Area X along with a team of other scientists, all women, all of varying disciplines and skills. Area X is a piece of the American south that's slowly being eaten away by an invisible force that mutates life, and it's the goal of the Southern Reach to observe the phenomenon with the science teams they send out.

It's not a story I found all that palatable, unfortunately. The 12th Expedition falls apart from page one as each team member mistrusts each other and inevitably lunge for each other's throats. I struggled to understand why this happened to each character--it's as if they're all written to be scheming, conniving a-holes. I suppose it's implicit that Area X affects everybody's senses and thoughts to become this way, but I feel the plot didn't really progress naturally in that direction.

In fact, I found no discernible plot at all. All sense of narrative momentum is bogged down by way too much introspection, which fills up the majority of the book. The progress that does happen amounts to characters moving around a tower or something, with lots of running around, fighting odd monsters, and then themselves. I never had a good sense of where acts begin and end, when characters make those story-defining decisions. Pacing is slow and the structure is abstract.

What bothered me more was the writing style, but I have to admit that if it wasn't for the Internet I would have never guessed that this book was written in the style of a field journal. To me, this simply read like a book with an awful lot of exposition--it is a necessity for epistolary novels, but it made this a chore to read. Part of the problem is that the voice is long-winded, dry, and devoid of personality or passion. I had zero emotions reading about the biologist as she observed her weird surroundings, reflected on her troubled past, and inevitably killed her teammates. It was all a cold and detached experience that I found droll.

To be fair, there is some value to the book and the more open-minded readers will probably enjoy the ideas, the atmosphere, and the tension of the story. There were moments where I found the sentence structures elegant, the descriptions deep, and the character flashbacks compelling. Can't complain about the world-building, Area X is a freaky place that will invoke uncanny images that may creep under your skin.

It is a unique piece of weird fiction that many have enjoyed, but it's not one I particularly liked. It may have been that I didn't understand the author's intention with the format, but even if I did, I doubt I would have followed it any better given the overabundance of introspection. For those that follow, read at your own discretion.

2/5