Slow-moving, and it was hard for me to relate to the main character because she is an asshole. ( )

This is the first fiction I read by Jeff VanderMeer; I had read and enjoyed his writer's manual Booklife, and when I saw this book as the i09 book club choice earlier this year I figured it was worth a look. I'm glad I did.

In some ways, this book is a slight throwback. It's told entirely from inside the mind of the narrator, a biologist discovering a mysterious area along with a handful of other women chosen for their backgrounds and their skills. It's mostly narration, like books from good old-time adventure writers like Edgar Rice Burroughs or Robert E. Howard. Those stories tended to read like a newspaper account sometimes, but Annihilation reaches out and engages you right off the bat.

I highly recommend this novel for its depiction of a woman of science with attachment issues striving to understand how the place she explores is changing her, and questioning the nature of her mission and the people behind it. ( )

It took a while to get into, but I think I liked it more than the first ( )

An interesting concept. However, the characters seem to be consistently held at arms length, even to the point names are not given. There are timesI know I ought to feel… something… for the main character and it falls flat. I don't feel any need to continue with the series. ( )

A strong plot similarity to Lovecraft's "Mountains of Madness", in that the protagonist is a scientist describing an expedition into the unknown, where strange and incomprehensible horrors dwell that threaten with the possibility of swamping our world. It's an inherently interesting plot to me, and this book delivers well enough to recommend, though I have some reservations.

Rather than let the horror continuously build, VanderMeer keeps cutting into the action with flashbacks to the protagonist's earlier life, seeking to give us a better, more literary understanding of her, but her character just pales in interest compared to what's going on in Area X. Her thoughts also sometimes follow an incomprehensible logic, jumping from Point A to Point D with no evident clue of how D follows from A.

As the first in a trilogy, a lot remains unclear and vague after finishing the book, which is fine with me as I intend to read the next installment. The world building here is worth keeping on with to see how the nature of Area X develops and is revealed. And I'm eager to know, is the horror here something ancient, as in Lovecraft, or is it something newly created due to man's exploitation of the natural environment? Or a combination, like Godzilla? ( )