Annihilation: A Novel (Southern Reach Trilogy)

Annihilation, the first of the Southern Reach Trilogy books by Jeff VanderMeer, is as bizarre an experience as I've had with a book.  To begin with, it really is an experience, rather than a story.  VanderMeer's language is thick and luscious, drawing you in like a moth to the flame.  I found myself reading, and re-reading sentences, just to taste them again.  His words have texture.  I experienced this book, I did not just read it.

Annihilation centers around the 12th expedition into Area X.  Our protagonist is known only as The Biologist, and she is accompanied by The Psychologist, The Surveyor, The Anthropologist,  and The Linguist.  They are sent into Area X to explore and discover ... whatever there is to be explored and discovered.  From base camp they can see the landscape, which features two distinguishing landmarks: the lighthouse, and the tower (that somehow goes down).  The explorations of these landmarks, full of the odd and creepy and the sometimes scary, are the basic story/plot of this experience, though we spend a lot of time in The Biologists past, via flashbacks and memory sequences.

About halfway through Annihilation, I realized that I had no idea what was going on.  I went back to skim a few paragraphs, trying to determine whether I had become so caught up in the language that I wasn't paying attention to the actual words, but it soon became evident that this story didn't really have a lot of story.  Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of interesting things that happen throughout the book, but there are not a lot of explanations to go along with them. Now, this is the first book in a series (the following two books will both be published in 2014), so how the story may play itself out in the subsequent volumes, only VanderMeer knows, but at the end of this experience I was left with little understanding of what had just happened.  I had become familiar with the inner workings of The Biologist and how she sees the world around her, but at this point the world around her has no anchor: is it a dream world, an alternate reality, another planet, something happening on our own planet?  VanderMeer has crafted this adventure in such a way that the reader does not know how the expedition arrived at Area X (nor do the members of the expedition), nor how the members of previous expeditions get back home.  There is much talk of "the border" throughout this book, but Area X seems to have none.  

All in all, it was a pleasant experience, the language was nice and juicy and the imagery crisp and imaginative.  There are no answers in this, the first of the series.  Having read it, I wish that I would have waited until all three books had been published (the third book is scheduled to hit the shelves in September, 2014), if only to be able to jump right into the next one to search for answers, or reasons, or at the very least, an explanation.

If you are a fan of language and laughter, and don't mind being a little lost in the plot for a while, I would recommend My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist by Mark Leynor.  Hilarity ensues.