Annihilation

By: Jeff VanderMeer

Narrated by: Carolyn McCormick

’A contemporary masterpiece’ Guardian

THE FIRST VOLUME OF THE EXTRAORDINARY SOUTHERN REACH TRILOGY – NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY ALEX GARLAND (EX MACHINA) AND STARRING NATALIE PORTMAN AND OSCAR ISAAC

For thirty years, Area X has remained mysterious and remote behind its intangible border – an environmental disaster zone, though to all appearances an abundant wilderness.

The Southern Reach, a secretive government agency, has sent eleven expeditions to investigate Area X. One has ended in mass suicide, another in a hail of gunfire, the eleventh in a fatal cancer epidemic.

Now four women embark on the twelfth expedition into the unknown.

Critic reviews

Praise for ANNIHILATION and the SOUTHERN REACH TRILOGY:

‘I’m loving the Southern Reach Trilogy … Creepy and fascinating’ Stephen King

‘Hauntingly weird and brilliantly new … These are contemporary masterpieces and career-defining novels’ Adam Robert, Books of the Year, Guardian

‘This trilogy is a modern mycological masterpiece … Remarkable … Tense, eerie and unsettling … VanderMeer writes much better prose than Poe ever did … This is genuinely potent and dream-haunting writing. VanderMeer has arrived’ Guardian

‘A teeming science fiction that draws on Conrad and Lovecraft alike … Annihilation shows signs of being the novel that will allow VanderMeer to break through to a new and larger audience’ Sunday Telegraph

‘A lasting monument to the uncanny … You find yourself afraid to turn the page’ Guardian

‘VanderMeer’s novel is a psycho-geographical tour de force, channelling Ballard and Lovecraft to instil the reader with a deep, delicious unease’ Financial Times

‘What a haunting book this is, lodging deep in the memory in similar fashion to otherworldly classics such as David Lindsay’s A Voyage To Arcturus … Annihilation is so disquietingly strange as to defy summarisation. Read it’ Daily Mail

‘Astonishing, frightening, spectacular … I hope the trilogy will come to be seen not only as the instant sci-fi classic it is, but also as Literature’ New Statesman

‘Immersive, insightful and often deeply bloody creepy, this is a startlingly good novel … A major work’ ***** SFX Magazine

‘A tense and chilling psychological thriller about an unravelling expedition and the strangeness within us. A little Kubrick, a lot of Lovecraft, the novel builds with an unbearable tension and claustrophobic dread that lingers long afterwards. I loved it’ Lauren Beukes

‘Original and beautiful, maddening and magnificent’ Warren Ellis

Disturbing

A disturbing read. A touch of Stephen King mixed with a fresh unsetling story. The narrator stumbles on few words but does a good work otherwise.

perfect for lovers of sci-fi/lovecraftian horror

loved it from start to finish. one might find it a tedious read (long descriptors and flashbacks) but it is the first book in the series and presents itself as an adequate world builder. my favourite part was the narrator's encounter with (from a literary standpoint) what could be described as the story's "antagonist" - literary surrealism at its finest. it doesn't answer all the questions you would encounter during the reading, but it does give you nuggets to come up with your own theories.

tedious and scattered

overcomplicated, scattered logic and thought profession made it hard to follow and siimultaneously it was tedious and not enticing. the speaker was dry but this may be due to a very dry narrative
at no point in the story did I have a clue what was happening and what was revealed was spoonfed to the audience

Creepy and thought provoking

It was very unnerving. The protagonist isn't a very likeable character. But that is intentional. Open-ended and thought provoking. Read of you like forming your own conclusions.

Soulless, but good.

Interesting story. The Biologist is probably the least likeable character ever created. The narration fits her, although a lot of times felt like listening to an artificial voice, like Alexa or the Google Translate voice. Also, she pronounces the word "detail" in such a wierd way (-dettaele-) that it will haunt me for my life.