What's so great about Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 มี.ค. 2023
- Annihilation is the first novel in Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, and it also inspired the film of the same name (directed by Alex Garland). I took a long time to get to this trippy sci-fi novel and it was worth the wait. Here's why.
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![The Southern Reach plot + timeline explained [SPOILER ALERT]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/L7X9j4krRQ4/mqdefault.jpg)
![The Southern Reach plot + timeline explained [SPOILER ALERT]](/img/tr.png)
I read this after watching the movie, and as a biologist loved the enviro/eco aspects of Jeff Vandermeer’s writing. I now have read a few more of his books and those themes do carry through his work.
That’s great to know, thanks!
When you read his books you can almost already tell that his Twitter is like 75% wildlife cam footage & i love it
Don't worry, the mystery never gets solved!
I loved 'Annihilation' because it felt like experiencing a Lovecraft story from the POV of a character who responds to strange life forms with "ooh, interesting!" not "auugh, how horrifying!".
And the later books only make this feel more like a combined tribute and middle finger to Lovecraft's works, given that we find out that all the people who survive the longest in and around Area X are members of one or more marginalized groups: the gay lighthouse keeper, the member of the Southern Reach who not only grew up in the area but is descended from its indigenous people (hence her drive to find out what's happening to the land), etc.
My hypothesis is that it is basically because: "Oh, there's a pervasive force here that wants to kill or assimilate me? Well, that's basically a Tuesday, I guess." As in, these are people who already have practice maintaining a reasonably stable identity in a hostile world.
Also, the ultimate fate of the Biologist is AMAZING. Very strange - but arguably a happy ending for HER.
Yes yes yes yes!! I think you are still left with a lot of mystery after reading the 2nd/3rd books. I would recommend either stopping at the first, a masterpiece in its own right, or reading all three. This book and series deserve more attention!! 👏 👏 👏
Truly a favorite book of all time! I’m about to do a re-read. I read Annihilation three years ago at the start of lockdown and it completely changed how I perceived such a strange time. I was able to go on walks and seeing the transformation from winter to spring occur in those first few weeks of lockdown of hearing birds and seeing nature uninterrupted by humanity was astonishing. I felt so much more connected to this novel seeing humanity take a step back and seeing what nature could do if we would just let it. I think this novel is so special because it allows the reader to draw multiple conclusions and there is no right or wrong way to read it. This was a fantastic video!💛
The 'tumbling and falling' moment for me was almost at the start, when they notice 'fresh ink' and it is revealed that the creature writes the text as they go down. Other books in the trilogy followed and left me thinking and puzzling the whole story(s) together. Really glad to see a review of it on this channel!
The scene as she decides to see what’s at the bottom of the tower horrifies me, and the other scene towards the end with all the journals makes me stop for a time. I can’t read it all straight through. I go a bit paranoid and filled with fear, maybe fear of the inevitable annihilation that the book sways to. I rather not be be atomically torn apart until my body partially becomes fragmented into a fungi growing on a wall that is filled with dread and paranoia, and lives growing around the very words that were in my mind near the moment of my Annihilation into something…else.
Okay this has been on my TBR for years and I think you've finally convinced me to bump it up to the top! ^_^
Hooray!
I have the same hesitation as you about reading the other books! I enjoyed the first one so much for what it was on its own that I didn't want the mystery tarnished for me. One of my favorite types of sci-fi is sci-fi that contends with the natural world and how nature truly, does not care about you: it simply is. I'm so glad you enjoyed this book.
Don't worry, the mystery never gets solved! The tone and POV of the next two books are different, but it continues to be just as weird, and book 3 takes us back into Area X itself.
the rest of the southern reach trilogy does drag on a little but its a different sort of good than the first novel. Though the mystery remains.
It's hard to nail down an exact meaning, but I feel like there's something in this series about how human language and concepts territorialize the world? And Area X, indescribable by mere words, *de*territorializes things-it recognizes their "oneness", the lack of separation between them. The lack of _borders_ betweenthem. It doesn't matter whether it's people or animals or technology or land or words or the past or anything else; it gets at some deeper physical truth about the commonality of things and manifests that physically.
I think maybe it's also about identity, and the movie gets this pretty right: our interactions with the world change us and change the world. Does that mean we're not us anymore? Yes and no; it's more complex than that. "Are you Kane?" "Are you Lena?" "I don't think so." But what's the difference between a doppelgänger and an original who's seen things that might have fully changed their understanding of the world?
I really enjoy your interpretation too; I think that that's a really fantastic way of seeing it. There's *something* that's reshaping the world out of its constituent parts, but it's literally beyond our ability to comprehend, or at least our ability to dissect and study with the logic available to us as humans. We can't understand how Area X can seemingly transform people, combine the written word with life, and so on-but like you suggest, could a dog understand how a little liquid crystal made of something we dug out of the earth changes its orientation when we apply an electrical current and forms words on a screen that we then read, which then change us? The dog's idea of reality that it imposes upon the world is based on the world, yes, but it decidedly *not the world*.
I'll also echo what others are saying: Authority and Acceptance do not answer the mystery. They provide background; they provide some context. But primarily, those serve to deepen the mysteries, and they show you some larger ideas and connections that arise quite naturally from Annihilation.
Great review, Willow. My friend randomly gifted this to me for my birthday a couple of years ago and I loved it. Just in general, I really like your interpretation of looking at Lovecraftian stories from the perspective of an animal. I often look at a dog and think 'you have absolutely no idea what's going on in the world do you?'. I look at animals like squirrels and birds who have adapted to our world and think about how confusing our man made world could be to them. A pigeon wandering through the automatic doors following a customer into into Greggs, a cat that nearly gets his by a car, a sparrow that flies into a window, these must all be terrifying and completely incomprehensible situations for them and that's how Lovecraftian fiction strives to make us feel.
You hit on exactly how this book made me feel, yes! And great examples of life through the eyes of instinct-led animals in a humanised world. Amazing
I love your interpretation. Annihilation is one of the best reading experiences I've ever had. I read it because I heard Alex Garland was making the film and I'm a big Garland fan. Ultimately the film couldn't compete with what my imagination came up with.
I love the metaphor of 'the tower', she can't help of thinking of it a structure that is being built upward, instead of a journey spiralling down into our own world away from the surface, or away the environment/ecology/reality.
With the organic writing on the wall it mirrors her profession of biology, chasing after something that is ultimately unknowable without the submission of the self, annihilation. There is a futility of all the collected human body of knowledge, described metaphorically as a rotting pile in a dark hole with the journals.
Just my take :)
Read all three. The mystery only gets more intense as you continue.
Ok
I love Jeff's books. I have them all, i'm in the process of reading them all.❤
I’m obsessed with your frank honesty 🧡🧡🧡
Aw thanks :)
Great review as always and you've made me bring this to read at work today... Very happy to hear that it's okay to read the first book without immediately going to the sequels!
I read this last year and absolutely loved it for what it was. What an existential trip that stayed with me for months after I read it.
I was lucky to have been able to take a science fiction course as a literature credit for my degree, and it was the best course. I have always loved sci-fi, but that class gave me an appreciation on a higher level.
The mystery is made more beautiful by the full sight of its messiness. Your POV character for the next 2 is as much named for his task as the Biologist, but just like her true knowledge of the biology of area x is impossible, being Control is a flawed goal. You cannot stop at book 2 tbh, I do not know how folks got through the time between releases. Personally I think the full trilogy grows your interpretation even as details and additional themes weave in. The biologist's story felt enriched by Control's encounter with it while still being unto itself. Reading all 3 ruins that garbage movie but not the first book.
Seconding the Setterfield love too!
Wait I love your interpretation of the meaning of the book! It reminds me of books I read as a kid about intelligent mice surviving and trying to figure out a dangerous human world
Coming in here to agree WHOLEHEARTEDLY. I binged the series in less than a week lol
I only recently read this and thought it was great. I loved your interpretation!
hahahahah You made me laugh with your rant!!!! Thank you for your reviews. You've been leading me into picking new books!
I read that last month, I will be getting to the other two.
If you want to go back to that books roots check out "Roadside Picnic" by the Strugatskii Brothers.
Some other related recs are "Square³" by Mira Grant and (in the unlikely event you haven't read) "I Who Have Never Known Men" by Jacqueline Harpman
Roadside Picnic was also made into a film called Stalker which has a very interesting history filmed near Chernobyl
Yea I want to read roadside picnic
YAAAAAYYYYYYY THIS IS ONE OF MY FAVES I'M SO GLAD YOU READ IT
Wow! You are my favorite book reviewer and I'm so happy that you enjoyed Annihilation! This was one of my favorite books as a teenager and I have read almost every book of Vandermeer's- I would particularly reccomend Borne, in addition to the other two books in this trilogy which I remember being very good (I really liked the second one!). This review was so fun, it reminded me why I loved Annihilation and you've made me want to re-read it now. Vandermeer definitely intended this book to be climate fiction, I think climate is a recurring theme in his writing. Dead Astronauts, in particular, is very clearly a book about the climate. Again, so cool to see you enjoying this book and I hope that you review other Vandermeer books in the future!
This sounds really intense, yet super fun. I feel bad for putting it off even though I really enjoyed Borne. Watching this review has made me want to read it asap.
You might like Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton. That is a zombie apocalypse novel, but told through the pov of a crow and occasionally other animals. I know I've mentioned that book in other comments but I just love it so much. 😅
God damn, that sounds like a fun kind of novel! Thanks!
I felt the same way about the mystery. In fact, it took very little time in this book for me to hope that the mystery wasn't solved at all. I felt like my approach to the story was almost to treat it like a fairytale in some ways.
(SPOILERS)
I found the novel was very unsettling until the biologist got to her husband's journal. In many ways, it seemed that the protag's marriage with her husband was an unknowable landscape *until* she could read things from his perspective. Like she didn't realize he went to Area X to understand her better. And at this point, it feels like all the pieces are in place, that the protagonist understands how she now fits into Area X and that she has the capacity to survive here. Once I had no real fear for her survival, the environment just seemed like nature again. It felt like the resolution she has with her relationship with her husband is all the resolution the book needs, so I'm a little confused as to why some people want MORE resolution than this. But people want different things out of their stories. 🤷
ALSO, after that recontextualization hits, the title felt like an attempt attack on my brain and it was hiding in plain sight the whole time. Surprising. And I want to tell people about it! But I don't want to ruin it by drawing attention to it!!
That's such a great observation. From the jump, I was taken by the surreal unknowability of Area X. It felt like some great violation of what was supposed to be natural.
But come to find out later on, this new change could be seen as just extending the previous natural order to higher frontiers. I don't know. I found myself halfway agreeing with the biologist when she suggested maybe the world should be this way. Regardless, the way it all played out, I was more than satisfied with how it ended. Really enjoyed this book.
Gonna start this right now!❤
watching your tea swirl around in your cup and slowly disappear -- anyway! loved this discussion. i did indeed tear through the trilogy and then realised barely any of it had fully made sense in me except that it was nuts and i loved it. i've since re-read the trilogy many times and not only are there no answers, that is kind of the beautiful and terrible thing about area x, the southern reach, and the characters. i could talk for hours about this universe. mr vandermeer was on pain meds and seeing news about an oil spill when he wrote the first book and yeah, i can respect that
I loved listening to your thoughts! Very interesting interpretation 👍
Loved the book, and loved your review even more! You always have a new viewpoint about the whole book that makes me sit for the next many minutes and think about it! I wonder, have you made or mentioned the next book (or the last book) in some of the videos, or did you not got to it yet? I am planning to read it next and love to watch your videos right after to have more opinions and insights :D
Oooooh the mystery continues. Also, he wrote an amazing novella called The Strange Bird that I absolutely adored if you’re interested.
9:54 Anthropocentric (thinking of humans as the center of everything)
Thanks
I'm currently reading the second one and came here after watching the movie for the second time. I loved the movie when it came out, and after reading the book I think is still great although it ends up being quite different from the book. Now, I thought the book was good, not too long, not to pretentious, the plot is ok and works great with the writing; the second book has me sucked into it, and it definitely improves on what I felt wasn't working on the first one. It did make me sad to read so many negative reviews on Good Reads :(
Is the UK cover meant to evoke the cover of that one Extinction Rebellion book? And if so, will they change the cover for subsequent printings because *gestures broadly*?
idk
Omg. Loved annihilation! I read it back in Fitbit challenge days. I started the audiobook and jogged around my kitchen island enthralled the entire time and then couldn’t walk for for like 2.5 days cause my feet were KILLING ME! But I did win that challenge… lol! I kept grabbing my phone to text my bff that was reading it at the same time and all caps’ ing at him “omg why aren’t we biologists?! I need a nearly empty pool to gaze into for hours!
I need to observe life!” Lol
Yer reasons for not wanting to read book2 is exactly why I haven’t picked it up. I love the open ended mystery. Like… I feel like I have just as many, if not more, questions at the end of the book compared to the beginning. And I love letting my mind just spazzily wander and wonder.
My tumbling falling moment in this book is when the biologist interacts with the crawler. Her description is frantic, analytical and contradictory as her human mind fails to comprehend what is happening. I read it so fast but I had to stop and process and go back so many times, even though I found it deeply unsettling.
The 2nd and 3rd books are very different from the first, as well as one another. And nothing really ever gets explained, more weird things happen, and we never really find out why or how everything works.
Yeah sometimes the revolution of the mystery ruins everything...meaningful kough X-files...
I’ve never watched X-Files 😳
@@WillowTalksBooks Wow, really? The beginning was great but than it kept going and going and the magic faded away. How a bout a short-lived but so unique "Pushing the daisies" I loved it.
Don't watch past the second episode of season 6 and you're good. 😎
0:09 😂
Do you think the Crawler could be a God?
Great book. I also loved the rest of the series. Book 2 has the single most horrifying scene I have ever read. I hope you enjoy!
Enjoyed Men
K
@@WillowTalksBooks referring to the sex
Man, pretentiousness of that review aside, I hope she's right - Annihilation's such a mind blowing, beautifully dense mirror that I can't see but how it won't end up being an all-timer, genre or not. I think every single review, critique, or discussion takes it apart in a slightly different way - the unknowability of nature, the ephemeral being of meaning, of cancer, of the viewpoint of animals, like every one I hear (and very much yours too) is different, and allllllll of them fit and work and are a fantastic lens to come at this book from. I don't think there's a "right" answer at all, and I think that's the best part, it's like a personal cipher if anything.
short follow up - i don't know if i suggest reading the next two, but I *do* suggest reading Borne, which I just finished, which is less "confusing" but no less wonderful.
This pretentious critic is a she
@@WillowTalksBooks oh shoot, apologies
humanity isnt destroying the land, colonialism is.
Yes
Man, lots of people don’t think of lovecraft as a racist first, and a novelist second. Like the facts have been out forever, and people have enjoyed his works for over a hundred years
Ok?
ooooo you're a dude. art is longer art when it is political.
What the actual hell is wrong with you?
Art is art, regardless of *your* personal politics. This is on you.