It is hard to find the right words to describe these novels. Over the course of about 5 days, I read all three books of the trilogy. Until, that is, I read the first description of the upcoming movie version of the first book, which instantly intrigued me.

One of his earlier novels, Finch, is on a very short list of “best books I’ve ever read.” I suspect that I simply read the name “Southern Reach” and it somehow evoked images of the Southern United States in a weird way that didn’t appeal to me, and I just never got around to looking at the books. The concepts are not without merit, and much promise is hinted at but, ultimately, the series fails to deliver.I’m not entirely sure why it took me three years to read Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy.

Of all the questions that are posed or develop over the course of the three books few, if any, are answered coherently. The intent of the author seems to be to describe humanity's encounter with another culture so alien that we can't communicate with it or understand its intent/purpose, and while that prospect is intellectually plausible, given the myriad ways in which life could evolve in another time/place, the lack of meaningful interaction between the characters and whatever that Other is, deprives the story of interest and prevents it from coming to any comprehensible conclusion. Characterizations are, at best, impersonal, and the writing sporadically clear, then muddled. This review is for the entire series, as I read, and cautiously enjoyed, the first two books, in great part with anticipation for revelations and a conclusion(s) in the final novel. They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers-they discover a massive topographic anomaly and life forms that surpass understanding-but it's the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself. The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist a surveyor a psychologist, the de facto leader and our narrator, a biologist. In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition.

The members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within weeks, all had died of cancer. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape the second expedition ended in mass suicide, the third expedition in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades.

Jeff vandermeer trilogy