Is it Tuesday Again?
Four star review of Annihilation
by Jeff VanderMeer
I
recently finished this book and I’m still not sure what I read.
Some of the images are stuck in my mind, still I wonder what was real
and what the biologist imagined in her mind, possibly because she
inhaled spores in the first exploration of the tower. Or maybe those
made her immune to the hypnotic control the psychologist had on the
members of the expedition. Eleven expeditions, or perhaps many more,
were sent to Area X before to explore it. We never really know what
happened to the others, but the narrator found some signs of them,
including journals, when she explored the lighthouse. Her husband’s
journal (he was a member of the eleventh expedition) was among them.
When he returned home he was different and soon after died of cancer.
Her explorations of what she alone called the tower could give you
the creeps. Again, who knows what’s real in her descriptions? Since
this is the first book in a trilogy, we don’t know what else she’ll
discover in her further explorations. I don’t know whether I love
this book or not, but it’s brilliantly plotted.