Annihilation – the first of a trilogy – is the tale of an expedition into the mysterious “Area X” . Something happened to Area X a while back – never explained, very vague. Exactly what or when and what’s wrong with “Area X” is never explained – at least not in this book. Perhaps in the other parts of the trilogy…
Eleven expeditions have gone in to investigate Area X and …really no one has come back out or if they have, they haven’t lived for long. So our protagonist goes in with the 12th expedition because…her husband was in the 11th. He came back, changed…and didn’t live for long. If in fact it was he who came back.
The four members of the expedition are all women, who are known only by their profession: the psychologist, the anthropologist, the surveyor and the narrator of the story, the biologist. They go in, they see strange and weird/amazing things, people die, terrible things happen, and our hero attempts to resolve them. Sort of. Rather grim and depressing. Rather like a bad dream.
I purchased the book because the premise was intriguing, the author is very good (someone I have read and liked previously) but I personally found the book very tedious going. Written from the protagonists point of view, I found it hard to feel much for her. The novel failed to draw me in – I finished it because I felt I must – because I like the author – and I hoped it was going to get better. I found nothing interesting or uplifting about her life… and frankly ceased caring about her or what happened to her.
However others have written superlative reviews on this book so perhaps I simply wasn’t in the right mood.
I too, was not in the right mood for this… and never got there. There was so little overall context or purpose for the Expedition or the Biologist’s experience that I couldn’t, as you very well say, bring myself to feel much for her. Did you read the other two novels in the series? And what of Vandermeer have you enjoyed?