Another month has passed, and I’m here to talk about books.
There are a lot of them. Really, a shocking number of books. They keep coming out!
Despite my best efforts, I haven’t read them all. But I promise, I’m working on it. Let’s talk about the ones I finished in May.
Where possible, I include Bookshop and Libro affiliate links instead of Amazon. If any of these books pique your interest, please use those links. I’ll get a small commission, and you’ll support real book stores instead of luxury ice for billionaires’ cocktails.
Annihilation (Southern Reach – Book 1)
By Jeff VanderMeer
As I mentioned last time, I’ve been getting into audio books as a way to read more. The three-books-in-one Area X collection was my second audio book purchase, and it was a fantastic choice. I’ve loved Jeff VanderMeer’s work for years, but between the Borne books and the Southern Reach series, he might just be my favorite author.
Annihilation begins with a simple premise: there is a place somewhere in the coastal US where something supernatural or alien has taken root. (The exact location never entirely clear, but it’s in the South, and VanderMeer himself lives near Tallahassee.) This place, dubbed Area X, is surrounded by an invisible barrier that vanishes any living creature that crosses it. The only entrance or exit is a gate of scintillating light.
The government has surrounded Area X with a military blockade, created a cover story of “ecological catastrophe,” and created a clandestine organization called The Southern Reach to study it, because that’s the sort of thing governments do.
We enter into this situation with The Biologist, one of four members of the 12th expedition sent into Area X. Her fellows are The Anthropologist, The Surveyor, and The Psychologist, who also serves as the expedition’s leader. They are discouraged from knowing anything about each other, even their real names.
Within Area X they encounter mysteries and monsters, and The Biologist soon has reason to believe that the Southern Reach knows more about Area X than it has told the members of the expedition.
Annihilation was shorter than I was expecting, only six hours as an audio book, but it’s packed full. Each chapter provides new revelations about the situation or unfurls new backstory about the characters in a way that kept me constantly revising my understanding of what was going on. And even so, the central mystery of “what is Area X” kept the story moving forward.
It’s interesting to see themes from VanderMeer’s other books present here. His stories are off the map. Deep in the unknown. Places that feel alien, and characters that often feel alien despite being human.
The man is obsessed with fungus as a vector for our fear of parasites, a foreign body that brings death—or transformation. Mushrooms and mushroom-people figured heavily in the Ambergris stories. He also clearly has a deep love for ecology and nature, especially coasts and tidal pools. The Biologist, with her aquatic obsessions, mirrors the protagonists of Dead Astronauts, another book by VanderMeer.
This feels like cosmic horror, but subtle. It says the world is unknown, and unknowable. Inscrutable. It reminded me of House of Leaves. You can’t trust the laws of physics, the constancy of space and time. There is a feeling of Area X holding forbidden knowledge that will destroy anyone who comes across it.
Authority (Southern Reach – Book 2)
By Jeff VanderMeer
As soon as I finished Annihilation, I jumped into Authority. I was hooked.
It starts with a twist that immediately grabbed me. One of the characters in the first book wasn’t who they pretended to be. Everything I knew from the 12th expedition was turned on its head.
This time, we follow the brand new director of the Southern Reach, a man who insists on being called Control— though it quickly becomes apparent that very little is actually in his control.
He has been brought in to replace the old director and “fix” the Southern Reach. Central, a shady government agency that may or may not be the CIA, is concerned that the organization is rotten—somehow infected or sympathetic toward Area X despite the directive to contain and control. They have become too close to the problem.
Control arrives just in time for the debriefing of the survivors of the 12th expedition, despite at least some of them appearing to be dead at the end of the first book. One of these survivors is The Biologist.
Beyond the weirdness of Area X and secret government organizations vying for power, Control has to contend with all the difficulties of being the outsider brought into a dysfunctional organization he doesn’t understand, to be in charge of people who don’t trust him and quietly resist any significant change.
As is often the case with clandestine organizations, Control soon realizes that he really doesn’t know everything going on at the Southern Reach or at Central. He is being manipulated from all sides while becoming more and more obsessed with the mysteries of Area X.
Even worse, the past has been purposely muddied. There have been far more than twelve expeditions, but the numbers are reused, the members lied to. The facts are hidden from all but the highest-ranking officials. The previous director’s notes indicate that Area X is expanding, though there seems to be no outward sign of it.
Control cannot even trust himself. The Southern Reach uses hypnosis to condition and control the members of the expeditions, and it seems increasingly likely that Central uses the same conditioning on its own people. Can he be sure of what he knows? Can he be sure of who he is?
The first book ended in personal catastrophe: death and failure for the 12th expedition. The second book ends in what appears to be a global catastrophe as Area X suddenly and rapidly expands, not only extending its border, but surpassing it, spreading its seeds out into the wider world. Control flees, but like everyone who spends time at the Southern Reach, he can’t really get away, and he finds himself returning to Area X.
If Authority has a hypothesis, it’s that nobody is truly in control. You can take a name or a title, you can construct borders to protect yourself, you can perform as much rigorous, scientific categorization and classification as you’d like. It won’t stand up in the face of the unknown.
Acceptance (Southern Reach – Book 3)
By Jeff VanderMeer
Annihilation and Authority mostly follow linear narratives, even if information about the past is revealed in bits and pieces throughout. Acceptance is decidedly non-linear. It intermingles three stories.
The time before the border fell over the Forgotten Coast is told by Saul Evans, lighthouse keeper and former preacher. He encounters the Séance and Science (S&S) Brigade, a weird collection of locals who investigate strange phenomena from scientific and paranormal angles, and somehow seem to be intimately involved in the eventual advent of Area X.
The time after Area X appeared is told by the director of the Southern Reach who preceded Control. She reveals the origin of the organization, some of its ties to Central, and what really happened across the many expeditions and years of investigation.
The present, then, is told by Control and The Biologist—or at least something that looks like The Biologist, but calls herself Ghost Bird. Control is drawn to Area X, repulsed by it, obsessed with it and terrified of it. Ghost Bird has a connection to Area X that she does not completely understand. They both suspect she is the only one who can stop it.
In the aftermath of the border’s expansion, the pair trek through the pristine wilderness of Area X, to the island off the coast. They meet an old friend and formulate a desperate plan to return to the buried tower that forms the heart of Area X, to stop the threat it poses to all of humanity.
The trilogy is built as something of a mystery box, with the ultimate question for readers being the cause and purpose of Area X. Is it supernatural? Alien?
I’d argue that VanderMeer is better than most at constructing this kind of mysterious narrative while still giving up big, exciting revelations along the way, but there are plenty of questions left to answer going into book three. To his credit, most of the questions are answered by the last page.
There are revelations about the origin and purpose of Area X, but they are oblique. Some readers will be satisfied with that, either constructing their own head-canon from the pieces, or accepting that there will always be a little uncertainty. On the other hand, I’ve seen plenty of folks online still looking for more clarity.
Personally, I came well-prepared, having read another VanderMeer series first — the not-quite trilogy of Borne, The Strange Bird, and Dead Astronauts. Those books are delightful explorations of language in a post-apocalyptic future, but they’re challenging and they leave a lot of questions unresolved. In comparison, the Southern Reach trilogy is practically overflowing with answers.
And luckily, there may be more. After ten years away, VanderMeer recently released a fourth Southern Reach book: Absolution. (Of course it has to start with A.)
What I’m Reading in June
When do you know you’re reading too many books at the same time? Right now, I’m halfway through an audio book that I listen to in the car. I’m also halfway through an e-book that I can read in spare minutes on my phone. And I’m halfway through a physical book that I keep next to my bed.
Next month, expect to hear about some sci-fi short stories, one of the most award-winning fantasy authors of recent times, and yet more from Jeff VanderMeer.
I’m also considering a change in format. I originally started these Read Reports as a way to combine my thoughts on a few books into a single post, but now I’m finding that it ends up being an awfully long post when I write about a month’s-worth of books.
So let me know in the comments — do you like these consolidated Read Reports, or would you rather have bite-sized posts on one book at a time?
Words Deferred 
I too fear fungi and their spores, invisible ranged attacks? Unfair! I would vote for bite-sized posts on one book at a time
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I don’t find shrooms especially worrying, but there is definitely some deep-seated lizard-brain fear of parasites in general that has probably served us well over human evolution.
I have to assume Jeff VanderMeer devotes at least an hour of every day to thinking about mushrooms, based on how often they pop up in his stories.
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