Annihilation

In Annihilation, the first part of an imaginatively marketed and beautifully produced trilogy,
the novelist and publishing entrepreneur Jeff VanderMeer sets out to create a lasting
monument to the uncanny by revisiting a pitiless focus on physical and psychological detail.
An alien invasion site. Assimilative spores. An unfurling of promiscuous alien biology.
On the first page we are told that the women's enterprise is doomed. Their equipment is
either nonsensical, or inadequate, or antiquated. Their training and instructions are
sometimes vague, sometimes misleading. They cannot recall the moment they crossed into
Area X, and they have no clear idea how they will leave. They cannot agree about what they
are seeing and three of them are all the while half-aware of being hypnotically manipulated
by their team leader.
You enter Area X with them, thinking the uncanny must lurk in some particular spot. The
lighthouse? The reed beds? The ‘tower’? Very quickly you spot your mistake, as a subtle,
well-engineered wrongness turns up in every character, every deed, every observation until,
at last, you find yourself afraid to turn the page.
Personally I really likes this book and its abstract story line where you don’t know what is
going to happen to the Women’s Enterprise. I rate this book a 9/10 as I don’t think the
language is that easy but it is bearable. So I would say only read this if you are a good reader
or are at least confident. Overall I would read this book again and I recommend it too
anyone who likes mystery, thrillers and/or abstract story lines causing confusion and
excitement from paper instead of a screen. This book is defiantly good for anyone who
doesn’t like books as I don’t like reading myself, and I find this a very good book that kept
me up WANTING to read it.