Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
Overall Review: Annihilation is a horrifying yet thought-provoking book about isolation and self-discovery. It’s a well-written story with thoughtful world-building that keeps you turning the page.
Synopsis: Five scientists are sent on a mission into the government-controlled “Area X” to study its mysterious properties. The story follows the Biologist as she explores the abandoned landscape and reflects on her life leading up to the mission. Together, the scientists find inexplicable phenomena and uncover secrets about Area X.
I began Annihilation with the idea that it was going to be a sci-fi book like others I’ve read. While some aspects of the book were familiar, it was also a lot spookier than I expected. I often read after work but this was creepy enough that I didn’t want to read it while it was dark out. I’ve never had a book creep me out like this (I don’t read a lot of horror), so it was a new experience for me.
Annihilation is scary in two ways. First of all, the setting is very unnerving. There’s an air of mystery and foreboding throughout the book, and very early on the book sets up the premise that something is not right - we learn that all other prior missions have failed and often resulted in gruesome death.
The second way the book is scary is in its philosophy of aloneness and its contemplation of death. While there are parts of the book where the Biologist is alone, for the most part, she’s accompanied by her fellow scientists. Despite this, the reader gets the sense that the Biologist is existentially alone, even if others are present. Early on there are divisions between the characters, and not merely on differences of perspective. The characters physically see different things in the environment and have entirely foreign ways of thinking from one another. The book also further alienates them by having all characters refer to each other by their titles (like “Biologist” and “Linguist”) rather than their names. This all leads to the reader feeling the Biologist is completely isolated.
Another theme present throughout the book is death, although not always death in a physical sense. While the book has its fair share of people dying (getting shot, falling off cliffs, etc.), the Biologist also frequently reflects on death in a figurative sense. The most obvious example of a figurative death is her husband, who comes back from his mission alive but a completely different person. The Biologist herself refers to him as “dying despite not being dead”. Another abstract death that struck me was the swimming pool where the Biologist grew up, teeming with life but changed after she left for graduate school. Examples of things or people dying in an abstract sense come up throughout the story.
One thing I liked about the book was that it felt very well thought-out from start to end. Throughout the story, you get a sense of an eldritch horror permeating through Area X but one that ties into the frequent flashbacks we get from the Biologist. What we see through the Biologist’s senses seems incomprehensible to the reader, but there’s also a sense of meaning hidden behind it all that eludes us. A great example of this is the chilling find of hundreds of journals from past expeditions in a pile in the lighthouse, leading the Biologist to realize that the agency has lied to her and that there were many more expeditions than she realized. All of these little details contribute to the overall horror of the book and tie together really well.
That sense of mystery and horror kept me reading more despite the scariness of the book, but towards the end I felt that VanderMeer went a bit too far in revealing the inner structure of Area X. At the end of the book, the Biologist has the realization that the Crawler is the lighthouse keeper from the photos she found. While some readers will be satisfied knowing all the details about Area X, I think this reveal is a bit too heavy-handed and degrades the horrific mystery of the story.
Overall, I would highly recommend Annihilation but not for those easily scared, and I also recommend reading it in the daytime when it’s light out. The sense of isolation (both physical and psychological) that permeates the book manages to be horrifying yet also serene, and the story is compelling from start to finish. It forces the reader to contemplate isolation in their own life and to reflect on their connection to the world around them. The corresponding movie starring Natalie Portman is also excellent and is a great contrast to the book since it has a somewhat different plot while capturing a similar sense of isolation and self-discovery that makes the book great. I will say that when re-watching the movie after reading the book, I found the book to be much more satisfying and thoughtful so I recommend picking it up first.