Areas of Broken Reality
Review: Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
This short novel makes no sense. Which is good, because it’s clearly not meant to…and there’s likely an unreliable narrator involved.
A mysterious Area X where reality doesn’t play by the rules…and, above all, biology doesn’t…has formed. And our narrator is part of the latest of many expeditions to enter it.
Supposedly the last one came back.
Supposedly.
This book is…the best way I can describe it, in my impression, is cosmic horror, but cosmic horror on a smaller and more intimate scale. There is something decidedly Lovecraftian going on here, but the sense is not of great beasts beyond…but of our own selves turning against us. Instead of fear of the other, this is fear of one’s own self…and of disease.
It’s beautifully written and if you are in to that kind of thing, definitely pick it up.
I received a copy of this book in the Hugo packet.