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A review by taisynn
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
4.0
Short read spread over two days. 208 pages. This is written from the perspective of someone who watched the movie first.
The book deviates strongly from the movie, very strongly. So while I imagined the various actors that filled in the various movie roles, the actual events are much different.
This story, if you’re looking for definitive answers, and a resolution to the plot, this is not for you. Many of the questions are ambiguous, and left to the viewpoints of a biologist who may or may not be compromised either by the clever hypnotism of their Psychologist, or by the spores they inhaled when first entering the tunnel.
The book is written from her viewpoint. A team of four women experts in their fields: a biologist (the protagonist), an anthropologist, a surveyor, and the psychologist (group leader.) They are sent into an area that is compromised by some unknown government experiment. They are heavily trained to not only forgo names, but not to trust the other perspective of their team. They are given journals to write their accounts of Area X. They are sent, under hypnosis of the psychologist, into a tunnel omitted from their maps. By hypnosis, they are made to omit the actual biological organisms and materials of the tunnel for something less alarming to the mind, to uncover the meaning of the words written on the walls shaped by vines and fungi. By inhaling the spores of the fungi, the biologist is able to become immune to the hypnosis, and from there begins to see through the forced perspective of the psychologist. She sees the alarming complexity of the environment around her. Whatever is changing the environment, it’s changing it into a distorted reflection of reality.
The biologist, an woman known for her introversion, is following the trail of her late husband in a search for answers. The story is about her changing perspectives of the scenery around her. I don’t want to give spoilers, but it’s following her unique perspective of the world, as the only one immune to the hypnosis as well as the understanding of a biologist, an expert of living things.
I’m about to start the next book. Perhaps it’ll fill in more of the answers I’m looking for, but it’s a good book; just very vague, ambiguous. It’s something not even the biologist can understand with only her five senses. The environment, and the creature changing the environment, are so alien they are unable to be given taxonomy. That leaves a lot of mystery.
If you like strange fiction, this is a very weird novel.
The book deviates strongly from the movie, very strongly. So while I imagined the various actors that filled in the various movie roles, the actual events are much different.
This story, if you’re looking for definitive answers, and a resolution to the plot, this is not for you. Many of the questions are ambiguous, and left to the viewpoints of a biologist who may or may not be compromised either by the clever hypnotism of their Psychologist, or by the spores they inhaled when first entering the tunnel.
The book is written from her viewpoint. A team of four women experts in their fields: a biologist (the protagonist), an anthropologist, a surveyor, and the psychologist (group leader.) They are sent into an area that is compromised by some unknown government experiment. They are heavily trained to not only forgo names, but not to trust the other perspective of their team. They are given journals to write their accounts of Area X. They are sent, under hypnosis of the psychologist, into a tunnel omitted from their maps. By hypnosis, they are made to omit the actual biological organisms and materials of the tunnel for something less alarming to the mind, to uncover the meaning of the words written on the walls shaped by vines and fungi. By inhaling the spores of the fungi, the biologist is able to become immune to the hypnosis, and from there begins to see through the forced perspective of the psychologist. She sees the alarming complexity of the environment around her. Whatever is changing the environment, it’s changing it into a distorted reflection of reality.
The biologist, an woman known for her introversion, is following the trail of her late husband in a search for answers. The story is about her changing perspectives of the scenery around her. I don’t want to give spoilers, but it’s following her unique perspective of the world, as the only one immune to the hypnosis as well as the understanding of a biologist, an expert of living things.
I’m about to start the next book. Perhaps it’ll fill in more of the answers I’m looking for, but it’s a good book; just very vague, ambiguous. It’s something not even the biologist can understand with only her five senses. The environment, and the creature changing the environment, are so alien they are unable to be given taxonomy. That leaves a lot of mystery.
If you like strange fiction, this is a very weird novel.