I’m Tapping Out Y’all

I read Annihilation about a year ago because I wanted to give sci-fi a chance, and I picked it up by random chance at a bookstore. I really enjoyed it, and I got the other three books as a birthday gift. The thing is, I don’t typically like reading series, especially when the author keeps expanding them—no hate to Jeff VanderMeer. But I pushed on because I did enjoy his writing, the Southern Reach world, and its interesting parallels to modern-day environmentalism, nature, government, and colonialism (the prefaces to all of these books were so insightful and inspirational of deeper academic study).

But I got halfway through Absolution, and I feel like I’m forcing myself to read it just to complete it. Absolution has a more whole, captivating story than Authority or Acceptance (and some better horror), but I just don’t give a shit about Old Jim or the other characters in this novel; they bore me, compared with Acceptance which felt a little scattered with the parallel storylines but had more beloved characters. I can’t tell you how much I loved Saul the lighthouse keeper. I can’t speak much on Authority, since it was mostly a slog and I am indifferent to Control—the expedition at the end to find the biologist was awesome though I’ll admit, and obviously Annihilation is the great OG.

But yeah, there’s other novels I want to read now, and I’m starting English Lit at uni next month. But I’ll always keep in touch with this community! I even got a tattoo from this series. I’m curious to know how you all feel.