[If you are new to the Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer, you may want to check out Katy’s review of Book 1, Annihilation, first.]
When I read Annihilation, I was eager to find out more about the Southern Reach, the shifty agency that sent the biologist and the other scientists out into the pristine wilderness of Area X. I wanted to see what they knew. I wanted to know their motives. More than anything, I wanted to see who – or what – was in control.
Annihilation, the first novel in the Southern Reach Trilogy, plunges the reader into the dark and beautiful backwoods of Area X, the alien world somewhere in the American South which lies behind an apparently advancing border. Authority brings Area X back to us and gives some of the answers I was so thirsty for – but maybe not the way the reader might expect.
Instead of jumping back into the pristine wilderness, we are invited to explore it through the Southern Reach. Things are twisted there. Unexpected answers come cheaply; more are hinted at and skirted around, seen translucidly as if through a bubble; others are still out of reach. There are disturbed echoes and repeats of the horrors and wonders found in Annihilation, but they’re never exactly as they were. Characters come back, even when they don’t. Where Annihilation is a short sweet shock to the system like an infection, Authority is a slow-building panic attack of a novel.
If I was looking for control, I found it. One of the story’s greatest strengths is in Control. He is the focal character and the new director of the Southern Reach charged with finding out why things seem to be going so wrong. Vulnerable without being tragic, flawed without being overly hapless or cruel, the real brilliance of Control’s narration is in the relatability of how he sees both the mundane and the uncanny within the agency – subjectively, distractedly, with an odd mix of brilliant insight and an inability to see the big picture. Tracking Control’s obstructed, fretful quest for answers and competence was as pleasurable as it was frightening. I found myself talking to Control a lot, a bad habit I seem to have when narrators are really believable, particularly if they are believably imperfect – I warned him, I laughed with him, I sympathised with him, and occasionally I told him off.
While Control is a likeable and engaging lead, there are many stars to the novel, and every character is memorable. From the sharp-edged assistant director Grace, to the eccentric and secretive scientist Whitby, there’s a believable diversity to the characters. There is more to all of them than meets the eye, and the way they keep Control running in circles adds both wings and brakes to the story.
Partially because of this, Authority is both longer and slower than Annihilation. VanderMeer uses a study of the mundane amidst the bizarre to build a slow, uneasy agitation, breeding a different kind of tension and darkness. There seems to be joy and anxiety in the way VanderMeer plays with a kind of panicky plot and sentence structure to great and chilling effect. Though this book feels quieter than Annihilation it comes as a dangerous hush falling on Control’s attempts at order, a monstrous shadow lurking behind office doors and locked draws.
During Annihilation I was waiting for monsters to pop out of the bushes, but watching Control try to uncover the secrets of the Southern Reach feels a lot more like freaking out at the sad and the inevitable – at the monster creeping close that it is so obvious to you and to none of the characters – instead of waiting to acutely shit myself. It’s still scary – really scary – but it’s a different kind of scary.
Whether all of this was absorbing or just plain boring seems to be a matter of contention among readers, but it is a quality of Authority that I have seen as a positive, a parallel process to the needs of the plot and to the mindsets of the characters. As Control takes the time to reflect on his situation and to smell the proverbial roses – or, in his case, honey – the reader can take in more of the situation as he views it, it’s magnificence and vileness.
And there are plenty of both to enjoy. If you loved Annihilation’s beautiful descriptions and metaphors, you will not go away from this book disappointed. Authority is just as rich in imagery, both beautiful (a stork silent and still, framed by storm clouds) and horrible (a plant with veins as red as blood, feeding on a long-dead mouse). The metaphors and descriptions are vivid and colourful, the kind that has you squirming with a kind of sick longing.
The use of foreshadowing is nauseatingly and masterfully effective; I spent much of the book with the same wretched exhilaration of watching genre-blind horror movie teenagers stumble around a creepy haunted house, wanting to shout, “No! Don’t go into the basement!” Authority understands its own themes with clarity and force – you look back and there it all is, textual and exact, set out like a particularly gruesome helter-skelter.
As you slide down into the depths of the mystery, some questions from Annihilation are answered almost immediately; others stew in the background; yet more pop up take their places. There is a horrible, lovely dread behind the balance of knowing and not knowing – it is the best kind of infuriating, and it’s the questions that keep the stories and narrative behind Southern Reach heart-poundingly engaging.
If all of this makes the novel sound frustrating, it’s because it is. I mean that in the best way – it’s frustrating in the kind of way that will have me reading this odd, slow-paced, mysterious novel many times.
Authority can be purchased individually on Amazon, or as part of Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy collection.
Learn more about Jeff VanderMeer on his website or follow him on Twitter: @JeffVanderMeer
