Book Review: Annihilation

               This is going to be a long one so buckle in. Wow. I am new to the realm of science fiction, and my professor assigned this book to talk about the subgenre of slipstream. From the reviews (God why do I ever trust Goodread's reviews?!) it seemed like this book was going to disappoint. Instead, however, this book made me dizzy but in a good way. I adored this read. It had a simple discovery vibe like Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth and other science fiction predecessors, but continued to take that dark, Shutter Island turn. I love a narrator that I don't trust in the slightest. Even from the beginning I thought this girl was sort of whack and I loved it! 

               One of my favorite parts of this book was the pacing. For a journal entry, you'd expect pretty cut and dry chronological order of events, but since our narrator is such a disorganized mess, we are taken through a journey past and present. Since Vandermeer is such a good writer, the backstory always has a place that makes sense in the narrative, but it takes awhile to get to why she tells us half the stuff she does. I adore the random cuts to her past life, because it keeps that suspense building on what is happening in the present. I picture when reading this, jumping to her past in similar to a commercial break (if commercials secretly relayed information about the actors to you I suppose). The pacing felt sort of Great Gatsby esc. with all the jumping around while someone logs a journal. Every time the biologist said, "I haven't been quite truthful with you guys," I lost my mind. I love that she is lying in her own journal. I know she wants to sound objective in her writing, but girl...you have never been objective. She tells us at LENGTH that we should not let all of her personal affiliations affect how we read her journal, which I found absolutely hilarious. Your husband was in the last expedition and your life at home was falling apart. You were never going to be objective babe. 

             Speaking of her husband I found their plot to be so interesting. The slow realization she has through her journal about her own behavior in a relationship was so subtle yet so clever. She starts us off by telling about her martial troubles and how she always was just too introverted and self protected to fit into her husbands life (it felt a little pick me pick me but we must ignore that urge to blame her). It worked for awhile until it became the center of all their issues. Towards the end though, she is fighting with herself. "He had created his share of our problems- by pushing me too hard, by wanting too much,  by trying to see something in me that didn't exist. But I could have met him partway and retain my sovereignty. And now it was too late." This internal battle after reading her husbands journal makes her question the parts of herself she was so sure of at the beginning of this expedition. It is stuff like this that makes me disagree so hard with the people who say this book contains no character development. Well, this and the whole going crazy and turning "bright."

            I think I disliked the actual science fiction aspects the most. I don't tend to care for creepy monsters that crawl up and back an underground tower like a Mario character. I enjoyed never knowing if it was actually happening. We could one thousand percent be reading a story told completely wrong by a woman who, due to the mystical environment, was driven mad. I liked to think of it in a way like the Yellow Wallpaper. Not that I am saying there was no abnormalities to the place, because there most definitely was, but a place that makes you fear your own mind for tricking you rather than the things that lie in it. I started to get sort of uninterested when she described the Crawler, and was honestly just waiting to hear more about how the fleshy walls were breathing. THAT was cool. Sorry I just love weird shit. The border that was expanding was also a very cool but a very confusing aspect. I hope we get to hear more about the actualities of that in another book, because I got so confused how the border was growing and taking over the world. The doppelgängers were a little odd to me, and honestly I think it would have made sense without them. I think it could have easily been that everyone died there instead of people returning home except not actually. At the very least the explanation at the end felt a little rushed and I got a bit lost. CRAZY about the weird animal reincarnation stuff. Dolphins with human eyes... WHACK.

             I didn't do any research before writing this review so it would be all my raw first impressions, so these next few parts are a lot of speculation that may have little authorial intent to back it up. The repetition of the religious images that came with the continual idea of death was super interesting. The forbidden fruit, the worms in the ground, the darkness that lies, it almost felt too on the nose at times yet somehow I couldn't explain why it's there. I don't necessarily think I have it all worked out, which I think is ok and probably the point. The religious belief of annihilation is that instead of ongoing pain for the sinners in hell, that torment will end eventually. Does that have something to do with the deaths here in Area X? In the book they use annihilation to mean immediate suicide. The hypnotic suggestion felt like a connection to those ideas as well. I almost saw this as a bigger allegory that all humans are out of place in the world and that their is something bigger controlling us. The psychologist says at one point something along the lines of "how many of your memories are implanted," and I think that idea too has something to do with the religious tie in. Now this is going to sound like a reach here folks, but maybe the biologists real world was her torment (I know how emo of me to say) but now that she is sort of Godly here in area X her torment is over. She can read the messages on the walls and now sort of has this superpower that gives her "brightness" which also sounds pretty biblical. Maybe in a more broad sense, religion is another thing Vandermeer is saying that is almost unfathomable to the human mind, like what God actually is, and the more we try to understand it, the more it makes no sense. No idea though friends, just some food for thought. 

                  Now to what I KNOW is meant to be understood from the author: we are destroying the earth! Vandermeer, from what I know, is a huge environmentalist and is subtly warning the readers about how we are slowly but surely destroying earth and causing climate change. Cool right? (Not the climate change part). I just want to add my two cents that I think this is an awesome way to write about such important issues. You may even miss it, its that subtle in this book, but I think the point is made, and I am assuming this idea only grows in the next few books as we get more information on the place itself. The biologist actually begins to like it there...kinda? She says there is something to be said for how peaceful and sound this environment is while the one back home is being destroyed. That's some environmentalism if I have ever heard it. I am hoping these aren't the only two options we have, as the biologist says, that we can choose from. Hot dirty earth about to implode, or world full of creepy crawlers and moaning monsters, and weird mud faces. 

                  Lets circle back to how unreliable our narrator is, and for that matter, any entry of the journals she found at the lighthouse. This complicated idea that we as readers are constantly trying to deal with along with the biologist is: how do we make sense of the nonsensical? This book doesn't promote itself to be supernatural and totally nonsensical. Having our main character be the reserved biologist drills that point home. Vandermeer is playing with that line of plausible and totally ridiculous, and the best way to do that is to make sure your narrator is mentally deteriorating as the story goes on. This psychological thriller aspect was by far the best part about this novel. It spoon feeds you absolutely nothing. We, most of the time, are just as confused as the biologist. Its awesome!

                 To conclude this tangent, I adored this book! Apparently there is three more. How do I know this? I immediately bought them on Amazon after finishing this book. If you are a lover of all things weird and confusing and maybe want to stare at your ceiling for awhile after reading, definitely give Annihilation a go around. And tell me your thoughts and feelings about the book! I know very little about anything in the grand scheme of things, so please, enlighten me!