Reviews with content warning for Medical trauma - Annihilation

Reviews tagging 'Medical trauma'

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

5 reviews

ravensandlace's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Title: Annihilation

Author: Jeff VanderMeer

Genre: Science Fiction

Format: ebook from Libby

Series: Southern Reach (#1)

Star Rating: 4 stars

tw: intimate partner violence recounted, suicide & attempted suicide discussed, alcohol consumption, blood & gore depiction, including physical injuries, dead bodies, terminal cancer recounted, hospital mentioned, death of a husband recounted, murder, gun violence, mind control & loss of autonomy (theme), animal attack

Note: When I read this book, I was in the process of moving. I lost the little notebook that contained my trigger warnings so I used the trigger warnings provided by the trigger warning database (https://triggerwarningdatabase.com/). Be sure to go check them out as they do an amazing job making sure trigger warnings are accounted for. They have hundreds of books on there.

Ever since I saw the movie, I have been dying to read this book. I was curious as to how different it would be from the movie. I hadn’t heard a lot of buzz about the books so I was curious. Because the movie is one of my all-time favorite movies. It’s right up there with The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Sinister. That bear scene though, if you know you know. And don’t even get me started on the soundtrack. I haven’t heard anything better since I played Destiny.

This book was like nothing I’ve ever read. It was truly a unique experience. First off, no one in the book had a name at all. Absolutely no one. It was strange and took some time to get used to. The main character was a biologist, hence her name was biologist. There was also an anthropologist, a surveyor, and a psychologist. But surprisingly, it was not hard to keep up with who was who. I really thought it added another layer to this novel, it made it stand out. It didn’t let me get too close to the characters, which was actually nice.

One of the downfalls of this book was there was science. I mean, a lot of science. There were a lot of scientific terms. The biologist is very passionate about being a biologist so there were times when she would just talk about the biology of something and use so many scientific terms. I am not a science person. I’m more of a history gal. There was one part of the book where the team comes across something (I won't say what because of spoilers) but it suddenly becomes all about the biology of said thing. It took me out of the story a bit because I had no idea what they were talking about. I ended up skimming that part, which was detrimental to me because that thing ended up being pretty important later on.

Overall, I enjoyed this book quite a bit. It wasn’t what I thought it was going to be but it ended up being a welcome surprise. I will most certainly be continuing with this series and I’ve even found an absolutely gorgeous set of books I will purchase (or I can add them to my Amazon wishlist in case anyone likes me enough! Kidding!). Also, be on the lookout for a movie/book comparison post, as soon as I get around to watching the movie again. Because while there were similarities, there was also some pretty big differences too. Overall, though, I highly recommend both this book and the movie.

Content Warnings