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A review by wellworn_soles
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
4.0
Surprise, this book was great. Some thoughts:
- this author really feels comfortable bypassing gender and racial lines; not in a way that hopes to use them to artificially push the story, but simply letting women and people of color lead a story that would normally not include them. The women in this cast are intriguing, varied characters; our lead narrator the biologist is fascinating and complex.
- the turn of language and surrealistic imagery suffuses this work with a low thrum of dread. Reading it late at night, i sometimes felt a presence shared the darkness with me, watching and waiting in the agonizingly silent vistas this narrative spread before me.
- i love a book that can give a subtle message, and this one delivers. Its ambivalent, ambiguous portrayal of environmental catastrophe manifests in our biologists fascination with reclaimed wilderness; with the seeming nihilistic, slow free-fall of civilization outside of Area X; and with the question that sits at the center of this book ringing in our ears: is the subsumption of an individual or an ecosystem a kind of death, or an evolution? And - when you get down to it - do we ever really have control?
4 stars
- this author really feels comfortable bypassing gender and racial lines; not in a way that hopes to use them to artificially push the story, but simply letting women and people of color lead a story that would normally not include them. The women in this cast are intriguing, varied characters; our lead narrator the biologist is fascinating and complex.
- the turn of language and surrealistic imagery suffuses this work with a low thrum of dread. Reading it late at night, i sometimes felt a presence shared the darkness with me, watching and waiting in the agonizingly silent vistas this narrative spread before me.
- i love a book that can give a subtle message, and this one delivers. Its ambivalent, ambiguous portrayal of environmental catastrophe manifests in our biologists fascination with reclaimed wilderness; with the seeming nihilistic, slow free-fall of civilization outside of Area X; and with the question that sits at the center of this book ringing in our ears: is the subsumption of an individual or an ecosystem a kind of death, or an evolution? And - when you get down to it - do we ever really have control?
4 stars