A review by whoischels
Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer

adventurous mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

I think Annihilation should have been a stand alone book. In Acceptance, VanderMeer takes on the behemoth task of explaining what the hell has been going on in Area X, but he is faced with a difficult problem. If he provides concretely explained context, the magic of Area X is lost. If he goes for an emo, poetic explanation, readers are asking "why the hell did you spend two books writing about people concretely trying to solve the mystery just to end by not explaining it properly." He goes for a middle ground and doesn't stick the landing.  The following spoiler is a major, major spoiler.

Area X is the result of a spore from an intergalactic fungus-like/plant-like organism whose psychedelic effects are physically manifest on a grand scale. It was created by an alien life form that has long since died out. This histo-biological information is available to Ghost Bird through physical/psychic contact with the fruiting body of the organism. All of the concrete efforts to solve the mystery would never lead to this explanation, because only Ghost Bird can obtain it through, essentially, magic.

Bureaucratic mysteries introduced in Authority and within this text are not solved completely. Though it's possible they might be implicitly answered on a second read. There is just a level of vagueness that makes this very unsatisfying, but at the same time, I have an immense respect for an author who can write an "enemy" that is not actively evil and is just existing and do so in a way that is sentence-to-sentence compelling.