“The tower, which was not supposed to be there, plunges into the earth in a place just before the black pine forest begins to give way to swamp and then the reeds and the wind-gnarled trees of the marsh flats.”

From Jeff VanderMeer’s The Southern Reach: Annihilation.

There is a quarantined area that the government has labeled Area X.  Eleven expeditions have been sent in to try to discover the cause and, hopefully, the remedy to the mysterious area.  What happens to the members of the expeditions remain a mystery as many never return and the few that do return are a shell of their former selves, including a young biologist’s husband.  In an attempt to understand both what happened to her husband and what is Area X, the biologist joins the twelfth expedition.  A 4-woman team (consisting of a psychologist, an anthropologist, a surveyor, and the biologist) heads into Area X to analyze and document the Area’s elements in their respective fields.  While the women were required to undergo extensive training before their arrival, nothing could prepare them for the mysteries they discover.  The discovery of a “tower” that shouldn’t be there sets off a series of deaths, infections, and lies that threaten the biologist on every side.  The biologist quickly realizes that nothing is as it seems and she can only trust herself, but as she dives deeper into the mystery of Area X she begins to question her ability to discover the truth.

The narration style is very attractive; the distance that the narrator places between herself and the characters/events of the book make the mystery that much more exciting.  However, the book is a type of complex that makes halfhearted reading impossible; details and developments can be easily lost without active reading.  The story is disturbing, but very captivating with each discovery adding more questions.  Annihilation is an engrossing read for those that enjoy science-fiction and thriller elements.