Pages, some stolen, some original

Monday, February 12, 2018

Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer

Lighthouse, because a lighthouse is a prominent landmark in the story.
Annihilation is a science fiction novel set in the not-too-distant future. We have an area has been declared off-limits by the military because of an 'ecological disaster', which sounds just like something that the military would do. But they are lying, or maybe they really don't know what is happening in this area, but for sure some weird stuff is going on, so they send small groups of people in to try and figure out what's going on. These explorations all end in disaster, so it's kind of like a common horror story that way. A lot of what the characters do doesn't make much sense, but then the people who would volunteer to go on a suicide mission with no real information may not be the most stable: We're going to drop you off in the wilderness with a bunch of other lunatics, all armed with guns and notebooks. When you have gathered enough information, your leader will arrange your extraction. No, we're not going to tell any of the rest of you how to get back.

Destroyer of Worlds Starfish
Our narrator is a biologist who tells about her cosmic / drunken experience with a Destroyer of Worlds starfish. The story was very readable, it flowed along smoothly enough except the bumps when someone does something stupid.

Underground Tower
This underground tower at the Quinta da Regaleira provided the inspiration for a similar structure in this story.

This book is part one of a trilogy which has been combined into one large book.  Something strange happens to the narrator, though we aren't sure what. The rest of the trilogy might tell you but I won't be reading it.

SuperPunch provided some links.

2 comments:

  1. Too much stupid stuff, too much unexplained stuff. It's like someone tells you they have something interesting to show you, and then they dump out a can of garbage on your kitchen floor and say 'look at this and be amazed'. No thank you, it's just a pile of garbage.

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