Authority: A Novel (10th Anniversary Edition) (The Southern Reach Series, 2)

Jeff, buddy, you’ve done it again! The Southern Reach series continues to be one of my favorites of all time. I heard some negative reviews about this book before picking it up, and went into the read expecting it to pale in comparison to Annihilation. After finishing it, I do agree Annihilation was not topped here (and I am suspicious if it ever will be), but I still LOVED this book. I think if I had started it without a bias, I wouldn’t have been so sluggish to finish it. I devoured Annihilation in days, but Authority took me months. That being said, the last 100 pages or so were captivating to me, and gave me the same frantic need to read more that I felt throughout Annihilation. So of course I finished this book last night at 2am. Once again, I am obsessed with how Jeff Vandermeer’s descriptive writing is somehow so specific but also so vague at the same time. It gives me the feeling of confusion and unexplained experience that the characters themselves are feeling, while still telling me exactly what happened. The paranoia Control struggles with was making its way through me as I questioned the motives of every single character in this book. The amazing thing about this sequel, which has never happened to me, is that it made me want to immediately go back and re-read the first. Not just because the first is so good, but because I feel like I have a few (and I do mean only a few) answers to the questions I vibrated with after finishing Annihilation. But somehow, I don’t care that much about having answers to all my questions about the Southern Reach. The experience of reading these books has been so invigorating and enjoyable to me that I could ride what I’ve read for the rest of my life. But of course I won’t be doing that, because there’s still more to uncover in the third book!

A modern day Lovecraft, VanderMeer has an incredible propensity for the unsettling. The tension rises almost imperceptibly, tiny oddities overflow into fullblown paranoia and you won't even see it until seconds before impact. The book has two, pivotal moments where everything falls into place. The beauty of looking back after those moments and seeing how well VanderMeer silently built the tension up to the point. Everything spirals out of control so quickly, but when you look back, all the pieces were there just waiting to be put together.

Book 2 in the southern reach trilogy. Although now there is actually a fourth that just came out last fall. This book follows the point of view of Control, who is trying to figure out at headquarters. What is going on. He never enters area X until the end when he dives in. He is following the biologist there, because area X the border has expanded and engulfed headquarters. The scariest scene was when Whitby was on the shelf, curled up, incubating. And then reached out and touched the back of Control’s head.

- a continuation of Annihilation, further explaining Area X & the secrets behind the Southern Reach
- focus on the bereaucratic issues surrounding SR that are compounded by the dangers of Area X
- not as science fiction-y as Annihilation, less time spent within Area X, but adds context to the first story