Annihilation (Southern Reach #1)

Stephen King AuthorI'm loving THE SOUTHERN REACH TRILOGY, by Jeff Vandermeer. Recommended by an indie bookseller. Creepy and fascinating. (Source)

Laura Dassow Walls A colleague of mine, Roy Scranton, knows Jeff VanderMeer and brought him to Notre Dame a few weeks ago for a reading. Way in advance, Roy said, ‘Laura, you’re going to love this guy, he’s the weird Thoreau.’ (Source)

James Bradley In the introduction to The Weird, the 2011 anthology that Jeff Vandermeer and his wife Ann edited, they suggest the weird isn’t a genre or a form so much as a technique or an affect, a thing that lurks in the interstices, and which emerges in unexpected and unsettling ways. I rather love this idea, not least because it captures something of what makes both Annihilation and its two sequels, Authority and Acceptance, so compelling, the way reading them leaves you feeling like you’ve been colonised yourself, your brain permanently altered by your descent into the world of the books. (Source)

Kate Marvel Annihilation evokes two things very well: that sense of confusion and powerlessness, and the drive to exert some sort of control over the situation by exploring and learning. (Source)