Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; all the members of the second expedition committed suicide; the third expedition died in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another; the members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within months of their return, all had died of aggressive cancer.

This is the twelfth expedition.

Their group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain and collect specimens; to record all their observations, scientific and otherwise, of their surroundings and of one another; and, above all, to avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.

They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers—they discover a massive topographic anomaly and life forms that surpass understanding—but it’s the surprises that came across the border with them, and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another, that change everything.

If FSG Originals had approached me for a front or back cover quote for Annihilation I would have provided them with something like this:

Annihilation is a wonderful paradox of a novel, something that feels familiar but is totally unique.

OK, maybe not the sort of sentiment that would sell the book but it does sum up my feelings toward this the first in VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy.  Annihilation is a novel that provokes comparison with other similar work.  At different stages I was reminded of Lovecraft, Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves and the freakier episodes of Lost (I’d also note Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers but I haven’t read it).  At the same time, though, Annihilation never felt like a grab bag of other people’s ideas

You only have to look at VanderMeer’s publishing history – the novel’s he’s written and the anthologies he’s co-edited with his wife Anne – to know that he has a deep, academic appreciation of all things Weird fiction.  He’s also one of the major proponents of the New Weird.  Annihilation probably falls outside the New Weird paradigm – although you could argue that Area X is as much a secondary world as Ambergris, just less populated – though it’s very much steeped in the Weird tradition, especially cosmic horror.

What makes it feel so new and fresh – even if the antecedents are as clear as day – is how VanderMeer plays around with and subverts traditional tropes.  Yes, structurally Annihilation feels Lovecraftian – a first person point of view, the tale transcribed in a journal – but instead of the genteel American going slowly insane, VanderMeer’s protagonist is a woman who never really loses her sanity, even if she is infected by Area X.

While the Biologist is never named, as if to elevate her functionality over her humanity, VanderMeer goes to great lengths to humanize her.  A good example, ironically  is the story of why she became a biologist:

My lodestone, the place I always thought of when people ask me why I became a biologist, was the overgrown swimming pool in the backyard of the rented house where I grew up…

[My parents] did not have the will or inclination to clean the kidney-shaped pool, even though it was fairly small.  Soon after we moved in, the grass around its edges grew long.  Sedge weeds and other towering plants became prevalent.  The short buses lining the fence around the pool lunged up to obscure the chain link… Dragonflies continually scouted the area.  Bullfrogs moved in, the wriggling malformed dots of their tadpoles always present.  Water gliders and aquatic beetles began to make the place their own.  Rather than get rid of my thirty gallon freshwater aquarium as my parents wanted, I dumped the fish into the pool, and some survived the shock of that.  Local bird, like herons and egrets began to appear, drawn by the frogs and the fish and insects.  By some miracle too, small turtles began to live in the pool, although I had no idea how they had gotten there.

It’s a long quote, I know, but it’s beautiful and bittersweet – you can’t help but smile wistfully at the line about the turtles – and most of all it grounds the character, explains to us that her function is also her passion.

The novel is full of character moments like this, culminating in the Biologists reason for coming to Area X in the first place.  Her husband was on the previous expedition, and when he came back home – under mysterious circumstances – there was something different about him.  In one of the more chilling passages we’re told:

I found my husband next to the refrigerator, still dressed in his expedition clothes, drinking milk until it flowed down his chin and neck.  Eating leftovers furiously.

Shortly after this the husband is taken away and eventually dies from a cancer that he contracted, presumably, during the expedition.  But it’s not only a search for answers that motivates the Biologist to join the next expedition.  In spite of a strained relationship with her husband – it “had been thready for a while” – she goes searching for him believing that somehow he is still out there.  It’s this sense of love and hope (realistic or otherwise) that propels the story.

Don’t get me wrong, the traditional elements, the bits that remind you of Lovecraft and the Strugatsky brothers, are very well handled.  While not as scary as House of Leaves, Annihilation does have its creepy moments; the discovery of the journals is one particular revelation that got under my skin.  And VanderMeer has nailed that sense of cosmic wrongness with Area X and its fungus and its underground tower, its walls scrawled with text, and its lighthouse, the site of a pitched battle against unknown forces.

But the mystery of Area X is never the focus of the novel.  Foremost, Annihilation is a journey of discovery, of love and hope and destiny, for a woman known only by her function but who we realise is so much more.