At the recommendation of a friend, I pushed Annihilation to the top of my TBR list. This book had me holding my breath and racing through the pages in a way that reminded me of the way I'd consume each new Harry Potter book. The world that VanderMeer created is vague and mysterious, yet feels just out of reach - as if just one more page will give you all the answers.

The members of the twelfth expedition into Area X are all women - a biologist (our narrator), a surveyor, a psychologist, and an anthropologist. Aside from the atmospheric grandeur of this novel, my favorite aspect of Annihilation is that the women are represented as exactly what they are: human. The women are good, bad, curious, guarded, violent, paranoid, brave, strong, and not caricatures of the myth of what women are viewed to be. The biologist is awkward and not driven by her emotions towards other people (specifically her husband) but instead by an extremely scientific mind which was a refreshing and real perspective to hear from a woman.

As I finished the final pages of this book, I felt as if I was coming out of Area X myself. There is so much left unknown about the nature of Area X, Southern Reach, the Crawler, and the expeditions themselves. Everything becomes fluid in Area X: the lines between life and death are blurred, as is the definition between Area X and the members of the expedition itself. What the biologist called "the brightness" begins to overtake her in a way that never feels threatening but leaves room for vague paranoia.

I told myself I wasn't going to spend money on books for a while so I need to check the rest of this trilogy out from the library. Knowing VanderMeer, I have a feeling that these next books will bring more questions than they will answers.

I don't think I want to see the movie because there's so much in VanderMeer's prose that transcends the ability to be transferred onto the screen.