3.5 stars, really. Chosen for ONTD's 2017 book challenge for January: a book that is being adapted into a movie or TV show in 2017.

We start off with our nameless biologist recounting past events, vague details of the grueling nature of an expedition to the mysterious Area X and her three nameless colleagues (a surveyor, an anthropologist and a psychologist, all women). The narrator never seemed to question the many things about the expedition that were withheld by her mysterious government benefactors: the nature of the border between her "world" and Area X, what the devices that they all carried were or what they detected. She simply noted her ignorance and moved on. I found this incredibly odd, but thankfully that is addressed as the novel progressed and not left as a weird quirk of personality.

Months and months of hypnotic suggestion built into their survival and weapons training. They were made into Bucky-like specialist soliders, of a sort, with activation words for compliance rather than aggression. The title comes from the tigger word to "help induce immediate suicide".

I liked the eerieness; the atmosphere was a little distant in the beginning, but it builds slowly and subtly as the group finds a tunnel (or tower, as our narrator keeps insisting) that is not on the map. Things go downhill from there, in weird and horrifying ways. There were clues scattered throughout that led me to believe that I couldn't entirely trust what the biologist was recording - she even makes oblique mention of it in the end.

The words in the tower and the overall spoopy tone have a very Lovecraftian vibe:

The fact that said tower is legit a living organism they're clambering around in doesn't hurt either.

.

... forms that never could be writhe for the impatience of the few who have never seen or be seen...

I'm not sure how well this will translate to screen, but I look forward to seeing Jennifer Jason Leigh as the suspiciously sinister psychologist. However, the less said about Natalie Portman playing a self-contained, introverted scientist, the better.

Creepiest phrase found in Area X:

There shall be a fire that knows your name, and in the presence of the strangling fruit, its dark flame shall acquire every part of you.