This book didn't leave a very strong impression on me. It begins with four women, who are never named, entering the mysterious region named Area X as part of the twelfth mission to try and uncover some of its secrets. The main character's husband had died as a result of his part in the previous mission, partially motivating her own participation. This rare reversal of the Women in Refrigerators trope was one of the things I found engaging about the story. Unfortunately, the eerie body horror aspect suffered in comparison with the similar but more interesting virus in the first volume of The Expanse, and the fungal zombies in The Girl With All The Gifts. The theme of a bizarre world slowly expanding its territory into our own reminded me of the pocket universes and alternate dimension intrusions of Kelly Link's short story "Light" from her collection Get In Trouble and John Chu's short story "Repairing the World" (which LeVar Burton performed in episode 13 of LeVar Burton Reads). Except that each of those stories made me fall in love with their characters, something this book failed to do. Essentially, this book felt like several good ideas mashed together but left half-baked. At only 185 pages, it felt too short to be a properly satisfying novel. I was left wondering why it had not been combined with the second volume, which came out a mere three months later.