Even though it pretty much picks up right where Authority leaves off, Acceptance was a little bit hard for me to get into. I think this is because I don't feel like Annihilation needed a sequel. I liked Authority, & where it took us in the Southern Reach just fine, but it didn't feel that necessary. It would be as if J.G. Ballard wrote a Crash Trilogy, or if the Wachowskis made 3 sequels to the Matrix. I think Hunger Games is a pretty close comparison, in that the 1st book was good & ended conclusively, then the 2nd book kind of rehashed the 1st one, while setting the stage for the 3rd book, which then had a big action packed conclusion to the big story. I thought it worked pretty well for Hunger Games, which had working for it straightforward action & teen drama, & the interesting premise. For me a big part of the appeal of Annihilation was the exploration of a big, weird, unknowable place, littered with the decaying remains of modern civilization & so I felt the sequels explained too much. It was a little hard for me to follow the explanations of the how & why of Area X, when I didn't really care if Area X was explicable or not. In many ways the series reminded me of Stranger Things, because the 1st Season stood on its own well, & the subsequent seasons kind of following the superfluous sequel pattern I've outlined (like Hunger Games, Stranger Things has teen adventure and teen drama helping it along), but with the later seasons starting to explain the Strangeness a bit too much. Also, the Upside Down really reminded me of Area X & the Hawkins Lab was a bit like The Southern Reach. Acceptance & Authority were still pretty good & did not fly completely off the rails like the also superfluous Dune sequels.