Annihilation is the first volume in Jeff VanderMeers Southern Reach trilogy, Authority is the second, and Acceptance is the third.
Area Xa remote and lush terrainhas 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 deliversthey discover a massive topographic anomaly and life forms that surpass understandingbut its the surprises that came across the border with them, and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another, that change everything.
After the disastrous twelfth expedition chronicled in Annihilation, the Southern Reachthe secret agency that monitors these expeditionsis in disarray. In Authority, John Rodriguez, aka Control, is the teams newly appointed head. From a series of interrogations, a cache of hidden notes and hours of profoundly troubling video footage, the secrets of Area X begin to reveal themselvesand what they expose pushes Control to confront disturbing truths about both himself and the agency hes promised to serve. And the consequences will spread much further than that.
It is winter in Area X in Acceptance. A new team embarks across the border on a mission to find a member of a previous expedition who may have been left behind. As they press deeper into the unknownnavigating new terrain and new challengesthe threat to the outside world becomes more daunting. The mysteries of Area X may have been solved, but their consequences and implications are no less profoundor terrifying.
