Annihilation was a short read. It isn’t because of its 195
pages, but the fact that it’s a true page-turner. From the very first page, you
begin to be slowly integrated into a Lovecraftian narrative that doesn’t
promise to reveal anything. That’s why this book might not be everyone’s cup of
coffee. It’s eerie, poetic, and equally terrifying.
Maybe that’s the point of this “pointless knowledge”, of the
psychological minute detailing of the protagonist’s inner thoughts.
Maybe Area X should remain Area X, immune to interpretation
and “compartmentalization”. Maybe that’s why the Biologist was the only
one—however unreliable a narrator as she is—who could show us what is Area X
without answering questions of whys—why is it there? Why is it terraforming
earth? Why did the entity come to our planet?
The book, the first of a trilogy, was an enjoyable
experience, even thought-provoking about the nature of ‘I’ and ‘the others’, of
individualism versus collectivism, of objectivity versus subjectivism.
It wasn’t action-packed as Garland’s interpretation in the
movie. It was more like an LSD ride straight into madness, which forced me to
stop at times to absorb the dreamlike hypnotizing passages.
I give three stars, which, in my estimation, isn’t bad at
all. Perhaps, I’ll re-rate it later once I’m finished with the trilogy.
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