"Authority" by Jeff VanderMeer

Authority

by Jeff VanderMeer

The trilogy of The Southern Reach continues with Authority. It tells the story of Area X from another perspective, from a government agent who likes to be called ‘Control’. The newly appointed director’s mission is to replace the former one who volunteered to enter Area X and vanished without ever returning to the Southern Reach facility.

I have to be honest, the book wasn’t as striking and suspense-filled and frightening as Annihilation was. It was a drag. The narrative was bland, stretched out, and conveyed little to nothing about what the hell is going on… even predictable at some point. Imagine Franz Kafka without the very essence of Franz Kafka, or Don Delillo without the thing that makes him Don Delillo… or the video game Control without its bizarre, moody, and horrifying aspects, with only its humdrum bureaucratic nonsense. That’s how I felt about two-thirds of the book. Perhaps, it’s the point of Authority to feel like it’s a husk, a shallow exterior of Annihilation, which, in a way, it reflects what happened to the returnees… but what do I know?

Anyway, it started out with interrogations (with no revelations because, of course, we knew what happened to the Biologist) and musings and flashbacks (which I found inconsequential and unamusing) and very, very detailed descriptions of the settings.

Yes, I get it, they’re part of a snail-paced buildup, but the question is… is the looong wait worth it? Does the ending justify the wait? Personally, no.

Now, I heard some readers claim that the third book holds many answers to what triggered Area X. They’re absolutely right. I had to watch youtube videos just to confirm that, and guess what, the story is indeed interesting. But, as a reader, I think it’s VanderMeer’s fault for driving me away with a 341-page-long book that should’ve been summarized into 100 pages to serve as a threshold for Acceptance.

I give it one star... two stars for effort. I'm terribly sorry, but the change of POV and mood between Annihilation and Authority felt jarring and inconsistent as if the two books didn't belong to the same series, something a professional writer wouldn't do.