And the consequences will spread much further than that. 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 themselves-and what they expose pushes Control to confront disturbing truths about both himself and the agency he's promised to serve. In Authority, John Rodriguez, aka 'Control,' is the team's newly appointed head. They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers-they discover a massive topographic anomaly and life forms that surpass understanding-but it's the surprises that came across the border with them, and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another, that change everything.Īfter the disastrous twelfth expedition chronicled in Annihilation, the Southern Reach-the secret agency that monitors these expeditions-is in disarray. 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. Their group is made up of four women: an anthropologist a surveyor a psychologist, the de facto leader and our narrator, a biologist.

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. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. A single-volume hardcover edition that brings together the three volumes of the Southern Reach Trilogy, which were originally published as paperback originals in February, May, and September 2014.Īnnihilation is the first volume in Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, Authority is the second, and Acceptance is the third.Īrea X-a remote and lush terrain-has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades.

Area X by Jeff VanderMeer