Science Fiction: Area X, Jeff Vandermeer

Area X (collected volume of short novels Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance)
Jeff Vandermeer
ISBN: 9780374261177
Read April 15, 2016

Weird book. The first of the trilogy was divisive: either it was the future of American sci-fi (weird fiction) or it was a self-congratulatory writing exercise by someone with an overactive imagination but no discipline.  The furor died down a bit as the other volumes arrived on schedule, and then built back up a bit with the release of the collected volume.

Plot summary time: (attempting to be spoiler-free)

There is a government research facility called the Southern Reach that is investigating a strange disaster that occurred along a portion of the southern coastline of the country, forming an impermeable border around that section with only a few mysterious terrifying portals.  The area inside the border is called Area X.  These three books are concerned with the people who either work for or are guinea pigs sent on "expeditions" inside Area X.  The government is attempting to understand and control whatever mysterious force is maintaining the border, the portals, and the facility (Southern Reach) is trying to figure out and stop it from doing horrific and unexplained things to all of the truly unfortunate expedition teams that are repeatedly shoved inside the place.

Thoughts on the collected edition:
The first book is absolutely the best, by a notable margin.  We are introduced to a peculiar character beginning a new expedition, with a curious background and emotional hooks to the expedition concept and to the oddly horrible and mundane natural setting of Area X.  The plot goes quickly, the horrible things are interesting and haunting and cleverly written to be evocative rather than overly helpfully descriptive.

The middle book lagged badly.  I wasn't enamored with the new characters we follow there, and thought that the slow progression towards madness was less inevitable and looming and more simply interminable and plodding.  It was also the most "obvious" of the three books, with heavy-handed symbolism and events that were painfully obvious to the reader, while the characters labor on unsuspecting.  Oddly enough, except for sections about two previously minor characters, not necessary to the progression of the story, and one could almost read only the first and last books and not miss too much substance.  In the middle book, we shadow a new director who has been sent out to run the Southern Reach facility after the previous directer was lost to Area X.  He's got problems of his own, and the Reach begins to really impact his sanity as he tries to figure out what is going on (and mostly fails, frustratingly).

The last book is the one that really ended up lighting people on fire.  We follow a set of characters (alternating sections) this time, most from the second book. They return to the actual Area X, and things get promptly weird and a lot more metaphysical and philosophical.  It has been compared to the TV series LOST, where the series appealed to two different types of audiences: the ones who like a good mystery to be solved and "figured out" and completed and put away into little tidy boxes, and the ones who like weird mysterious conspiracy-theory ideas and don't mind the world (or their fiction) to be messy and unexplained in the end.  Like LOST, this book pissed off roughly half the readership - the ones who like things to be tidy and explained.  I read it fairly quickly in a few big chunks, and so was less unhappy with the very open ending, but even I was confused by the massive shifts in tone and focus right at the end.

So.. I don't know if I recommend it or not.  If you like creepity haunting descriptions, and don't mind a meandering plot and unresolved endings, then read the first book by itself and see if it intrigues you.  If you've read Lovecraft or Hodgson's ancient The Night Land, and thought that they were a bit too linear, but nicely desciptive, you're likely going to like this.  If you really want things to be explained and "finished" in any sort of tidy way, don't even bother - you'll just frustrate yourself.