The second instalment in Jeff VanderMeer's chilling and spectacular Southern Reach trilogy finds the titular secret agency now headed by new leader John Rodriguez and pursuing even darker and more disturbing leads in trying to safeguard and comprehend the mysterious Area X.
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Now a major motion picture, written and directed by Alex Garland and starring Natalie Portman and Oscar Isaac.
The second volume of the extraordinary Southern Reach Trilogy - Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance.
He stares for hours at the shapes, the movements, listening to the whispers echoing up to him… and then he falls.Following the disastrous twelfth expedition chronicled in Annihilation, the second book of the Southern Reach trilogy introduces John Rodriguez, the new head of the government agency responsible for the safeguarding of Area X.
His first day is spent grappling with the fall-out from the last expedition. Area X itself remains a mystery. But, as instructed by a higher authority known only as The Voice, the self-styled Control must battle to `put his house in order'.
From a series of interrogations, a cache of hidden notes and hours of profoundly troubling video footage, the mysteries 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.
Undermined and under pressure to make sense of everything, Rodriguez retreats into his past in a labyrinthine search for answers. Yet the more he uncovers, the more he risks, for the secrets of the Southern Reach are more sinister than anyone could have known.
Described as ‘a contemporary masterpiece’ by the Guardian, the Southern Reach Trilogy is a stunning work of contemporary science fiction that challenges the boundary between known and the unknown, human and alien, terror and limitless beauty.
Read X Marks the Plot, our exclusive interview with Jeff VanderMeer, on the Waterstones Blog
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN: 9780008139117
Number of pages: 352
Weight: 330 g
Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 26 mm
Praise for ANNIHILATION and the SOUTHERN REACH TRILOGY: ‘I’m loving the Southern Reach Trilogy … Creepy and fascinating’ Stephen King ‘Hauntingly weird and brilliantly new … These are contemporary masterpieces and career-defining novels’ Adam Robert, Books of the Year, Guardian ‘This trilogy is a modern mycological masterpiece … Remarkable … Tense, eerie and unsettling … VanderMeer writes much better prose than Poe ever did … This is genuinely potent and dream-haunting writing. VanderMeer has arrived.’ Guardian ‘A teeming science fiction that draws on Conrad and Lovecraft alike … “Annihilation” shows signs of being the novel that will allow VanderMeer to break through to a new and larger audience’ Sunday Telegraph ‘A lasting monument to the uncanny … You find yourself afraid to turn the page’ Guardian ‘VanderMeer’s novel is a psycho-geographical tour de force, channelling Ballard and Lovecraft to instil the reader with a deep, delicious unease’ Financial Times ‘What a haunting book this is, lodging deep in the memory in similar fashion to otherworldly classics such as David Lindsay’s “A Voyage To Arcturus” … “Annihilation” is so disquietingly strange as to defy summarisation. Read it’ Daily Mail ‘Astonishing, frightening, spectacular … The imaginative daring and reach with which VanderMeer has invented and executed a concept such as Area X is breathtaking … Powerful and echoing … I hope the trilogy will come to be seen not only as the instant sci-fi classic it is, but also as Literature’ New Statesman ‘Immersive, insightful and often deeply bloody creepy, this is a startlingly good novel … A major work’ SFX Magazine ‘A tense and chilling psychological thriller about an unravelling expedition and the strangeness within us. A little Kubrick, a lot of Lovecraft, the novel builds with an unbearable tension and claustrophobic dread that lingers long afterwards. I loved it’ Lauren Beukes ‘Original and beautiful, maddening and magnificent’ Warren Ellis
The second book in Jeff VanderMeer's engrossing trilogy answers some questions whilst still leaving plenty in wait for the third and final book.
It was always tricky to follow up the thrilling pace of the first...
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In part two of three of the Southern Reach Trilogy, we finally see inside the research institute that is sending people to Area X. Questions left hanging in the first instalment are answered masterfully, and often in... More
LOVED IT!! An incredible follow up to Annihilation. Brilliantly written and plotted, engrossing, dark and tense - I found myself holding my breath throughout several parts of this novel. I'm raving about this... More
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