The Library Reviews: Jeff Vandermeer’s ‘Annihilation’ and the Art of Paying Extra for an Ending
Why did no one warn me I was entering a dangerious world of…Pay to understand? How did this review turn so sour? Oh wait, you might have to pay me to find out.
I have a list of people I trust with books. Anyone else comes at me with a recommendation, I tend to look at them funny and say —’ whoa whoa whoa’.
I would love to be more open and read whatever people think is great, but it’s hard to trust a foreign taste. Still,I beleive that a book can be made better if someone explains why they like it, brings out something unusual that maybe I would have missed, or tells me how they relate to it. Some books you gotta be introduced to.
So when I told a friend about the book we’re working on at themoment, she said ‘The Sourthern Reach Trilogy’ is a definite must read, beautiful, intelligent. So I read it. What happened next, is now part of your online history.
ABOUT THE DAMN BOOK:
‘Annihilation’ is a story about four women who go to a place they shouldn’t really be, on an expedition that wasn’t clearly explained to them. And whatever was explained, was probably lies anyway. Apparently they’re going to this wild nature area where an accident occured some time ago and interesting things started going on. Unfortuntaly, most people who go there, simply don’t come back. This is the extent of my understanding of the plot before and after reading the book.
They have no names and refer to themselves by their expertise. The person we follow around in their head is the biologist, a person who is so uninteresting on a galactic scale, I can only assume that me man Jeff over here put in the book simply to make sure a personality wouldn’t distract us from all this weird stuff.
“To summarise this book in a commercial way, this is Lost vs Stranger things, minus the kids. “
— me, after struggling to explain what in the world is this
This is clearly a books that sets up a massive mystery, from the first page to its peak, and that’s great. It even equips you with the best person to try and make sense of this wilderness, an actual biologist who specialises in understanding ‘life’ on every level. So far, so totally good.
Now, when I start reading a book like this, I get a little bit nervous. Such a big mystery. So little info. It’s not that thick. Will it get to the point in time? Or will it literally just keep spitting weirdness until final credits?
What I’m referring to is the fact that mystery, horror, suspense, new concepts that comprise a work of speculative fiction, they should have A PAYOFF.
MILD SPOILER AHEAD CALM DOWN
Imagine how you would feel if at the end of Dune, young Paul would sit on a sand dune, probably dying, and say “oh man, I really hope someone finds out where spice comes from.” THE END
If that would make you angry, I thoroughly recommend you either steer clear of this book, or give in to what I have now named the ‘microtransaction scam’ of the the 4th Estate Publishing.
ABOUT THE DAMN PUBLISHING PROCESS OF THE TRILOGY
The Southern Reach trilogy succeeded because it was packaged in a certain way, and the entire Book 1 is literally a set up for the actual story that follows in books 2+3.
They were published in the same year, which means the entire story was written at once probably, but someone made the decision to split it in three.
Now, I love book marketing. In fact, I do it. A lot. And with the book industry more competitive than ever (debatable), trad publishers need to think a lot more like indies to make their titles rank high, to make people rave and share. And a brilliant way to do it, is to do this super satisfying thing where you release more than one book in a year, in the same series.
As a reader, I strongly salute this, because I think books deserve momentum, and if you can afford to wait and invest, then good for you.
But what I beleive they’ve done in the case on ‘The Southern Reach Trilogy’ makes me all kinds of angry.
At first, I couldn’t put my finger on it. It was like, wait so — I don’t get to know more at the end of the first book? This entire behemoth of lies and mystery doesn’t get solved?
And then the book itself referred me straight back to the shop and literally said — ‘listen here, the next book has like such a better perspective into what’s really going on, because it’s about the people who organise the expeditions and this is where you get your answers from.’
DISCLAIMER: I did not read Book 2 or 3 yet, and I kind of feel like I will. But if there’s no answers there either, then I’ll feel silly and I’ll buy you all Vandermeer fans some ice cream.
But hang on. I just braved through 60,000 words of a mystery with no payoff that (cheap trick) I now want because I braved though all these pages, and all you have for me is a link back to the shop?
J’accuse.
This feels like I’m being asked to pay to understand all of this rubble I waded though, TOWER OR TUNNEL TOWER OR TUNNEL (sorry I had to get that out).
The art of selling books for the 4th Estate, a publisher that claims they do ‘literary fiction’, would seem to be above this reader tricking, but what it seems to have done is —
Made me pay for its own book teaser.
Think about that for a while.
P.S. I already bought ‘Authority’, and as I did, I’ll read it but, why…
