For thirty years, Area X has remained mysterious and remote behind its intangible border - an environmental disaster zone, though to all appearances an abundant wilderness.
The Southern Reach, a secretive government agency, has sent eleven expeditions to investigate Area X. One has ended in mass suicide, another in a hail of gunfire, the eleventh in a fatal cancer epidemic.
Now four women embark on the twelfth expedition into the unknown.
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The tower, which was not supposed to be there, plunges into the earth in a place just before the black pine forest begins to give way to swamp and then the reeds and wind-gnarled trees of the marsh flats.- 01: INITIATION
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(@4thEstateBooks, 4 February 2014, e-book, 210 pages, bought from @AmazonKindle)
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I loved Annihilation. I've wanted to read it since I saw and loved the movie. The book is a bit different from the movie which I found all the more enjoyable. The overall impression of the four unnamed characters expedition through Area X is the same as the movie, surreal, strange, and dream-like with a sense of impending horror. They know something awful is around them, perhaps watching them but the four women are compelled to continue on even as they start to transform and lose all sense of reality. I loved this and can't wait to read the second book.