I am a huge sucker for The Weird, and I so wanted to like this book. Soooooo wanted to. But it feels very self-consciously weird to me, and somewhat familiar — The TV show Lost had the same kind of “and here is the bizarre thing we will just throw at you with no explanation.” Lost had the hatch; Annihilation has the tower (or tunnel). Lost has a smoke monster, Annihilation has the Crawler. Lost has a lighthouse, Annihilation has…a lighthouse!

The bigger problem I have is that the narration is so flat. The first-person narrator is a scientist (“the biologist” is her only name in the book), and it’s emphasized throughout that she is scientific, logical, detached, that this has been a problem for her in her relationships. The narration and descriptions throughout the book are, therefore, always straightforward, fact-based, logical, and detached. It’s a technique, and I admire it from a writing craft point of view, but it kept me from being really drawn into the book. I like my Weird to be more richly described, more heavily adjectivy, more over-the-top florid. (yes I am a huge Lovecraft fan)

I will probably read the next book in the series because there’s a lot that is set up and not explained in this one, and I’m curious enough to want to find out where it goes. And maybe the next book will have a different narrator.