Jeff VanderMeer

In the cold winter of Area X, a new team embarks across the border on a mission to find a member of a previous expedition; and as they press deeper into the unknown the threat to the outside world becomes even more daunting.

A Novel

Acceptance

Sabrina D. 

"You know, Gloria," he says, “you’ll never really understand what it was like that first time, going out through that door in the border, coming back. Not if you cross the border a thousand times. We were offered up and we were lost. We were passing through a door of ghosts, into a place of spirits. And asked to deal with that. For the rest of our lives."

Nothing monstrous existed here—only beauty, only the glory of good design, of intricate planning, from the lungs that allowed this creature to live on land or at sea, to the huge gill slits hinted at along the sides, shut tightly now, but which would open to breathe deeply of seawater when the biologist once again headed for the ocean. All of those eyes, all of those temporary tidal pools, the pockmarks and the ridges, the thick, sturdy quality of the skin. An animal, an organism that had never existed before or that might belong to an alien ecology. That could transition not just from land to water but from one remote place to another, with no need for a door in a border. Staring up at her with her own eyes. Seeing her.

The sonorous sound now rising. The distant sense of weight and movement and bulk and substance and intent, and something in Ghost Bird’s mind linked to it, and no way to undo that.

So after a time, Ghost Bird stopped him. She knelt beside him, gently took the biologist’s letter and journal from him. She placed her arms around Control and held him, while Grace looked elsewhere in embarrassment, or a suppression of her own need for comfort. He thrashed in Ghost Bird’s arms, resisting, her feeling the preternatural warmth of him, and then eventually he subsided, stopped fighting, held her loosely, then held her tightly while she said not a word because to say anything—anything at all—would be to humiliate him, and she cared more about him than that. And it cost her nothing.

You could know the what of something forever and never discover the why.

It was a circular discussion, a loop that Control was creating to trap himself inside of, to dig the trenches, the moat, that would keep things out. How is this possible, how is that possible, and why—agonizing over both what he knew or thought he knew and what he could never, ever know. She knew where it would all lead, what it always led to in human beings—a decision about what to do. What are we going to do? Where do we go from here? How do we move forward? What is our mission now? As if purpose could solve everything, could take the outlines of what was missing and by sheer will invoke it, make it appear, bring it back to life.

What if an infection was a message, a brightness a kind of symphony? As a defense? An odd form of communication? If so, the message had not been received, would probably never be received, the message buried in the transformation itself. Having to reach for such banal answers because of a lack of imagination, because human beings couldn’t even put themselves in the mind of a cormorant or an owl or a whale or a bumblebee.

Membranes and dimensions. Limitless amounts of space. Limitless amounts of energy. Effortless manipulation of molecules. Continual attempts to transform the human into the non-human. The ability to move an entire biosphere to another place. Right now, if the outside world existed, it would still be sending radio-wave messages into space and monitoring radio-wave frequencies to seek out other intelligent life in the universe.

For, having found so many ways to put it off, I believe that my transformation will be more radical than it might have been, that I might indeed become something like the moaning creature. Will I see the real stars then?

Standing in a clearing one evening, as still as possible, I felt a kind of breath or thickness of molecules from behind that I could not identify, and I willed my heartbeat to slow so that for every one of mine the hearts of the tree frogs throating out their song might beat twenty thousand times. Hoping to be so quiet that without turning I might hear or in some other way glimpse what regarded me. But to my relief it fled or withdrew into the ground a moment later.

“What do you want?” you asked. Thankful, for once, that being your father’s daughter meant sometimes you could cut right through the bullshit.

Lowry, bent over his task, letting the moment elongate further. The mane of golden hair now silver, grown long. The determined, solid head on a thick neck, the landmarks of features upon a face that had served him well: craggy good looks, people say, like an astronaut or old-fashioned movie star.

The room is narrow, and you’re standing at the window, behind you a long, low lime-green couch with a steel frame covered by psychedelic orange pillows. Shaped like crude downward-diving breasts, porcelain light fixtures hang in rows of twenty from a ceiling slanted to the curve of the hill. Their glow melts across the couches, tables, and wooden floor in soft overlapping circles. The whole back plate of glass sealing off the room from behind is a mirror, projecting your images and protecting you from the truth that this isn’t really a lounge and you’re here not by invitation but by order. That this is an interrogation room of sorts.

But, in truth, standing there with Lowry, looking out across his domain through a long plate of tinted glass, you feel more as if you’re staring at a movie set: a collection of objects that without the animation of Lowry’s paranoia and fear, his projection of a story upon them, are inert and pathetic. No, not even a movie set, you realize. More like a seaside carnival in the winter, in the off-season, when even the beach is a poem about loneliness. How lonely is Lowry out here, surrounded by all of this?

No light came from the lighthouse, but raucous clusters of birds settling in for the night on the trees competed with the waves, their rude cries coming to her now over the wind. The trajectories of bats in the sky above seemed like something planned by a drunk navigator, their bodies obliterating stars in haphazard and unpredictable fashion.

At his back, the moon had filled utterly with blood and was plummeting to the Earth, descending in the midst of a flame so hot he could feel it at his back. The dead and the dying had taken up the cry of approaching oblivion.

But that just hid the thought that came now in little surges of panic: that something was wrong, that he was more and more a stranger in his own skin, that perhaps something was beginning to look out through his eyes. Infestation was a thought that crept in at moments between wakefulness and sleep, sleep and wakefulness, drifting down the passageway between the two. There was the sense of something sliding more completely into place, and the feeling confused and frightened him.

As he searched for something he knew he probably wouldn’t recognize, he was reflecting that a man could fall apart from any number of ailments, and a bit of maintenance couldn’t hurt.

Henry’s trudging across the sand toward the lighthouse had been a kind of travesty of progress, as he sagged and lurched and fought for purchase. Henry squinting against the glare, the wind half ripping his shirt from him—so big on him that the back of it surged right and left off his shoulders like a sail, as if mad to get free. It obscured the lagging Suzanne, whom Saul hadn’t even noticed at first. The sandpipers had hardly bothered with the usual nervous pitter-patter-glide away from Henry, choosing instead to poke around in the sand until the last moment and then take wing to escape the clumsy monster. Henry had looked in that moment like an awkward supplicant, a pilgrim come to worship.

The sun above was a huge gob of runny yellow. The waves were a rushing vibration in his awareness, but muffled.

“If you took away the insane people, no one would be left.” “Except me,” Charlie said. “Except me and, maybe, you.” “Except the birds and the deer and the otters.” “Except the hills and the lakes.” “Except the snakes and the ladders.”

Sometimes Saul did miss the sermons, the cadence of them, the way he could raise the words up from within him and send them out, never severing the deep connection between them. Could name a thing and in naming it enter so many minds. But there had come a day during his ministry when he had no words left, when he knew he was enjoying the cadence of the sentences he spoke more than the meaning—and then he was lost for a time, swimming across an endless sea of doubt, certain he had failed. Because he had failed. Hellfire and apocalyptic visions, the coming destruction of the world by demons, could not sustain a man for long without robbing him of something, too. At the end, he did not know what he meant or what he believed, and so he had given it up in one prolonged shudder that cast off an entire life and fled as far south as he could, as far remote as well. Fleeing, too, his father, who had fed off that growing cult of personality, had been at once manipulative and envious, and that had been too much to bear for long: that a man so distant, who had projected so little light, should now reveal to Saul only those emotions he did not want.

“There is the sea, vast and spacious, and there the ships go to and fro.”

You take a deep breath and relax into the landscape, walk along the shore of this lower heaven rejuvenated by its perfect stillness. Your legs are for a time no longer tired and you are afraid of nothing, not even Area X, and you have no room for memory or thought or anything except this moment, and this one, and the next.

Unexpectedly my favorite of the trilogy. I felt this one was surprisingly poetic…not fluffy pretty prose, but straightforward and simple, yet beautiful nonetheless. 

The story still holds true to the main characters’ emotions or lack thereof, which is something I really admire about this series and the way the author writes intellectual female characters. 

Even though much of the mystery of Area X came to light, it somehow led to more questions and hypotheses 😵‍💫🤔

Laura Walden

Unexpectedly my favorite of the trilogy. I felt this one was surprisingly poetic…not fluffy pretty prose, but straightforward and simple, yet beautiful nonetheless. 

The story still holds true to the main characters’ emotions or lack thereof, which is something I really admire about this series and the way the author writes intellectual female characters. 

Even though much of the mystery of Area X came to light, it somehow led to more questions and hypotheses 😵‍💫🤔

’A contemporary masterpiece’ Guardian THE THIRD VOLUME OF THE EXTRAORDINARY SOUTHERN REACH TRILOGY – NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY ALEX GARLAND (EX MACHINA) AND STARRING NATALIE PORTMAN, OSCAR ISAAC, GINA RODRIGUEZ AND TESSA THOMPSON

Acceptance (The Southern Reach Trilogy, Book 3)

My favorite of the SR series so far. Combines the cosmic with the mundane, the surreal with sensory realism. I love the characters, the setting, and the presentation. 

Chloe 

i know this book no longer concludes the southern reach series, but i am happy enough for it to be the end. no rush to absolution. the lighthouse keeper and the director sections are the more compelling ones, while i had no investment in control. not sure how to rate this, really. 

aisha

Anna 

** spoiler alert **
           závěrečný díl trilogie jižní zóna byl naštěstí milým překvapením. po druhém díle, který se odehrával ve své podstatě jen v kanceláři a v hospodě a já musela 300 stran poslouchat stížnosti vyhořelého detektiva, jsem se - docela pochopitelně - bála, že třetí díl bude stejně nudný, ne-li horší. díky bohu se ale hlavní postavy vrátily zpět do oblasti x a já jsem zas cítila stejnou hororovou atmosféru jako v prvním díle, který jsem si tak užila.
knížka byla vyprávěná z pohledu více hlavních postav, novinkou byl třeba strážce majáku. jakoby, ta atmosféra byla určitě úžasná a tajemná, celé to bylo takové zamotané a napínavé a člověk chtěl strašně moc zjistit, jak to vlastně bylo, ale... ve své podstatě jste se tam nic nového nedozvěděli. kniha skončila s poměrně otevřeným koncem a celé ty kapitoly z různých pohledů sice vyprávěly příběh, ale ten příběh nikam nesměřoval a skončil někde... uprostřed, nebo jak to říct.
nejzajímavější částí byl asi deník bioložky, to jsem si strašně užila a její zápisky mi hezky celou oblast x dokreslily, ale jinak.. no v podstatě mám pořád hodně otázek. 
knížce jsem nechala takto vysoký počet hlavně protože ten svět je prostě úžasně vymyšlený a originální a já to přečetla jedním dechem, ale jak jsem říkala, příběh skončil rozpracovaný a ponechaný svému osudu. 
vlastně jsem si teď vzpomněla, že měla vyjít čtvrtá kniha do série, ale autor ji ani nenapsal. tak to bude asi kvůli tomu a já se holt smířím s tím, že si oblast x nějak vysvětlím sama.
.
nechávám 4*/5*, série se mi vryla do paměti a myslím na ní ještě týdny po dočtení, kdy píšu tuhle recenzi. postavy byly dobře vykreslené a každá z nich ve mně něco zanechala. 
jen škoda, že se to pořádně neuzavřelo.

Ryan Mateyk

I want to keep this short but I'll start by saying this was a satisfying conclusion to this one-of-a-kind trilogy. I really did enjoy reading these novels, though they could be a bit tedious at times. I found this true with this book, especially Ghost Bird's narration. Vandermeer uses commas a bit excessively and it convoluted the narration for me. 

I really enjoyed the varying narrative perspectives in this book, especially the use of second person narration. I also really enjoyed the Lightkeeper's sections. There are still many unanswered questions, and even some new ideas that were introduced in this book were left as mysteries, but after three books, I've warmed to the fact that there is always going to mystery associated with Area X, for the characters and for the reader.

Last thing: I think I enjoyed this one of the most (or tied for first with Authority) of the trilogy because it seemed so much more human than the other books. We discovered traits and personalities that made the characters seem more real, versus the abstracts we'd been given previously.

Barış Yarsel

VanderMeer üretken bir yazar editör. hery yerde görünür olanlardan değil de, sürekli bir şeyler üreten cinsten. gençler için bilimkurgu fantezi edebiyat kampı da yapıyor birkaç yıldır.

bu üçlemesi, çorba gibi birçok konuyu gayet başarılı biçimde derli toplu, heyecanlı biçimde sunuyor. ekolojik felaketler, insanın doğayla, hayvanlarla ilişkisi, dünyadan soyutlanmış Bölge ile gizemli odalar, biyolojik fenomenler vs.

Dört kadından oluşan bir keşif ekibi, ki isimleri yerine mesleklerini biliriz, x bölgesi denilen ve tuhaf bir çevresel durumun olduğu bölgeyi araştırmaya gider. İlk kitapta bu keşif görevinin notlarını okuruz.

Ben üçlemeden çok ikincisini sevdim, Authority. Burada Kontrol isimli karakterin etrafında oldukça başarılı psikolojik gerilim örülmüş. keşfin yıllar sonrasına gidiyoruz. Anlatımdaki üslup tamamen değişiyor, bunu ayrıca sevdim.

Üçüncü kitap Acceptance’da üslup yine değişiyor. Üç farklı karakterin gözünden, anomaliyi bilimsel metotlarla çözmeye çalışan kurumu, bürokrasinin anlamlandıramadığı bir olay karşısında nasıl felce uğradığını okuyoruz.

Aynı zamanda bölgenin geçmişine gidiyor ve anomali öncesinde yaşananları öğreniyoruz. Kitap başarılı biçimde (ya da başarısız ?) bazı cevaplar verirken, havada bıraktığı konularla bölgeye bizim de kendimizce anlam katmamıza çalışmış gibi.

Lakin böylesi hikayelerde insan cevap istiyor, üzerime çözülmüş gizem at diyor. Ştrugatski biraderleri hatırlatan detaylar ve Lem benzerliği ise tuhaf, yazar bunları hiç okumadığını söylüyor. Bu da tuhaf:) Yazar anomalinin bir gün öncesini anlatan bir novella yazacak sanırım.

bir ekleme: bu üçleme Alfa Yayıncılık tarafından hızlıca çevrilip yayımlandı. Göz attığım kadarıyla da gayet iyi bir çeviri. Bu şartlarda hemen her kitabı yakalayıp çeviren yayıncılara da tebrikler. Mine Sarucan çevirisi.

I felt like a whole lot of nothing happened here. I'm no closer to necessarily understanding Area X as I was before; everyone just walked around or thought of something and then talked about what they thought about. It felt a little underwhelming in comparison to what I felt in the first and second books in this series.

Holly

Eitan Hershkovitz

Not as good as the second or first books. Very slow and boring. A lot of questions left unanswered. A lot of unnecessary background information that gives no additional supplement to the main story. The ending was kind of cool.

I could never expect the way it ended, I only wish there was more. 

Kimber Severance 

What a fun conclusion to this trilogy! I finished this yesterday and I have been sitting and thinking about it for the past 24 hours. 

Acceptance is an eerie and cerebral final act, we find out through multiple pov’s the birth of area x, the reason for area x and what happens within it. 

Overall this trilogy was such a fun read and left me still with questions and theories. I thoroughly enjoyed immersing into this atmospheric world and will still be thinking about it in the years to come. 

jaz ☁️

What a fun conclusion to this trilogy! I finished this yesterday and I have been sitting and thinking about it for the past 24 hours. 

Acceptance is an eerie and cerebral final act, we find out through multiple pov’s the birth of area x, the reason for area x and what happens within it. 

Overall this trilogy was such a fun read and left me still with questions and theories. I thoroughly enjoyed immersing into this atmospheric world and will still be thinking about it in the years to come. 

It is winter in Area X. A new team embarks across the border, on a mission to find a member of a previous expedition who may have been left behind. As they press deeper into the unknown, navigating new terrain and new challenges, the threat to the outside world becomes only more daunting.

The Southern Reach Trilogy #3

Ed Kay

Have rated all four books in this trilogy as 4 stars, though I'm still quite unsure about what I just experienced. Initially frustrated by the fact that there were never any easy answers, I've read a few reviews that point out that this isn't a straight science fiction text, but more of a "weird" fiction, a genre I'm not all that familiar with, but which apparently has less of a reliance on tying things up.

There's a lot to enjoy in here, particularly the writing style which is very hypnotic. It washes over you with a kind of steady, wave-like rhythm, appropriately, given the strong presence of the sea in the book - and hypnosis, of course.

This is a terrible review, partly because I feel this trilogy has put me in a kind of fugue state. As if I have been colonised by Area X and am not sure where my own interpretations and impressions end, and Area X itself begins.

It's very haunting, and I think will stay with me for a while. Not so that I can try to solve the mystery (I don't think that is possible) - rather, so that I can revel in it.

Dave | Storyphoria

I’ll save my thoughts on the series overall for their own discussion, but as a stand-alone I enjoyed Acceptance. It’s a thought provoking science fiction read that bucks the trend of having everything wrapped up with a nice little bow. VanderMeer makes you work for it some and I found myself going back to re-read sections not only for the story itself, but because I really enjoyed his choice of words at times. I can absolutely understand people feeling wholly unsatisfied with this book as the ending to the Southern Reach trilogy, however I appreciate a book(and a series) that leaves some meat on the bone for us to chew on after the final pages have been consumed.

If I had to boil this book down to just a few words or thoughts, it would be this. Acceptance was a chilling, low-fi/sci-fi full of atmospheric vibes and a world that is at once beautiful and brutally deadly. Nothing is given freely and you’ll feel like you earned those final pages by the time it’s over. It won’t be for everybody, it answers some, but not all, of your questions, but in the end it’s a beautiful look into a world where nature(of some variety) is simply trying to reclaim what has been lost to the tinkering of human-kind.

Hana 

Stephanie Highfield 

I was over this quite early on, but I had to finish it because the first 2 in the trilogy were so good! Was it worth it? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

James Eaton

I read all 3 back to back to back. 

Ultimately it felt like one larger story. Each book has an interesting take on the area, the organization, the history, etc. 

So much more that could have been unearthed,
But it was a rewarding read.

Alfredo santos

This is the craziest trilogy I've ever read. 

This is because of several important points:

- The story is very superfluos and full of symbols, hidden meanings and a lot of semiotic stuff. 
- The prose is elegant, eloquent and absent. It's such a different way of writing, knowing that every word you read, is not going to mean anything, or going to mean a lot. Depends on your preference. This is so hard to describe so I recommend you go and read a bit for yourselves. 
- The overall meaning is to have an uncomprehended story. If that makes any sense. Words are not words, sometimes they are vessels, sometimes they mean something else entirely. 

So, either it's a master piece of uncomprehensible prose which fulfills it's exact purpose. And also leaves an open conclusion for suggestion mixed with perpetual entanglement, or it can be a crap story with a nice writing. Both opinions and conclusions are right for this trilogy.

nonchi

Na real é 3.5 🌟 mas os últimos 4 capítulos foram muito bons então fica 4, mesmo sendo anticlimatico pra caramba. 

Valeu como o primeiro livro de ficção estranha que eu li, mas não gostei de quase nenhum backstory apresentado pelos personagens. Só gostei mesmo foi o da Bióloga e o resto é sem graça e repetitivo. Todos vem de família problemática com pais charlatões, ninguém tem relacionamentos sólidos, Grace era a única que tava fazendo sentido do meio pro final... E eu nem gosto dela! 
Ninguém queria entender, tava todo mundo aceitando mesmo, e é isso que tem pra hoje. E tudo bem, é ficção estranha. 

Sobre o que a bióloga se tornou no final, fiquei triste. Ela não merecia isso não. E na minha cabeça o Controle virou o cervo de galho florido que apareceu na versão do filme, vlw flw.

It is winter in Area X, the mysterious wilderness that has defied explanation for thirty years, rebuffing expedition after expedition, refusing to reveal its secrets. As Area X expands, the agency tasked with investigating and overseeing it--the Southern Reach--has collapsed on itself in confusion. Now one last, desperate team crosses the border, determined to reach a remote island that may hold the answers they've been seeking. If they fail, the outer world is in peril. Meanwhile, Acceptance tunnels ever deeper into the circumstances surrounding the creation of Area X--what initiated this unnatural upheaval? Among the many who have tried, who has gotten close to understanding Area X--and who may have been corrupted by it? In this last installment of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, the mysteries of Area X may be solved, but their consequences and implications are no less profound--or terrifying.

Fraser Simons

A pretty satisfying finale, less horrific than the others in that the answers demystify things such that it strips away what was scary. I actually would have maybe even liked more mystery. It’s still somewhat unknowable but what is given hampers what works so well. But as usual there is a couple bends in the road and cool stuff going on. My favourite is still by far and away the first book, though. 

It would have been much more effective to me if the chapter switching between different character perspectives didn’t tread over old ground. Especially in the case of the psychiatrist. Been waiting to learn about her for the entire time but 3/4 of the story lands with a thud because all the really twisty stuff was revealed previously, plus it’s done from a perspective I hate: where the author addresses the reader as though they’re a character. It takes me out of the fiction, it doesn’t embed me further.

Emmett

More conundrum than conclusion, but given that the expanse of the world VanderMeer has created defies even linguistic categorisation, one can only happily accept this brilliant, puzzling, answer-less end to the trilogy. It is the only ending this series can serve up that completes itself and sustains a reader's expectations.

jiaqi kang

** spoiler alert **
           i really did miss the biologist's voice and was so happy when she came back for a while

Sheila

WTFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

Maxie Froelicher

It takes a lot to make me cry, but this book did. This whole trilogy is gorgeous, the visuals stunning and (even though I still have so many questions!) I couldn’t ask for a better ending.

Amanda Valentin

** spoiler alert **
           This was the most disappointing out of the series. I don't know if it is because I read this with a cold or what but I was soooo confused. I really did not understand what was going on in most of the book. And I am confused still with what Area X was and what happened to some of the characters. The descriptions of what was going on were so out there that I had trouble picturing what they looked like...like the biologist monster thing...The series started off strong I really liked the first book and the 2nd one was alright but this one was just not very good.

Jason Porterfield

This book is a hindrance and a slow and painful death. It is an excellent argument against e-readers, for one can't destroy a dead tree book by flinging it across the room in disgust. This book can leave this world.

Acceptance A Novel

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