Name: Gabe Cortez's review of Authority by Jeff VanderMeer
Item: Authority
Rating: 3.5
Author: Gabe Cortez

Jeff VanderMeer

’A contemporary masterpiece’ Guardian THE SECOND 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

The Southern Reach Trilogy #2

Authority

John Rodriguez, the new head of a secret agency tasked to monitor Area X—a lush and remote terrain mysteriously sequestered from civilization—is faced with disturbing truths about himself and the agency he has sworn to serve when the secrets of Area X begin to reveal themselves. Original. 50,000 first printing.

A Novel

aisha

“[. . .] There’s a kind of… brightness…. inside.”

Nothing in the medical updates, except an elevated temperature.

“That’s called life,” Control said.

She didn’t laugh at that, but said, quietly, “I don’t think so.”

For thirty years, the only human engagement with Area X has taken the form of a series of expeditions monitored by a secret agency called the Southern Reach. After the disastrous twelfth expedition chronicled in 'Annihilation', the Southern Reach is in disarray, and John Rodriguez, aka 'Control, ' is the team's newly appointed head. From a series of interrogations, a cache of hidden notes, and hours of profoundly troubling video footage, the secrets 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

Holly

That Whitby had become a breach, a leak, a door into Area X, expressed as an elongated equation over time... it was because Whitby had been calling out to her like a human beacon.

And the wall was soft and breathing under the touch of his hand.

Imagined Whitby crawling through the air ducts. His white face. His white hands. Reaching out.

...that the stiff shifting of the man's jaw hid something more premeditated and deadly... but still, Whitby did not speak, as if he too wanted to preserve the illusion.

He had been standing there recognizing that there was a draft in the loft...

...it wasn't a draft. Someone was breathing, behind him. Someone was breathing on his neck.

He turned with incredible slowness...saw with alarm a large, pale, watery-blue eye that existed against a backdrop of darkness or dark rags shot through with pale flesh, and which resolved into Whitby.

...someone had painted a vast phantasmagoria of grotesque monsters with human faces... The pixelated faces were blown-up security head shots of Southern Reach staff.

There was a border, too: a red ring of fire that transformed at the ends into a two-headed monster, and Area X in its belly.

And none of which saved him from a kind of grieving not at the power he was losing but at the person he had lost.

It was like a diorama from a museum devoted to the secret history of the Southern Reach.

A tower could become a pit. Questioning a biologist could become a trap.

it's as if Control learned the word "terroir" from Whitby and began using it extensively across his time in SR. looove this feature

Everyone was dead by then, except for an injured Lowry, already halfway back to the border.

Yet for a good twenty seconds the camera flew above the glimmering marsh reeds, the deep blue lakes, the ragged white cusp of the sea, toward the lighthouse.

Dipped and rose, fell again and soared again.

With what seemed like a horrifying enthusiasm. An all-consuming joy.

A pale creature was crouched in front of the shelves of supplies, revealed under the sharp light of a single low-swinging lightbulb.

An unbearable yet beatific agony deformed its features.

He looked like a walking, talking cliché... You could become invisible that way... Become a type, no one saw you. Paranoid thought: What better disguise? But disguise for what?

...but that white spiral, that enormous space, did not leave him completely. There was an odd synchronicity as he worked that linked the spiral to his mother's flash of light across the sky, the literal and metaphoric joined together across an expanse of time and context so vast that only thoughts could bridge the gap.

Slow death by malign unknown time-traveling force. Slow death by invasion from an alternate earth. Slow death by wildly divergent technology or shadow biosphere or symbiosis or iconography or etymology. 

Whitby. Invisible and yet all too visible. The cipher who came in and out of focus, seemed both near and far.

Central descended on the Southern Reach like a many-limbed über-parasite...

Imagine that language is only part of a method of communication. Imagine that it isn't even the important part but more like the pipeline, the highway. A conduit only.

Maybe "superstition" was what snuck into the gaps, the cracks, when you worked in a place with falling morale and depleted resources. Maybe superstition was what happened when your director went missing in action and your assistant director was still mourning the loss. Maybe that was when you fell back on spells and rituals, the reptile brain saying to the rest of you, "I'll take it from here. You've had your shot." ... How many invisible, abstract incantations ruled the world beyond the Southern Reach?

The plaintive groan of metal and the vibration of engines that continued running as they disappeared... A smoldering, apocalyptic vision, the con towers of a destroyer, sent to investigate with the wrong intel, "sliding into nothing", as one observer put it.

The thing about people who wanted to show you things was that sometimes their interest in granting you knowledge was laced with a little voyeuristic sadism.

Already his wings were burning up and he felt more like some ponderous moaning creature trapped in the mire.

"Never do something for just one reason," his grandpa had told him more than once, and that, at least, Control had taken to heart.

Much slower paced than Annihilation, but still keeps you on edge and peering around every corner (and behind your back). Some creepy scenes and images that will stick with me for sure, and a pretty good ending. Would hold up far less as an individual work I would think, but a decent middle entry that keeps you hooked on to read the third. 

Gabe Cortez

 interesting as the one inside it, but there's more than enough here to keep me going, and flipping the perspective dials up the intrigue another way.

c0up

The world outside of Area X isn't as interesting as the one inside it, but there's more than enough here to keep me going, and flipping the perspective dials up the intrigue another way.

Slower than Annihilation but still interesting enough to keep me reading.

Ashley Freeman

vandermeer's imagining of ecological upheaval? revolution? (these are the words i'm drawn to) is always so incredibly beautiful and all-consuming, yet not hungry... if it makes any sense? never... ravenous or malevolent... it's a gorgeous thing...

book 3 here i come... 

vandermeer's imagining of ecological upheaval? revolution? (these are the words i'm drawn to) is always so incredibly beautiful and all-consuming, yet not hungry... if it makes any sense? never... ravenous or malevolent... it's a gorgeous thing...

Anna 

druhý díl série, která vypadala velice nadějně. anihilace mě příjemně překvapila, autoritu jsem proto začala číst hned ten stejný den. ale musím říct, že mě hodně zklamala.
děj už není o bioložce, ale o agentovi, který si říká šéf. šéfa přeřadili do jižní zóny, což je v podstatě středisko, ve kterém se celá oblast X zkoumá. můžeme si myslet, že šéf oblast X rozluští, že kniha dostane nějaký spád a bude tam tolik plot twistů, že to přečtete na jeden nádech. nic takového se ale nestane. alespoň ne prvních 200 stran, z celkových 297 stran.
autor zvolil er-formu, tedy jiný druh vyprávění než v prvním díle, a možná to byl taky kámen úrazu. popisoval každou vteřinu šéfova dne, jaký si dal k snídani moučník a jak vypadal bar, ve kterém si ho dal, kolik tam sedělo lidí a jaký byl jejich životní příběh. ano, v anihilaci se občas od tématu odbočovalo, ale narozdíl od autority to byla procházka růžovým sadem. 
dvě stě stran úplně o ničem. nedokážu vám říct, co se tam dělo, a to jsem knihu dočetla před hodinou. ano, nějaké ty informace k oblasti X tam byly, ale bylo jich tak málo, že by se celých těch 200 stran dalo smrsknout na 50, kdyby se měly nechat jen ty důležité části. zbylých 100 stran se konečně něco začalo dít, ale nevím, proč to autor nezačal rozebírat mnohem dřív. chyběla mi bioložka, jejíž příběh mě zajímal, i když mi nebyla dvakrát příjemná. chyběla mi oblast X a ta její děsivá, hororová atmosféra. chybělo mi všechno, co dělalo anihilaci skvělou hororovo-fantastickou knížkou. 
.
adaptaci si přečtu, chci vědět, jak to všechno dopadne, abych si o sérii udělala obrázek a kdyžtak jí s těžkým srdcem poslala dál. první díl byl totiž vážně pecka, možná si nechám jen ten a opravdu budu stejně jako sol předstírat, že zbytek série neexistuje.
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2,5*/5*

Patrick Book

I’m becoming pretty confident that I’m not cool enough for “Weird Fiction.”

Ryan Mateyk

With the first book, Annihilation, the story started strong but the intensity fizzled as I continued on. This story, Authority, progressed quite the opposite; it was a slow-burn thriller that picked up, very strongly I might add, in the last 100 pages or so. 

The writing is pretty different from anything I've ever read (kind of existential? but the book's also a thriller?) and though I did enjoy the first book, I think I preferred this one. I preferred the narration (omniscient vs. first person). I preferred the descriptions this new narrative style allowed. And I preferred his use of devices, like repetition (see what I did there?) I will say though that due to this different writing style, the book tended to drag on in sections.

What left me with a sour taste after finishing the first book was the lack of answers. This book added some reprieve to this, but there is still a lot going on that the reader is unsure about. Hopefully the third book will continue where this one left off and prove a satisfying conclusion to this trilogy!

I feel like it was intentional how confusing the writing is here; as though every word means something more significant than obvious, and that each meaning is layered until this book becomes an onion; countless layers of thoughts and details and mysteries, all working together until it becomes impossible to read just once. I would almost give this a 5— this book was actually grotesque and horrifying, but that multi-layered structure threw me off a few times. Particularly the descriptions of Whitby in places: they were nothing short of sinister.

I have mixed feelings about the book. I did not expect the biologist to reappear, so I was thrilled when that occurred as she is one of my favorite characters. However, it was a frustrating read afterwards. 

I found the narrative from Control’s perspective claustrophobic. Contrary to his name, he seems to have so little control of what is occurring around him in the Southern reach. It is frustrating to be in his mind as he flounders, trying to uncovered the muddled truths about Area X. So much so in fact, that it was a relief when Area X breached containment and Control is freed as well. 

This book is certainly well-written and the mystery gripped me throughout, but it is also confusing and I think I would have to re-read it to understand what occurs throughout. 

B. R.

I have mixed feelings about the book. I did not expect the biologist to reappear, so I was thrilled when that occurred as she is one of my favorite characters. However, it was a frustrating read afterwards. 

I found the narrative from Control’s perspective claustrophobic. Contrary to his name, he seems to have so little control of what is occurring around him in the Southern reach. It is frustrating to be in his mind as he flounders, trying to uncovered the muddled truths about Area X. So much so in fact, that it was a relief when Area X breached containment and Control is freed as well. 

This book is certainly well-written and the mystery gripped me throughout, but it is also confusing and I think I would have to re-read it to understand what occurs throughout. 

Kyle Curry

Part 2 keeps things sweeping along. VanerMeer keeps a similiar tone here of the seemingly ordinary pot lid barley holding in the boiling pot of horrors. I found the jump in timeline/ new protagonist (or atleast character perspective) a cool way to carry on a trilogy. One of the things I really appreciate about his main characters is that they seem small in the face of the massive events surrounding them. They aren't always conviently the key or just the right person to fix something. I feel very human along side his characters facing the unimaginable. Literally unimaginable. Which is fascinating. The foes of this book aren't easily explainable zombies, aliens, or vampires. The shadowy government agencies prove as inefficent as they often seem in the real world. The monsters don't have obvious weaknesses. No it's exactly the kind of threat which is truely scary: one which we don't understand. One that has the ability to do things we don't even have knowledge of. Something unmeasureable by scientific instruments or even basic senses. He poses the question to us: How can we expect to deal with something that is beyond our scope of comprehension and that can define the way we do comprehend it?

Potential spoilers ahead:

I appreciate how he set us up to fail along with the new main character. We had spent a book with one character which our new protagonist is coming to deal with the fall out from. So coming into the book we, the reader, seem to have all this knowledge that our protagonist is lacking. Only we come to find he may know much of it, or worse, none of it mean what we think it does. This isn't even a case of unreliable narrator- more a case of underinformed narrator, dangerously underinformed. As the world crumbles around control, we aren't able to stand above, secure in the knowledge that he'll eventually learn it's secrets or die trying. No, we to find our various comfertable pieces of plot intel crumbling. 

VanderMeer constantly reminds us to be careful with words. They often have multiple meanings, and to rush into naming things with them might be dangerous. 

Looking forward to the 3rd!

Eitan Hershkovitz

Slower than the first book but the ending makes up for it. This series is like nothing I have ever read before and I really appreciate that.

Every moment was gripping, somehow I got no closer to solving the mystery but was thoroughly intrigued the entire time. 

Kimber Severance 

The Second Installment of the Southern Reach Trilogy. 

This story follows a man named "Control" (an alias) as he takes over as Director of the Southern Reach and consequently has to interview, investigate and get to the bottom of Area X. Alongside a wide array of eccentric scientists and a mysterious government official called "The Voice" who calls the shots. 

I wanted to love this story just as much as Annihilation, but I found that it dragged and dragged for the most part, 75% of this story was confusing and stale. I found myself thinking that Vandermeer was trying to set an atmospheric allusive dialogue so much that it just all became extremely convoluted and confusing, I could not follow the plot and found myself not engaged and losing interest every 10 pages or so. 

The last 30% saved the book for me, the unreliable narration will always be a love of mine and that combined with the eccentric scientists made me keep holding onto this story until the end.

I am looking forward to the last installment in this trilogy because I have heard that it ends really nicely!

jaz ☁️

The Second Installment of the Southern Reach Trilogy. 

This story follows a man named "Control" (an alias) as he takes over as Director of the Southern Reach and consequently has to interview, investigate and get to the bottom of Area X. Alongside a wide array of eccentric scientists and a mysterious government official called "The Voice" who calls the shots. 

I wanted to love this story just as much as Annihilation, but I found that it dragged and dragged for the most part, 75% of this story was confusing and stale. I found myself thinking that Vandermeer was trying to set an atmospheric allusive dialogue so much that it just all became extremely convoluted and confusing, I could not follow the plot and found myself not engaged and losing interest every 10 pages or so. 

The last 30% saved the book for me, the unreliable narration will always be a love of mine and that combined with the eccentric scientists made me keep holding onto this story until the end.

I am looking forward to the last installment in this trilogy because I have heard that it ends really nicely!

Vladimir

хареса ми повече от Annihilation. в началото атмосферата беше като от по-добрите не-дюнски романи на Хърбърт ("Кошерът на Хелстрьом", "Бариерата Сантарога") и някои от разказите му от 70те. може би е нарочно - образът на майката, чисто визуалната препратка към бене-гесеритския Voice и темата за камуфлажа, темата за властта сочат към това. а и да не е нарочно, тогава от "несъзнателната" игра на трилогията с Жанра и жанровете се раждат красиви чудовища.

Dave | Storyphoria

Where Annihilation was a chilling and atmospheric look inside Area X through the eyes of the biologist, Authority is a claustrophobic look inside the Southern Reach. An organization seemingly crumbling from within under the weight of secrets, hidden truths, and total lack of understanding around what Area X is and what it’s actually doing to those that come in contact with it. Can VanderMeer’s beautiful and purposeful writing save a rather tedious story?

This book is not going to be for everyone. Many will find it a grind to get through, but I hope you stick with it because in hindsight it’s really a wonderful trick that VanderMeer is pulling off. My favorite part is the sneaky vibe it pulls off so wonderfully. A feeling of steady dread creeping in, the walls closing in so slowly that you never even notice it happening… until you do. And at that point the story, while still in the very intentional and steady pace VanderMeer uses throughout this series, begins to feel chaotic and unstable. It’s really a beautiful piece of writing.

But beautiful writing through a story that is, frankly, often boring isn’t what most readers sign up for. As much as I love how hindsight has let me think back fondly on those slow chapters through the first half of this book, it just didn’t hit me like Annihilation did. I enjoyed this one, but not as much as the chilling, atmospheric bliss of Annihilation, though I’m hopeful for the grand finale in book three. As many have said, you need to just fight and push through Authority (I’m literally biting my tongue to avoid making a John Mellencamp pun here!) to get to the final book in the series. In hindsight, it was enjoyable. In the moment it was often a grind. No matter how you look at it, it falls short of the bar that Annihilation set.

Isabella

Didn't draw me in as much as Annihilation at first, but ended up being just as gripping in its own claustrophobic, paranoid way. Mark me down as terrified and hungry for a conclusion.

Janice Hopper

Sometimes I say in my reviews that I like the story ok but the writing, not so much.

With Jeff VanderMeer, I REALLY like the writing. The stories sometimes leave me scratching my head and pondering for a while. Sometimes I think I totally follow what's going on. Sometimes I don't.

These books take some time and thought. They're full of interesting ideas and weird, allusive references, and things that maybe happened? or maybe not? 

This is the story of Control, who comes to the Southern Reach to take over from the Director, who disappeared in the last expedition into Area X. The biologist was the only member who returned. Or is it even the biologist we knew from Annihilation?? Control keeps interviewing her, trying to get a handle on what's happening. But he also has lots of issues of his own.

And Area X may be expanding. For real this time.

This is good stuff. I'd read this again, though I agree with another reviewer that it's more a transitional book between the first (Annihilation) and the third (Acceptance). Some of the scenes described in both books really stick in my mind.

Currently reading the 3rd book. Caveat: if you fall asleep reading these books, you may experience some odd dreams from them. Be warned. :)

Very different from Annihilation but that’s not a bad thing at all. The good: excellent length and pace, lots of the same mysterious ambiguity of the first book but with a few more answers and a few more questions, great characters. The bad (?): it is definitely a middle book - lots of things remain unanswered and it feels like very little progress is made. Some people may strongly dislike reading from the perspective of a character who is in a position where he’s set up to fail from every standpoint - his coworkers tolerate him at best, he has very few resources, and he hardly knows why he’s even there. If the thought of a protagonist making little headway, as you yourself make little headway, bothers you, you may not enjoy this book. Personally, I found it the perfect bureaucratic feel for a spy novel, saved by the author’s excellent writing.

Becky Carpenter

James Eaton

Really enjoy this series. Once you get a few chapters in you just can’t stop. 

Already on to the 3rd book!

After thirty years, the only human engagement with Area X—a seemingly malevolent landscape surrounded by an invisible border and mysteriously wiped clean of all signs of civilization—has been a series of expeditions overseen by a government agency so secret it has almost been forgotten: the Southern Reach. Following the tumultuous twelfth expedition chronicled in Annihilation, the agency is in complete disarray. John Rodrigues (aka "Control") is the Southern Reach's newly appointed head. Working with a distrustful but desperate team, a series of frustrating interrogations, a cache of hidden notes, and hours of profoundly troubling video footage, Control begins to penetrate the secrets of Area X. But with each discovery he must confront disturbing truths about himself and the agency he's pledged to serve. In Authority, the New York Times bestselling second volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, Area X's most disturbing questions are answered . . . but the answers are far from reassuring.

Kyle Vice

A decent follow-up to the first book. Not quite as fast-paced, but that’s understandable given that it is the middle of a trilogy.

Kyle S

Updated review:
The first time I revisited this series I skipped this book and only really Annihilation and Acceptance because back in the day I found Authority a slow paced less engaging book that mostly functioned as exposition for the series. Now on my third revisit of the series I decided to give Authority a second shot and wow has my opinion changed. 

Authority is a slower paced read than Annihilation and Acceptance, and yes it does have a lot of exposition but neither is bad. In Authority we're introduced to the acting director of the Southern Reach who's installed there as a proxy for Central, the organization that oversees the Southern Reach. The book is all about the quirky characters who work at the fading government agency that has lost all relevancy for observing a strange area that really has any known greater scope consequences. The book explores who these people are, who the past director is and her goals, and the looming doom of Area X as it begins waking up and Vendermeer does it in such a slow and engaging way that you're nothing but hyped for Acceptance. 


Original Review:
This books functions mostly as an expositionary entry to the series.

Honestly wtf that’s all I can say like the writing linked to this dudes experiences is crazy and will be starting numero tres so I can figure out what’s going on

jillian tenner

Fraser Simons

Different kind of horror and story than Annihilation, which was very enjoyable. But it did drag sometimes despite the slow build up and structure. Reading it right after the first it seems right to have the cool down and not the same frenetic pacing. Some of my favourite moments are in this one so far, and some of the scariest! Looking forward to the next

Maria Bono

I must admit the second part of Southern Reach was a disappointment to me. The story slows down so much, you need to make an effort to keep reading through the middle of the book. Yes, some questions from Annihilation get an answer, but I feel you can see through all the mysteries happening inside the Southern Reach building. No surprising revelations or explanations you didn't see coming...it became frustrating to me.

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Authority by Jeff VanderMeer

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