Jeff Vandermeer
Book 3 of the Southern Reach Trilogy
I have accepted the fact that this is a bad trilogy. Book 3, I was hoping, would provide some resolution, both in terms of the mystery of what exactly Area X is, and in terms of why we care. I must say that we only find out a bit more about Area X. So the series ends with only vague understandings of what it might be. And I clearly don't care. The motivations are not developed to the point where a reader is truly invested in the characters. I was curious, but not invested. Which leads me to think about why this trilogy showed up on so many 'best book of the year' lists. It was supposed to be a character driven mystery/sci-fi novel. Was it supposed to be commentary on something? Environmentalism? Government control? In-office working relationships? Self-discovery? Or is it supposed to be a character driven, fantasy-mystery? Maybe the fact that I don't know, or couldn't tell, means that I am not the target audience for this trilogy.
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Monday, January 30, 2017
Thursday, January 5, 2017
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Jeff Vandermeer
Book 2 of the Southern Reach Trilogy
So in book 2, we see the story from the perspective of the Southern Reach, which is a scientific research facility tasked with exploring (and containing) Area X. We are introduced to Control (aka John Rodriguez) who is the newly assigned director of the Southern Reach. Control is basically tasked with solving a mystery, or a series of mysteries. What is going on inside Area X, what is Area X, what happened to the prior director (the psychologist of Book 1), how did the biologist get out of Area X, what happened to her while she was in, etc. I still have a pretty mixed reaction here. Still lots of mystery (which I am not opposed to), but now we are 2/3 of the way through the trilogy and I am not seeing a lot of progress on solving those mysteries. This is beginning to feel like one of those novels/films where, in the last two minutes, everything is resolved with fortuitous facts revealed in the last three minutes. On the other hand, I am at least marginally interested enough to probably read the third installment. Still hesitant.
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Book 2 of the Southern Reach Trilogy
So in book 2, we see the story from the perspective of the Southern Reach, which is a scientific research facility tasked with exploring (and containing) Area X. We are introduced to Control (aka John Rodriguez) who is the newly assigned director of the Southern Reach. Control is basically tasked with solving a mystery, or a series of mysteries. What is going on inside Area X, what is Area X, what happened to the prior director (the psychologist of Book 1), how did the biologist get out of Area X, what happened to her while she was in, etc. I still have a pretty mixed reaction here. Still lots of mystery (which I am not opposed to), but now we are 2/3 of the way through the trilogy and I am not seeing a lot of progress on solving those mysteries. This is beginning to feel like one of those novels/films where, in the last two minutes, everything is resolved with fortuitous facts revealed in the last three minutes. On the other hand, I am at least marginally interested enough to probably read the third installment. Still hesitant.
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