Authority

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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