Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsHBO's "The Leftovers" meets..."The Office"?
Reviewed in the United States on March 18, 2018
Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation is very much modernized H.P. Lovecraft with intensely vivid prose that, at times, felt like Cormac McCarthy taking a stab of weird-science fiction; Authority is not that. The Lovecraftian undertones are gone. The first-person perspective is gone (which makes sense, because Annihilation was simply a journal). But it's still weird as heck.
When this novel came out, I'm sure people didn't know how to define it, or what to compare it with. And even now, people are probably not understanding it because they saw the movie (which is a masterpiece but nothing like Jeff VanderMeer's own masterpiece) and neither Annihilation or Authority are anything like the movie. Let the movie be its own thing. Let the book (and book series) be its own thing.
You should not expect a mainstream, streamline, popular fiction novel. Expect weird, intelligent horror; expect weird, intelligent humor. Jeff VanderMeer does not place his scares or his jokes on a golden platter (like Stephen King does-but that's okay, Stephen King admits that he's the Big Mac and fries of writers; VanderMeer is more like organic, gluten-free, free-range, grass-fed, sugar free sushi); he doesn't dumb it down for the reader-you get it, or you don't; you understand his sense of humor, or you don't.
If you like LOST or The Leftovers (especially The Leftovers), this book and this book series is for you. The weirdness of the questions is what drives the story, not the answers. The answers really don't matter. Authority is one of my favorite novels of all time, and yet if you're expecting an action packed, science fiction, horror-thriller extravaganza, I cannot recommend this book for you.
