Acceptance

Title: Acceptance

Author: Jeff VanderMeer

Summary: The Southern Reach trilogy draws to a close and it is winter in Area X.

One last, desperate team embarks across the border, determined to reach a remote island that may hold the answers they’ve been seeking. As they press deeper into the unknown, the threat to the outside world becomes only more daunting.

The mysteries of Area X may have been solved, but their consequences and implications are no less profound – or terrifying.

Rating: ★★★☆☆ 3/5

Review: I was excited to be finishing this trilogy. To discover what other secrets Area X and the Southern Reach held. But… I didn’t find it as compelling as the first two books in the Southern Reach series. Annihilation and Authority followed single characters navigating new and increasingly bizarre situations. This books followed several characters and was less about the strangeness around them, and more about them as individuals. Each chapter felt like a character-driven vignette loosely strung together with the .

This wasn’t a bad thing, necessarily. But it wasn’t what I had expected. I enjoyed meeting characters we had only really heard about and barely met, and seeing more of their motivations and feelings. Saul, the lighthouse keeper, was most definitely my favourite, and his chapters were always a delight. They were also bittersweet, as we already know where his story ends. Seeing him get there was heart-wrenching.

The Director was, in some ways, the most interesting. Her story bridges the gap between the first two books in a lot of ways. The illicit trip she took into Area X, the repercussions of that for her, for Whitby, and for the Souther Reach as a whole. How that informed her and drove the decisions she made ahead of the expedition into Area X we follow in the first book. The things she still didn’t understand and what she left behind, which were found by her successor in the second book. And, of course, her connection to the Forgotten Coast and her relationship with Saul. It was so interesting seeing her as a child in his story, and as a adult her in own. They felt like two different characters, again connecting different parts of the same story.

Control and Ghost Bird I cared much less about. The innocent and the wise, their characters fumbling their way through Area X with no clear intention. Their role in the greater story simply seemed to be showing us more of Area X, a lot of which was not new or surprising. I was shocked none of the characters had picked up on the fact that time moves differently in Area X, there was so many clues to that. Meeting the Crawler—seeing what had become of Saul—I had been looking forward to, but felt underwhelming. The most interesting of their chapters was finding out what had happened to the Biologist. That felt fitting and right and I hope she is content as she is now.

There are so many links and chains and circles in this trilogy, and I think this book brings many of them to light in a fascinating way. Parts of the narrative starting as others end, people’s stories ending only also to begin. Themes and motifs running through and so many questions begged with so precious few answers given.

I think that is, at the core of it, what I love and dislike about this book in equal measure. There is so much to consider and ways to connect things to draw meaning from them, but never any real concrete answers to help gauge how close or far you may be to the truth.