Annihilation | Southern Reach Series # 1 by Jeff VanderMeer

The Southern Reach Trilogy begins with Annihilation, the Nebula Award-winning novel that ?reads as if Verne or Wellsian adventurers exploring a mysterious island had warped through into a Kafkaesque nightmare world? (Kim Stanley Robinson). \n\nArea X has been cut off from the rest of the world for years. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. Expeditions into Area X have ended in disaster or death. \n\nIn Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer?s Southern Reach Trilogy, we join the latest expedition. The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and the narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself. \n\nThey arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers?they discover lifeforms that surpass understanding. But it?s the secrets they carried across the border with them that change everything.