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Annihilation

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Annihilation

By: Jeff VanderMeer
Narrated by: Carolyn McCormick
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About this listen

’A contemporary masterpiece’ Guardian

THE FIRST VOLUME OF THE EXTRAORDINARY SOUTHERN REACH TRILOGY – NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY ALEX GARLAND (EX MACHINA) AND STARRING NATALIE PORTMAN AND OSCAR ISAAC

For thirty years, Area X has remained mysterious and remote behind its intangible border – an environmental disaster zone, though to all appearances an abundant wilderness.

The Southern Reach, a secretive government agency, has sent eleven expeditions to investigate Area X. One has ended in mass suicide, another in a hail of gunfire, the eleventh in a fatal cancer epidemic.

Now four women embark on the twelfth expedition into the unknown.

Adventure Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Science Fiction Technothrillers Thriller & Suspense Thriller Fantasy Technology Suspense

Critic Reviews

Praise for ANNIHILATION and the SOUTHERN REACH TRILOGY:

‘I’m loving the Southern Reach Trilogy … Creepy and fascinating’ Stephen King

‘Hauntingly weird and brilliantly new … These are contemporary masterpieces and career-defining novels’ Adam Robert, Books of the Year, Guardian

This trilogy is a modern mycological masterpiece … Remarkable … Tense, eerie and unsettling … VanderMeer writes much better prose than Poe ever did … This is genuinely potent and dream-haunting writing. VanderMeer has arrived’ Guardian

‘A teeming science fiction that draws on Conrad and Lovecraft alikeAnnihilation shows signs of being the novel that will allow VanderMeer to break through to a new and larger audience’ Sunday Telegraph

‘A lasting monument to the uncanny … You find yourself afraid to turn the pageGuardian

‘VanderMeer’s novel is a psycho-geographical tour de force, channelling Ballard and Lovecraft to instil the reader with a deep, delicious unease’ Financial Times

‘What a haunting book this is, lodging deep in the memory in similar fashion to otherworldly classics such as David Lindsay’s A Voyage To ArcturusAnnihilation is so disquietingly strange as to defy summarisation. Read itDaily Mail

Astonishing, frightening, spectacular … I hope the trilogy will come to be seen not only as the instant sci-fi classic it is, but also as Literature’ New Statesman

‘Immersive, insightful and often deeply bloody creepy, this is a startlingly good novel … A major work’ ***** SFX Magazine

‘A tense and chilling psychological thriller about an unravelling expedition and the strangeness within us. A little Kubrick, a lot of Lovecraft, the novel builds with an unbearable tension and claustrophobic dread that lingers long afterwards. I loved it’ Lauren Beukes

Original and beautiful, maddening and magnificent’ Warren Ellis

All stars
Most relevant
Amazingly imaginative with unique world building and a suspenseful setting. Hence I am at a loss over how it's so boring. I listened because it was highly recommended and lauded by an opinion I trust, and I can see why it was. But, IMO, that powerful context, setting and suspense doesn't lend well to how heavily the story relies on mundane allegory and sentiment to build momentum. For me the result irritatingly ends up failing to suspend disbelief on so many occasions.

brilliantly imaginative, but...

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Loved the narrator, story was interesting and I loved the way the narrator built suspense. Can't wait for the next two books to come out on Audible!

Intriguing and suspenseful

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Great narrator and a wonderfully hallucinatory and intriguing narrative. The author has the great skill of not attempting to over explain the inexplicable...

Weird SciFi at it's best

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Well written, am curious for the next book as it's a three part series... in hope for some action. Overall, it was interesting and I liked it.

Neutral, but curious enough for the next book.

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I really like this novel that I listened in 2 days. The reader job was also excellent and atuned to the storyline

a very good and original novel

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