Authority: A Novel (The Southern Reach Trilogy)

Pretty boring except for the last part. Could've been a lot shorter.

This book was boring. That is all I can really say and it won't even spoil anything. I was bored. 80% of this book were completely boring and utterly useless and unnecessary to the plot. This is the most important thing to say about this book. It might have been amazing, had it been the the same size as Annihilation. Compact, around 100 pages, that would have worked. But this book is three times as long. And nothing ever happens. I actually wrote a book journal while reading this and all I ever wrote down was "I'm bored." or "Things seem to be picking up now." but they seriously never really did. Even when the plot thickened and I was so sure things couldn't be boring anymore, they did manage to slow down so much again. I still tagged the hell out of this book, because the writing is beautiful and when something happened it was haunting and I wanted more. But those happenings where just too few. I needed more action, more information, but it just fell completely flat in that department. Still, the writing is creepy and whimsical and captivating. Just as great as it was in Annihilation and probably still will be in Acceptance. Overall, I was definitely disappointed. The characters were developed, but I didn't really care much for them in the end. Annihilation did that too, where you kinda know the characters but they also seem like strangers. It was weird. Still, I think will read the third book. Mostly cause I own it. But also, cause it will take place in the Area X again and I really wanna know more of what creepy things could go down there. I will give my overall judgement over this second book after the third one, but so far I wouldn't really recommend it, just cause it's so slow and has almost no essence. Maybe read a summary and go straight to the third one.

Part two of the Southern Reach Trilogy was equaly good as the first book, but totaly different in form and story. This time we get a view on the Southern Reach, through the newly appointed head of the project, John Rodriguez (aka “Control”). He tries to unreveal the mysteries sourrounding the failed expeditions and AreaX. The deeper he diggs the abstruser it get's. This is really a very well written mystery series and I'm excited for the conclusion, that will be published in Sep 2014.

Auf den zweiten Teil der Southern Reach-Reihe war ich sehr gespannt. Ich war neugierig zu erfahren, wie der Autor seine Idee weiter ausführen würde. Meine Neugierde wurde mit einer wirklich gelungenen Fortsetzung belohnt, die weiterhin Lust auf mehr macht. Spannend war es, dass VanderMeer die Geschichte hier von einer ganz anderen Position aus aufzieht. Das tut der Geschichte aber wirklich gut und erweitert unser Verständnis für die spezielle Situation ungemein. Auch macht es das Ganze noch beklemmender und bedrohlicher, da wir so viel Neues erfahren. Was mich dann aber noch mehr überraschte, war Controls leichter Sinn für Humor, der fast schon ein wenig ironisch/zynisch ist. Es passt enorm, war für mich aber völlig unerwartet. Die Zone als Ferienresort für Aliens? - Ja, ich wurde auf der Strasse komisch angeguckt, als ich plötzlich auflachen musste. Ein wirklich, wirklich guter zweiter Teil, der dem Beginn in Nichts nach steht und genau deswegen dafür sorgt, dass man (oder zumindest ich) auch dringend Teil drei kennenlernen möchte.

Not so wild as the first one, but things remain bizzare. It was an interesting way to move the story forward and keep the tension to see what is really going on with Area X and if it is possible to stop it.