1y ago

Second Place Book Club Selection - Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer

Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer

Annihilation is our second place selection for November. We decided to choose a second book for people who want to have a little more variety and want to do more than one book in a month. I am looking forward to the discussion on this one. I saw the movie when it came out but am really interested to experience the story in book form.

17 comments

Really enjoyed the first book. Started questioning things in the second. By the third, I was hate reading it to get to the end.
Without spoiling it, the ending completely failed to land for me. Just a hodgepodge of incomplete ideas and loose ends... If it was just the first book they could've told other stories and built a Lovecraftian mythos around it, but instead they had to go for the 3 book deal and by the end it was just too much toast and not enough butter for me.
- Are you me? Couldn't agree more. Enjoyed the first so much, kept going for some kind of resolution and got...blah.
- This is why I stopped after the first book. I’ve seen a ton of people having that exact same sentiment.
- I don't often give up on books, but I couldn't finish the third. Maybe one day I'll go back, but yeah, it all went downhill after the first one.

Reading all these comments sure does make me wish I liked it...
- I actually read about 50% of it, but something about the writing style was not working for me and I was focused more on how it was written than what was written. Stopped reading it. I actually like the movie and wanted the details only a book can provide.
  Anyway maybe not relevant to you but if I don't like it, I don't read it. Too many other things to enjoy rather than trudging through something I don't.

Nice, literally finished it yesterday. Surprised at how different the second book is so far.
I love how fuzzy and surreal everything is in annihilation.
I'm kind of interested in watching the film again, but I want to let the book settle in first, since the story and setting felt so different to me then what I remember from the film.
An initial scene with a boar basically had me reliving princess mononoke while reading, it was very surprising and wonderful.

I thoroughly enjoyed that one. A different take on the Roadside Picnic genre and thoroughly weird.

I loved these books. and actually I wasn't turned off by the movie. For just 90 minutes they did a good job of touching on most of the key aspects. The visuals were pretty close to how I had imagined it from the reading, anyway. I was hoping they would make a sequel to touch on the rest of the series but I'll take what I can get these days.

I dut this book so much. The kind of book you read in the dark for the good ol' tinglies.

I loved the first book. I read it after seeing the film, which I also loved.
Both seemed like a dream of the other.
The sequels I enjoyed, but you have to enjoy the journey: there is no conclusion. Though that is a form of story telling that I quite like.
- They also feel like completely different genres. Wild, surreal, uneasy.

Great story

I haven't read this, mostly because when I saw the trailer for the movie I started screaming with joy in the theater because I thought Chaga (Evolution's Shore - oddly enough, by the author of the other November selection, Ian McDonald) had gotten a movie adaptation.
I did see and like the Annihilation movie OK.
So even if the book is not like the movie, I can't go in without prejudice. I was just so disappointed.

I went into it hoping to capture the nostalgia of discovering and reading SCP when I first discovered them many years ago.
Unfortunately, Even though the premise looked really cool I found myself bored after the first book and never read the rest of the series.
Are the following books different? Is the film worth it?
- The movie is good, though I felt it missed a lot of things I found interesting in the book. (Don't ask what exactly, it's been a while.)
  If you were bored by the first book, don't even bother with the others.
  
  Thanks I might give the movie a try :)

17 comments