Detailed plot synopsis reviews of Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance |
|---|
Some had turned into monsters and the rest had killed each other. How convenient for the storyline.
Control and Ghost Bird encounter Grace on an island. Grace says she has been there for three years. Obviously time passes at different speeds at different parts of Area X.
We pick up on the story of the Biologist, the real Biologist. She had been infected with alien spores and had given the Crawler a blowjob which presumably had infected her further, and she talked constantly about a "brightness" within her that was changing her into a monster or an alien or an alien monster.
The Biologist spends a lot of time following an owl. She thinks that her husband, who visited Area X in a previous expedition, might have turned into an owl. The Biologist talks a lot about the owl. You would find it very exciting.
Click here to see the rest of this reviewThe Biologist spends years on an island in Area X. Remember that time passes differently here. She thinks a lot about the owl. It is still as exciting as when she first started thinking about it.
Control, back in his own storyline with Ghost Bird, says something noteworthy about the alien:
"We know its purpose. Which is to kill us, to transform us, or to get rid of us."
Exactly. That's been obvious from Book 1. But for all the hundreds of pages of discussion of rabbits and owls and lighthouses and tunnels the motivation of the alien is one topic they never touch on again.
Control and Ghost Bird meet the Biologist. By now many years have passed for the Biologist and she has turned into a monster. The Biologist is a very ugly monster who moans.
In another flashback we find out that the Psychologist/Director is dying of cancer. Maybe that's why she's willing to go back to Area X, because she knows she will die soon.
We have a flashback to Saul the homosexual lighthouse keeper watching someone named Jim play the piano so hard that his fingers are destroyed. We are given the impression that the alien inside of Saul is destroying the fingers of Jim the piano player.
Ghost Bird decides to go back to the Tower. She finds the Crawler there. The Crawler doesn't attack her since it recognizes she is an alien duplicate. Ghost Bird sees a light. A profound light! Ghost Bird thinks about the profound light for a long time.
Then Grace appears and shoots Ghost Bird in the back. But since Ghost Bird is an alien duplicate, she is unharmed, despite the fact that alien duplicates have been killed with guns before. Does this make no sense to you? Good!
We read about another flashback of Saul the homosexual lighthouse keeper and his friend Henry. Henry shot a duplicate of himself and was upset by that. Henry then shot Saul and they wrestled, and then they jumped off the lighthouse, but because Saul was turning into an alien this large fall didn't bother him much. At least he got to hug another man on the way down, right?
Back in the present, Control had gone down the stairs of the Tower and the Crawler had smacked him. Of all the many people who have repeatedly gone down the Tower so many times, I don't know why one of them doesn't bring a gun and simply shoot the monster.
Control goes to the very bottom of the stairs and sees a bright light/door. He goes into it. That's the end of his story. Were you expecting something more from this asswipe author? In case you haven't figured it out by now, this entire trilogy is just a literary cocktease.
There is a final flashback to Saul, lying on the ground after jumping off the lighthouse, realizing the alien disease is transforming him into a monster.
Ghost Bird and Grace leave the Tower. They walk around Area X some more. That's the exciting conclusion to their story.
The story ends with the Psychologist either becoming some kind of non-physical being who floats around Area X, or dying. It's not made clear, as with everything else in these nutty books.
The End.
Literary Criticism:
The first book, Annihilation, had a lot of weak points, but at least a few things happened in it. The second book, Authority, was the worst, because most of the book was about office politics which had nothing to do with the first book. The third book, Acceptance, was almost as bad as Authority, because it answered no questions at all.
Let's list just some of the major problems of this series:
1) Pseudo-intellectualism. The trilogy tried to be very profound, portraying alien lights and sounds as having tremendous meaning, as if the author was creating a painting, and not a story. The author also spent pages and pages talking about what it meant to exist in Area X, but it was all very vague and came across as shallow and pretentious.
2) Shallow characters. The only developed characters were the Biologist, the Psychologist, and Control. The rest were basically two dimensional or little more as props for the main characters. Three developed characters is not a lot for a trilogy.
3) Unbelievable characters. The Biologist's husband dies a horrible death and she wants to go after him? The Psychologist wants to go to this dangerous place because she had a friend at the lighthouse? None of it makes any sense. No one in their right mind would want to go this place. And because their motivations to go there was unreal, the story didn't work.
4) Constant trips to the Tower. The first and third books featured repetitive trips to the Tower as characters went there over and over to be infected by the Crawler. Not once did someone think to shoot it with a gun.
5) Useless debates. Most of the trilogy featured useless debates, useless debates over whether the Tower was a tunnel, or the meaning of the crazy words on the walls, or about the many rabbits they sent across, or about how the special light or sounds made them feel, instead of focusing on the main issue--what was the alien's plan and how to stop it?
6) Most of Book 2 was office politics. Book 2 seemed totally out of place. It was a book about office politics which had almost nothing to do with the first book, except at the end.
7) The ending didn't explain anything. There was no explanation of what the door at the bottom of the tower led to, what the alien's motivations were, or how to kill or stop it. The books usually ended with characters either turned into monsters or deciding to wander around aimlessly.
8) We never learn the Psychologist's plan. The Psychologist kept saying that she had some kind of plan to stop the monster involving the Biologist. But we never learn what the plan is.
9) Why not soldiers? Why didn't they send in a battalion of soldiers, rather than a handful of scientists? This is never explained. Why didn't they shoot the Crawler or blast the Tower?
10) Why not nukes? When it became apparent that Area X was expanding, why didn't they nuke it? This possibility was never even discussed.
As I said earlier, this entire book was a literary cocktease. It is meant to be a story which wants you to think, "Aliens are turning people into aliens, with unimaginable lights and sounds! How profound is that?" Except that the idea is rather simple, and pretending that it is profound is not enough to carry one book, much less three of them. The author purposefully avoids answering any questions about or it offering any resolution to the story, feeling that it is more artistic to leave everything unanswered and unresolved.
That is why Jeff Vandermeer is an asswipe, and why these books suck ass, and, most importantly, why you paid $4.99 to read this summary rather than read these annoying books on your own.
