John Rodríguez (aka 'Control') is the Southern Reach's newly appointed head. Following the tumultuous twelfth expedition chronicled in Annihilation, the agency is in complete disarray. 'After thirty years, the only human engagement with Area X-a seemingly malevolent landscape surrounded by an invisible border and mysteriously wiped clean of all signs of civilization-has been a series of expeditions overseen by a government agency so secret it has almost been forgotten: the Southern Reach. Plot Summary Main article: Timeline of Authority While the first book takes place inside of Area X, Authority portrays how it was inside of the organization that sent the expeditions to that area.

‘Annihilation’ is the first volume in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy, which will be published throughout 2014: volume two (’Authority’) in May, and volume three (’Acceptance’) in September 2014.Authority is the second book in the Southern Reach Trilogy, written by Jeff VanderMeer. The book was published on by Ferrar, Straus and Giroux. And while each member of the expedition has surrendered to the authority of the Southern Reach, the power of Area X is far more difficult to resist. An inexplicable moaning calls in the distance at dusk.

An unmapped tunnel is not as it first appears. She is accompanied by a psychologist, an anthropologist and a surveyor, their stated mission: to chart the land, take samples and expand the Southern Reach’s understanding of Area X.īut they soon find out that they are being manipulated by forces both strange and all too familiar. Introverted but highly intelligent, the biologist brings her own secrets with her. ‘Annihilation’ is the story of the twelfth expedition and is told by its nameless biologist. Eleven expeditions have been sent in to investigate even for those that have made it out alive, there have been terrible consequences. Abrams and Margaret Atwood collaborated on a novel, it might look something like ‘Annihilation’, the first in an extraordinary trilogy.įor thirty years, Area X, monitored by the secret agency known as the Southern Reach, has remained mysterious and remote behind its intangible border– an environmental disaster zone, though to all appearances an abundant wilderness.

The southern reach trilogy