Authority (The Southern Reach Trilogy)

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In the second volume of the Southern Reach Trilogy, questions are answered, stakes are raised, and mysteries are deepened

In Annihilation', Jeff VanderMeer introduced Area X a remote and lush terrain mysteriously sequestered from civilisation. This was the first volume of a projected trilogy; well in advance of publication, translation rights had already sold around the world and a major movie deal had been struck.

Just months later, Authority', the second volume, is here. For thirty years, the only human engagement with Area X has taken the form of a series of expeditions monitored by a secret agency called the Southern Reach. After the disastrous twelfth expedition chronicled in Annihilation, the Southern Reach is in disarray, and John Rodriguez, aka Control, is the team's newly appointed head. From a series of interrogations, a cache of hidden notes, and hours of profoundly troubling video footage, the secrets of Area X begin to reveal themselves and what they expose pushes Control to confront disturbing truths about both himself and the agency he's promised to serve. And the consequences will spread much further than that.

The Southern Reach trilogy will conclude in autumn 2014 with Acceptance'.

Reviews

Praise for ANNIHILATION and the SOUTHERN REACH TRILOGY:

Im 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 alike Annihilation 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 page Guardian

VanderMeers 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 Lindsays A Voyage To Arcturus Annihilation is so disquietingly strange as to defy summarisation. Read it Daily Mail

Astonishing, frightening, spectacular The imaginative daring and reach with which VanderMeer has invented and executed a concept such as Area X is breathtaking Powerful and echoing 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

Author Bio

Jeff VanderMeer is an award-winning novelist and editor. His fiction has been translated into twenty languages and has appeared in the Library of Americas American Fantastic Tales and in multiple years-best anthologies. He writes non-fiction for the Washington Post, the New York Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Times, and the Guardian, among others. He grew up in the Fiji Islands and now lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with his wife.